Mantra II
Art from The Cleveland Museum of Art on Unsplash.
after Ernest Ogunyemi’s “Gee”
Beloved: we will dance soon, like the ants
around the sugar cube, and not suffocate
from joy. We will sing grace like the birds,
above the ripe mangoes, & our throats
won’t hurt. I swear, the news will come &
we won’t beat the radio to death—
terror won’t slice through our ears again:
our hymns will open & draw to a close
without the mantra of blood spill, without
the anthem of flood, of animals grazing us
& the harvest of our striving. Our crusts shall
make it to bread. O beloved, take the kọ̀ngọ́*
& listen to the dead animal come alive
like an awaited music— we, too,
will outshine the language of rust. Someday,
we’ll drink together & laughter will
spill from the deepest of our bellies.
Someday, the country will sleep & forget
its claws in the stone age. And our dreams,
these sore horses, these limping travellers,
will repair alive
to the green zone of morning. We’ll dance soon
o’ beloved!¹
* Kọ̀ngọ́ is a Yorùbá word equivalent to drum stick in English.
¹ From Tomas Tranströmer’s “Prelude”
Art from Europeana on Unsplash.
O’ Brother: Apocalypse
Last night I slept on my left side. & I suppose
you know what that means: I saw the world tumbling
in a pot of blood, & humans mutating to tree barks,
becoming fire-food. Brother, I saw you in a frenzy,
heart beating to the strange rhythms of òsugbo drum
& your feet stimulating the rabid ache of the world
that blankets itself in fire. Fuck ammunition & immunity. Nothing
to say about the stars, each carving itself as a bullet— the
heavens stoned us seeking red flood. Brother, your teeth
were rising for a bite with the gods in alternate universe.
Brother, I saw you at the edge of the boiling world, swooping
firewood [men] into fire like a cutlass swoops lumps of
grass into a horse’s [death’s] mouth. The world reached its
boiling point. & before my body changed position,
there was no wood left for the fire to eat. So the canine of
the fire made love to you. I mean, your head rolled
into its yellow embrace— what hell is enough to purge
your sins? What sea of your blood is enough to quench
the thirsts of mouths you shut with guns?— the gods were
hungry & it’s your turn— I mean, if the gods must eat,
if the ceremony of blood spill must take place,
o brother, you’re the next firewood.
Art by Steve Johnson on Unsplash.
SERENADE
The glowing alloy that forges the blade
shapes its own dreams; the blade, against
the throat of my little lamb. But my
innocence does not fend, and my verses,
tranced by the appetite of lips, spawn
no asylum: the apple overcomes the man.
Yet, the body longs more for a fall, endless
like the hunger of its molder’s hands; for
a bruise that stirred the scripture man’s
beauty. The flesh and its weak ambition. My
blue sanctuary, I have repaired to your altar
with wounds blessing my palms. Still, the blade
keeps its dreams in motion, to fall the lamb. Still,
the longing for Sirius has brought me thus:
watching, wanting, bruising— o brooding
o brooding soul, shall the lambent rudder steer us?
