My Land is a Cruel Poet.
Art by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash.
My Land is a Cruel Poet
I am not sure if I’ve ever written of my country. Maybe because she had written me with a shaky
hand like a poet drunk with cognac and departed love. My land is like George Orwell — she
knows she’ll die of tuberculosis but won’t stop smoking. I went outside on a Monday morning
to recreate my dream into reality. I saw a boy on the road, chasing a glow that beckons him to a
rewarding emptiness as he chews words meant for spirits that run barefoot in the market. I saw in
his eyes a man being set on fire because he only puked his fears. I said to the boy, I am you. He
said no, he is me. A star shot out of the smoke of the burning man and shattered between us,
yelling, “I am both of you.” Revelation is cold, like ice on the neck; I am groping in a house
of echoes, searching for my brother’s face between punctuations of silence. The roads are made
dirty by legs that carried wailing dreams; they will soon be washed by blood, which is the purest
soap for purgation of filth. I saw a woman scooping water on her face. She said she could no longer
keep the kisses of her murdered husband on her cheeks. Night is here. I am afraid to go outside.
Bodies are lying around; it is hard to say if they are alive or dead. In this part, death is a way of
leaving before being buried alive. And hope is a candle you hold against a dark storm. The cries of
children give music to the wicked drums of callous hands. One asked for her mother’s wrapper to
wrap around the wound he got from the playground — the playground where bullets and flesh
romance and mothers hold their breath in supplication. I wish to retell the glorious stories I’ve
heard about this land in my being. Yet, no matter how I hide, I am like everyone else here — we
recover shades from forgotten stories because we know the sun will never set even on this dark
side.
Art by Josep Martins on Unsplash.
Reacquaintance with Olokun
Do you remember the songs I’ve written for you, Olokun, eh?
The memories whetted with prurience in hope to be lived like houses in dreams, hm?
How I love(d) to dine in your honeyed house and
watch my mirrored rebirth by your tender loins
The name christened the infant you by the pronunciations of my pen;
“Olókun sèníadé
opener of all minds”
My mind, you did(n’t) open
with the door a(insert space, if you like)jar,
cracking under the flutter of your cascaded fingers
I am pressed between the pounding pulses of your silence
my feet, buried in your billows, search for answers to the questions I can’t ask.
I, a rippled poem, a shattered, scattered r i v e r
seek rhythm in the breasts of your waves.
Yet I freeze in cold cloak of fright when I see the sprawling of your body spread to the end of
where the sky does not end.
Your song is like that of war,
not a lullaby, yet
lures me (many) to sleep.
Sleep Sleep
Sleeping
Let me (not) wake up from this trance.
