Pharaoh’s Syndrome.
Art by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash.
Pharaoh’s Syndrome.
For Tee.
Note: Parenthesized lines are to be whispered.
I saw the Lord one evening inside a brittle nap
I wrought at the expense of a dough of a poem.
& I became restless and restless trying to recall
both the poem and the vision.
The vision, a cushion feel with an air of butterflies.
I forget the images under the pillow, the wonder
of unwritten masterpieces stuck in between moments.
The nape of memory is to know you know
but you cannot say what it is you know for sure.
A Pharaoh’s Syndrome, my girl called it.
She, roleplaying as therapist, said I should think
of the memories as a jigsaw puzzle, of which
there is no solution in one big swift move.
We tried mindfulness. Counting our breath
to fours in a mirroring lotus pose.
Her hair filled the air, her presence whipped
my lungs, and I was back in the space of oblivion
where only breasts and rose oil reigned.
so what do you remember of the poem?
a single word: lord.
[but I do not know
if it is a prayer or an exclamation
or a moan.]
let’s try again, olumide
what do you remember of the vision?
a single slide of light,
undifferentiated; lightyears, sudden
and rapturous— [like your hair
catching the morning light through the curtains, but—]
have you thought about the poem &
the vision being one?
I cannot say for sure— [not buts, girl
your body is the beginning of my poetry,
the end of all prophecies]
this is not really working, is it?
yeah. [you caught my eyes
in their mischief, so now,]
shouldn’t we worship together
the masterpiece that needs no remembrance?
Art by Steve Johnson on Unsplash.
A rhapsody of bloated cities.
songs of bloatation begins with a drip, and a billion blobs
into the deluge rising against the seed-eyes of plainsongs.
hum along with me— gods’ sneezes are dam-sized,
and when they burp, the waterways
morph into vagabonds. to put it simply,
Fela was wrong. water antagonized
the minute it motioned a purge against these mother-
cities. their skirts, wet to the necks.
their children, paperbodies upon the flood.
they have refused to sink.
four months ago in Kogi, you will doubt this turgidity.
then, a sugarcane stalk along a rivermouth was thirsty.
but for shame no one will speak of it. we continued as
though myth is another Sudan face of a harsh season.
yet deep inside the Sahel, the blades of the guineas
are whimpering. the egrets, quiet. their whites, stained
by the fiercer sun. again, I suspect it is the stretch
of the sky’s hand against ampleness.
a preacher said it is the prophecy of a running tyre
towards the end of the world. Earth as a
synecdoche for rotation and the Newtonian law.
but neglect is the nutrient that ripens a ruin.
for the object of damnation has always been around
in the body of a fruit. and because hunger is,
sin becomes.
still I fault the gods. their hand planted the tree,
timed the game of enticement.
it is not us who are sinful.
it is not the rivers either.
but judged are we regardless. it is the country
of the confluence, its offense are
two handfuls. I muse upon a sharp thirst—
if fire shall judge us, do it swiftly.
but gods are funny and their jokes
are scabbarded. I know one who might say
in a concomitant thunder, your youths
have profaned my altar in the name of wetness.
now drink, drink this flood, and die.
and in quickness, we shifted.
by the call of seed, we body stubborn cities.
we became Lagos— turgid,
tenacious shark jaws about the lagoon,
kinging over the ruins across the veined ouroboros.
say this is my sober song—the living tail
of rainbows slithering inside me.
unlike the Samaritan woman,
who will hold tight to the pitcher against
the thrills of prophecy? when shall
Bayajidda return and kill the death
living in the well? and who will father
new cities, now that the old ones are bloated?
Art from USGS on Unsplash.
Shame Parade.
the decaying of the social walls as we knew it—
fathers cannot father again, mothers lost in the
maze of mothering, and what of the sun, what
has the waste made of the country once giant
among her folks? her skin rages and breaks uneven,
the craze is what emerges when the teeth of surviving
hits a bone. something cracks, I’m not sure what.
I count the wars residing inside my country’s palm—
how they grow like tumors, how they seep like overripe
mangoes pretending to be grenades— outside her lie
is the old clock, dead in the clicks, forming half-boys
who are fond of gulping warsongs, sour milk and
tender rotten potatoes. they say this is the balanced diet
of the beautiful ones, afraid of being born. yet they say
that we, we were tossed into the maze, do not know wars
like our fathers, but the years that are living through us
are also war-wearied, mindless battles praying themselves
about troops of decaying dreams, one of which is mine,
one of which is a simple life where survival does not run
like a thief in the market. my father says I am his most sincere
bullet at hitting the mark, and I’m failing. his bullet shells the harsh
wind and sizzles to a sigh— because it is difficult to wound
a reality already full of wounds in shape of dirges. every attempt
becomes a mouth singing my name through a shame parade.
but my country expiates this with her own great shame.
are you broke? are you tired? are you in debt? are you afraid?
do you feel like running away? do you feel broken? crouch,
place a hand on the land and know that the ruining
is the same, the shame is both mine and ours at once.
