OF A POET & HIS COUNTRY'S DOLOUR.
Inspired by the recent shooting of protesters in Kenya
It's a thing of tragedy to name this poem a beautiful thing.
Pardon me, I am not trying to fuck with language.
Everything I have named beauty is only a reminder of my
grief: a garden of roses blooming its lushness of reds on
my brother’s grave; the endless blue sky after it kisses
a black horizon; the night before it lost its essence to the
moon; the birds taking flight into the safety of the
sky; men chanting peaceful songs, protesting against wounds
that do not heal; our bodies walking into the mouth of
guns, as if to say it would spare our innocence. Once, I
wrote a poem about the brief history of erasure,
about the sorrow of my sorrow, & titled it memory.
But now I understand my country holds a lot of
sadness in its flesh. & It's not enough to qualify my
portion of her sadness as a memory. Here, grief is like
a wildfire—it torches what it touches & nestles on the
branches of the body as a portraiture of beauty.
A mouth is a wounded thing. By which i mean—
once, a cyborg offered me metaphors to unwind its
part of my country’s misery. & tonight, it is choked
on language—shut down. Say to live we must close
the mouth of our grievance & pretend it's beautiful.
A PARADOX
After the Lekki Tollgate Massacre, EndSarz, 20th October 2020
it's a thing of terror to sing a song to the
night. here, the mouth opens, enough to let
silence crawl in. believe me when i said not
every death is a door toward erasure. it is something
you must fashion, whether against or within a
body. today marks the 4th anniversary of the
massacre at the lekki tollgate. twitter. #endsarz:
the videos keeps replaying on my phone—
how the night punctures holes into bodies.
before the massacre, there's a boy holding a placard,
as if to say, guns are not enough to steal innocence.
& there's another, maybe another & another &
the death continues. i am walking past the street
again, & silence is all i hold in my throat. forgive me,
i have become too human to name my death an
escape. denouement: in my dream, my son is
holding a placard up in the air. when asked why
he chooses to protest. he says cheerfully, i was born
to continue the death of my father, punching his
chest heavily. in my head, i am replaying his words,
wondering if anything has ever had a claim over
me in that way. the body is never corrupted. a bullet
won't kill you, it only opens a hole wide enough
for silence to crawl into the body.