art back view backlit boy

A MAN’S BORDERLINE TO OVERCOMING LONELINESS

by Oluwadare Popoola

there is familiarity,

a twinkle in our eyes for unknown places

that beg a birdsong to settle

for one of milky eyes or murderous ears.

a chalice or wine.

 

I don’t think I know the crevices of insanity well,

but it sure looks like a jagged muscle

from a mouth tilted in the position of a rig-saw.

 

you leave the ninety-nine

and come after my body,

measuring slabs of it with your eyes,

resectioning its tissues with your teeth,

cooking it with spices from the internet.

& then you see

that you have cooked up a ghost.

it’s a white coat carrying rashes,

something you call letters

or a relic of it

that soon becomes songs.

 

you bathe them in your spittle

and give them a home in photographs

or tie them to a group of wintering bluebirds

and in electronic papers that are all apparitions.

calories wasting & eyes singeing.

 

you go to the kitchen to search for lost energy,

sleep and dream that I became your neighbour

and woke up to ninety-nine retweets.

Source: From the Isolation Issue (September 2020)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

OLÚWÁDÁRE PÓPÓỌLA is a poet or so he thinks, a student of Microbiology and a Sportswriter for a media company. He writes from a city by the rocks and longs to see the world without discrimination of any form. He is learning how images are made from words and his poems are up/forthcoming on Mineral Lit. Magazine, Headline Poetry & Press, Feral: A Journal of Poetry & Art and ang(st)zine.

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