ENDING AS A CHAOS OF TRUE BEGINNING by Oyindamola Shoola

ENDING AS A CHAOS OF TRUE BEGINNING by Oyindamola Shoola

by | Sep 1, 2020 | Isolation, Isolation-Poetry

time

Ending As a Chaos of True Beginning

by Oyindamola Shoola

Times when my eyes tear into dawn; 

when I negotiate between being awake and being alive, 

or I moan gratitude, and it feels like 1000 pins pricking my tongue 

or another poorly written poem I am trying to patch here and there,

with purpose + God + hallelujahs. 

 

Where was life when I wanted to live,

and where was living when I needed to feel alive?

 

Life and living hiccup in my mind.

Every day has a bad habit of living in me without permission, 

and today beats my heart into an attempt of healing. Healing begins with 

a remembrance service, two lovers – day and night, 

kissing a shadow of insomnia and mourning the loss of time 

in me. Life continues, but existence doesn’t. 

 

And if you asked, I made some effort. I tried 

to show up for today, but I forgot myself at home. 

I am at home. I am home. Yet. I can’t remember myself enough.

I run through my thoughts but never start the

journey or arrive like drowning into something empty,

like I want to move forward, but time is standing still,

waiting for me to catch up.

 

I am trusting that this night will run out of darkness to offer my soul.

I am baptizing myself in the lack of muse, of life, in the emptiness

of desiring a renewal that words can’t birth.

 

I feel powerless, unable to tame time with words 

and touch the face of God with the language of my spirit.

 

I am undoing myself and re-doing each breath;

maybe everything will make sense that way and take me back to life,

or perhaps, what seems to be the end is just a chaos of a true beginning,

and God will say, Let there be light – and I will arrive, 

and you too will be delivered.

Source: From the Isolation Issue (September 2020)

Ending As a Chaos of True Beginning

by Oyindamola Shoola | POEMS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

OYINDAMOLA SHOOLA is a writer, author, and CEO of SprinNG – a non-profit dedicated to Nigerian writers. She is also a graduate of New York University. You can reach her via her blog: www.shoolaoyin.com.

THE MAN WHO WEARS THE SEASONS by Jide Badmus

THE MAN WHO WEARS THE SEASONS by Jide Badmus

by | Mar 30, 2020 | POEMS

THE MAN WHO WEARS THE SEASONS

by Jide Badmus

On the surface you are weak &
Your smiles are a broken stream
But nightmares could not break your sleep.

You hang your fears
Like jackets in closets
& bury sullen memories
In unmarked graves. 

You carry your flaws like a flag,
Showing off scars, like medals.
You wear the seasons—
Face of haze, beards of rain—
& bear tales of sprouting shoots, fallen leaves…

You are chronicles of wailing winds,
Diary of grieving waterfalls—
A chameleon of time. 

You are an emblem of strength—a tide,
Anthology of falls & flights…relentless!

 

THE MAN WHO WEARS THE SEASONS

by Jide Badmus | POEMS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jide Badmus is an electrical engineer, a poet inspired by beauty and destruction; he believes that things in ruins were once beautiful. He is the author of There is a Storm in my Head, Scripture, and Paper Planes in the Rain; curator of Vowels Under Duress; Coffee; and Today, I Choose Joy anthologies.
Badmus explores themes around sensuality and healing. He writes from Lagos, Nigeria. You can reach him on twitter @bardmus, IG @instajhide
FALLING WATERS by Lade Falobi

FALLING WATERS by Lade Falobi

by | Dec 21, 2019 | CONTESTS, POEMS

FALLING WATERS

by Lade Falobi

Falling Waters – Second Runner-up of the 2019 Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Contest (Poetry Category)

My mother says when it rains and one needs to pee/one does not need to find a toilet.
I cry in the rain so she doesn’t see.
The rain pouring from my eyes is heavier than the one pouring from the sky.
I hardly ever feel the one from the sky
 
Think of water racing so fast through a hose that it bursts it open all over.
Think of the heavy slaps of water in a waterfall as it hits the floor.
Sometimes my tears are the storm.
I like storms.
 
Now think of water traveling down the window of a moving car, a child enthralled by the movement and tracing dreams in the mist behind the window.
Think of a tap that does not quite shut completely, tiny drops of water falling from its mouth.
Sometimes my tears are the quiet drizzle.
I do not like drizzles.

 

Imagine pointing the barrel of a gun at your head.

Imagine your shaky hands, too scared to die but too scared to live.

Imagine deciding to pull the trigger because it is easier to die than it is to live.

Imagine the dead silence after.

Not the quiet silence of death. The quiet silence of failing even in this.

An empty gun never fires

and you have been shooting blanks.

 

Today                    we live

FALLING WATERS

by Lade Falobi | POEMS

GRIEF WILL REMAKE YOU by Ernest Ogunyemi

GRIEF WILL REMAKE YOU by Ernest Ogunyemi

by | Dec 21, 2019 | CONTESTS, POEMS

GRIEF WILL REMAKE YOU

by Ernest Ogunyemi

Grief Will Remake You – First Runner-up of the 2019 Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Contest (Poetry Category)

“Grief will probably/ redraft your whole/ anatomy”
—Caroline Ebeid

I have just begun my walk out of dawn
& I have begun picking dead leaves.

I have never played so close to fire, but
hear, I know the language of been burnt.

my mother taught me, the taste of a live-coal
on a boy’s tongue, when she walked out of her body,

left it a snail shell. today, I forget the language of joy,
I forget how happiness grows into a sugary bird

filling every puff of cheek, nestling under the pave
of the tongue, hiding in the spaces between the teeth

where god decided to let air in in seeps. it is the doing
of grief. how it will gift you a new tongue, or scrape clean
 
the one you knew; bland every bud that knows
sweetness; fill your mouth with a new song,
 
the way a Mother python fills a room-corner.
tell me, what is grief itself if not the remaking of a life?
 
how motherless boys are pushed into a life we never chose
burning wood & Maami’s cooking & the smell of grief’s spittle
from its latest fresh at your skin fills my nose like air.
rainwater & saltwater & the buttery taste of mucus on my tongue.
the rusty bunk bed, your fragile self pressed into its bosom.
here: the sword-edge sharp coldness of your eyes,
the wilt flowers in your hair, the after-rain quiet of your body.

 

something in my head whispers, this might be a joke.
death does not take people when their bodies begin
to green, when they’re in their most beautiful dresses—
does it?
 
when does it not?
 
I feel the pinky of grief on the nape of my neck, its touch
cold & warm like the welcoming of a new born & the burying
of its mother. the ants on my inside roam about, they pinch,
they want. a dead bird falls from my chest & ends at the floor
of my belly. the ants gather in its belly where some bees have honeyed.
a few minutes later, the ants roam again—just as I now
roam, my legs walking me to places somebody forgot to draw
on the map. the ants on my inside now bite; they bite
everything that has a name till everything that has a name forgets
its name—what is grief if not the unbottling of hunger?—
 
I forget my name, too. & I forget from
where I began walking into this new life.

GRIEF WILL REMAKE YOU

by Ernest Ogunyemi | POEMS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ernest O. Ògúnyemí (b. 2000) is a writer from Nigeria. Some of his works have appeared/forthcoming in Acumen Poetry Journal, Ricochet Review, Litro Print Journal, Erotic Africa: The Sex Anthology, Lucent Dreaming, Low Light Magazine, Canvas Lit Journal, Agbowó, The Nigerian Poetry Anthology (Animal Heart Press), Polyphony Lit Mag, and elsewhere. A 2019 Adroit Summer Mentee, a 2019 COUNTERCLOCK Arts Collective Fellow, and a reader at Palette Poetry and a staff reader at COUNTERCLOCK Journal, he is curating the first Young African Poets Anthology, guest-edited by Nome Emeka Patrick and Itiola Jones. In 2019, he got a mini-grant to Kickstart a literary outfit dedicated solely to young African creatives. When he is not reading a book of short stories or watching the birds flying in the sky, dreaming, you can find him on Twitter @ErnestOgunyemi.

A REPUBLIC OF WILDNESS by Michael Akuchie

A REPUBLIC OF WILDNESS by Michael Akuchie

by | Oct 27, 2019 | ISSUE, Issue - Poetry

A REPUBLIC OF WILDNESS

by Michael Akuchie

I mean to wear my hair like a slice cut from a collision. 

Different from normal people, a republic of wildness.

Out in the streets, they catcall, whistle & hurl stones

existing in the currency of insult.

My folks raise a storm of abuse with no shelter

to keep warm when the wind in their lungs snuffs out itself.

At this point, they leave me & a smile widens

the corners of my mouth. 

When I tell them I want to love a woman,

what my father wants is a gun.

When I tell them I could never master love

for a man, my mother rehearses a sermon.

They enforce curfews & sing along with

the preacher on TV. I sit with a blazing heart & a hunger

for the rest of the world, a desire for the euphoria a kiss provides.

A fruit forbidden from touch but not from thought.

Source: From the Rebel Issue (October 2019)

A REPUBLIC OF WILDNESS

by Michael Akuchie | POEMS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MICHAEL AKUCHIE is a Nigerian poet who is currently pursuing a degree in English and Literature at the University of Benin, Nigeria. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming at The Impossible Task, Sandy River Review, Headway Lit, Rabid Oak, The Hellebore, Peculiars Magazine and elsewhere. He is a Contributing Editor at Barren Magazine. His micro-chapbook, Calling Out Grief is forthcoming with Ghost City Press (July 2019). He is on Twitter as @Michael_Akuchie. 

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