After “Poet In Time of Buhari” by Moyosore Orimoloye

 

a metronome rings from the bark of a cathedral
& my heart dashes into a conflux of horrible reminiscences
of bodies of patriots that became outposts of their
own souls, gifting their relatives perpetual griefs as keepsakes.
if Jimoh’s mother was sharing ties with Gandalf, i bet
she would have latched his son’s legs from wandering into a stray
bullet. or Kolade who took a semibreve rest into a susurrus of silence
in the football viewing center that transmuted to a shrine
where his blood was split as immolation for èsù. or zabarmari massacre—
a rice farmland on the terra cotta of earth where bloodied heads
were the fertilizers to germinate crops. a boy kaleidoscoped through
rattled bones littered on the asphalt of Lekki Tollgate to, if God wills,
forage out the residues of his brother for a proper burial
& ended up crawling home with bouts of gunshots holing his skeleton.
my hair shrinks into low-cut each day, afraid of becoming a suspect
stalked by a trigger-happy cop who sees my afro or dreadlocks
as a pariah, an enchiridion of scarlet humans. this way
i am going to deflect from encroaching on the listel of death,
of forming a brook in the already grief-stricken eyes of my mother.

 

Photo by Divine Effiong on Unsplash