THE RENDITION OF LIFE FOR A FAITHLESS BOY

By Olalekan Hussein 

                          Canvas Print by Jay Fleck 

THE RENDITION OF LIFE FOR A FAITHLESS BOY

They say this faithless body is an enemy antagonising God because it forbids everything holy:

it doesn't know every road that leads to a religious house, the Faj'r prayer is a bullet & it doesn't benefit a flexible skin that hides under the retina of a local roof.

my memory is a stubborn bird that nestles where it's not expected - a moss that secretly grows in a démodé house.

in my nightmares, mornings take over darkness where icicles drip down by ingesting the beauty of my mother's house - there's a bullet in my coffee hiding to obey.

today, I watch a petal desert from a flower & the flower mournfully buries it at the riverbank - we call it scientific method of escaping unwanted things.

the more I try chasing life out of me, the more it keeps sprouting fresh daffodils in the soil that governs my heart, that this body of mine is a work of God & it's not ready to become a food to homeless termites.

actually what do I know? what do I know about management of fate? what does a happy boy know about death? what does a river know about dryness?

tomorrow, won't I pluck a bird from sky & gossip into its ear: wherever you see God, tell him a boy is here waiting like the dead hand of a clock seeking miracles from rain?

                                                     

OLALEKAN HUSSEIN (Nature) is a young poet from Lagos, Nigeria, who develops much interest in Literature. His works have appeared & forthcoming in: Brittle Paper, African Writer Mag, The Shallow Tales Review & other great mags. He's a student of a prestigious Arabic/Islamic institution in Lagos State (Darul Falah). If he is not perusing the holy Quran and other Islamic books, he's writing.