THREE POEMS

By Olusoji Obebe

                           Photo Credit: Felix Inclusis
 

A PIECE OF MUSIC

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I gather some dead things to make up a body

Of this poem and you, wait 

And listen to what song my broken beak shall tweet.

This poem is a carcass of a particular country I

Would not name. Everywhere in it

And everything in it stinks. 

Here, father drinks a booze and it forms

A lump too hard to hawk in the son's throat

Like a fresh fish bone.

Here, mother plants a flower 

And its fragrance eats up the breath of the daughter

Just as a body of water stifles.

The idyllic of everything old 

Has been made to filter through the vicissitudes

Of the new.

Everywhere stinks of death. Dead green.

Dead pasture. Stale booze.

Carbonized flower.

¡¡

I won't want to talk about grief, though.

Not even death, either. So, I mummify this poem

Into a piece of music.

Music, they say, is a fine wine.

But I fear. My body is an

Uncovered pensile bottle.

Even now, look. Look the way this music puffs

Out of my mouth like a cloud

Of an imminent heavy downpour.

Like aroma—the music of supplication—escaping an

uncovered pot of soup to heaven but couldn't meet its host.

My tongue is just too mutilated to be orchestrated.

But I won't leave without a song: 

So help me, God.

    

                                                                               

THE MUEZZIN

i'm reciting the adhan of this poem

with both eyes shut;

with a full scale of grievances tilting me

and innocent cries clothing my tongue to say

come and let us pull back the stones (they can even be grenades) to undo the zealotry eating up our hearts

but i hope your ears are so near 

to listen to this verse on the pinnacle of my call.

come and let us become

some sort of god on our own. that's to say, 

exorcising the God(s) in us in order to see how

it has all this while turned us into shaitans.

since the man's concept of God has become

a friable skein, pulled from different ends

in which God Himself watches man scattering

Him the way a reckless farmer does his seed.

call it rebellion. God forgive me if i blaspheme but 

i call for a mental revolution.

come and let us learn how

to hate religion and re(li)gion.

is it not a bang of bazooka itself 

saying we love God by fighting for him?

now, who really hates? astaghfirullah. forgive me

Allah, if i think i love you by hating others.

                                                                              

FIVE, SIX/ TWENTY TWENTY-TWO

            hope?

someday, we would wake up &

would not hear ourselves;

would not see ourselves anymore.

             me, a prey praying:

I called on God to help but

before He answered 

our bodies answered the guns' calls.

              to wear pain,

your body can be temple

of God now & next

is a slaughter house of sheep.

               and for hypocrisy:

you won't know how it feels till

bullets take forceful

occupation of your flesh.

                so, in the name of one nation,

I body a shot for her—

a shot from her— but

died of cancer on their tongue.

                 & goodnight

to those who wear blankets to

sleep but shall wake up

naked, goodnight & goodnight.

                                             

Olusoji Obebe is an emerging Nigerian writer and artist. His works have appeared on Fiery Scribe Review, Nnoko Stories, Terror House Magazine, Sixth Chinua Achebe Poetry/Essay Anthology and Lumiere Review. Twitter @olusoji_obebe