THREE POEMS

By Olayioye Paul

                                           Saatchi Art 

BLIGHT 

For the people killed in saint Francis Parish 

All fires, I know, begins with a spark, a tongue 

touching the prose of words. Then comes the 

blaze, tearing everything that names itself 

beautiful, before leaving the ashes for the press. 

So I learn to close everything I name beautiful, 

for the rifle. Even my body, a water that absorb 

a pebble like tsunami. But these little pages, 

trying to ink their heart with God's word, touch 

fire. They're beautiful, adroit shaped bumf. & 

the sun likes it. Then the stars. Then the vultures, 

obstructing the sun. Then the hovering, life mince

carcass shading in a chapel. These christianed 

peasants were only trying to hallow a day, 

their cloths unraveling the happiness. But each

day has a way of munching its sacrifice. It 

begins with a prayer, then fire, then the whole 

body. Their vacuum body, wants to refill it with 

bliss, with God. But the bullets escape God first 

into the hearts, & build a grenade that wet the 

vestibule, red. Today we heard the news & our 

ears were permeate with fear. Our hearts melt

with fear. Mother took us in, soften our hairs 

with oil & dribble prayers on them. My body, 

freezing more than the prayers. If prayer is the 

bulletproof, why did the members sleep before 

the altar? 

                                                             

PORTRAIT OF PAIN 

because pain is a body / & the body, mine / because the night 

is a microphone, standing erect to the mouth / I have decided 

to aired a song of lamentation / clad on my torso. elegy, the 

leading crochet. / I know of many words, grief is one. / that 

means grief is only a word / until it bullet into your heart / 

flamed it with pain / & leave you to tell of the ashes; until / it 

makes you, a graffiti / scribbled on the wall for people to see / 

how amoebic, your heart erects. / here, I am an ocean, inhabited 

with pain / surging inside of me. / taste me to feel the saltiness 

of grief. / taste me & see how easily you can spat me out of your 

mouth. / they said the sea has no cure, except to keep being 

salty. / & I, I'm a heir, following the path it strode / but I did 

search for a cure - to cure the grief, spreading on my skin like 

leprosy. / but I couldn't, instead they increase. / I walked in the 

basilica to meet a clergy / whose words, I believe, are saber / that

can scion the pain. / I walked, the ground echoed my footsteps. /

I walked, fear ripples into bubbles / & I thought I was turning 

the knobs of hell with my foot. / I spittle every grief on my hairy 

tongue to him. / but he gathered them into a bowl & poured them 

back into my tongue / & said, endure the pain. / I wondered if he meant

that I should wait till it rottens / & withers. / but of course, my longing 

has blossomed into a rose tree. / & now, thorns came out as fruits on 

each branch. / I wondered if the clergyman doesn't know that the boy

sitting before him, is a vessel / flowered by grief. I'm a caterpillar. grief 

blossomed into a butterfly in the inside. // there in the apse, another boy 

kneel by the altar. / his lips, bruised, rarely slit apart. / the clergy said, his

father kept whetting the boy's spine with a cudgel. & the father wet his 

lips with mead. / now, he is fruiting endurance. / & I pondered if I must 

bruised my back, before God can see my agony. / whether until, I turned 

it to a hymn. / perhaps mine is small. / perhaps I'm just a urchin, who is

cloaked with the tussle of life. / perhaps this is how my life was mold into. /

maybe, it is me, trying to see myself in another's picture. / I mean, this 

is how pain crushed me, whenever I am draped with silence. night.  

                                                               

HOW I VIEW SCIENCE WITH DESIRE

i shamble into the lab with the professor / a 

gyroscope was cycling into a 90 degree / at 

a second. / on the chimney rock / shallow skulls

/ clog in a prism / stares back into my nightmares. /

i ask why everything looks death / if science 

is life / & he respond with his googles / glue to

a microscopic lens /: science is life / but it seeks to create 

its own life / as mathematicians trudge to approximate 

0.4 to a holistic figure. at once i reminiscence the scripture 

that says: & this life / is the light of men. / how much 

i desire to be a light / dissolving musk shadows, & 

dawning exhilaration upon peasants nestle under 

bridges. / i once live there, sipping from the / 

ocean of miseries & i know how a mosquito / 

nail a radius in the skin / for cold to inn. // the professor 

spout / in between my imbroglio thoughts / that science 

believe in flowers / & flowers need light to unbud their 

petals. / & i told him how i once gargle my gullet / & 

spit on a budding flower / & to my marvel / it blossom. /

& he said: boy, you gat constellation in your palates. /

but if only i could pour these galaxies into a poem /

for urchins / drench with grief / to absolution their heart with 

it. / if only i could pluck out the sorrows from their faces /

& replace it with an iridescent. // the professor said desires

are chameleon / morphing the heart into instability. / & i 

told the professor how i always dream / of becoming the 

first astronaut / to bring down galaxy into a (b)right ocean /

waving it into smiles & music. // he chuckle & said: someday 

son, someday. 

                                                 

Olayioye Paul Bamidele is a writer, and student of mass communication. Some of his works are forthcoming in Spillword, Lunaris, Afreecan, Artlounge, Ninshar Art, Kreative Diadem, Ice Floe, Kitchen Sink and elsewhere.