POETRY

Silence

December 1, 2022 | Issue II | Fasisi Abdulrosheed Oladipupo

I brew silence in my throat, somewhere, some day

I shall tell this story, a cleric shearing off my boyhood, he said;

A boy of your sparks should not be adore in a cheap garb, (a boy) 

It is a blasphemy to be called such, in a class full of echoes 

His voice revisiting, I want to blame everyone who said its education 

Is a taboo (even now I am afraid to be tagged bad mouth for calling it sex)

They said young boys like us should rather read books and forget stuffs of such

Nature has a way of giving us what our parents and community failed to give us, until

 

Those they trusted us with made it the gateway to fondle our bony boyhood,

They gave the theories for free and asked our innocence to practice with them out of will,

We danced the gross music yet we must not say, a girl before the Sunday School was

Full of light but turned ghost by the evening, a boy - purple of lilac, died before rebirth,

Became wilted in the hands of Imam, he was showed unholy

Scenes in the holy room - the caller to success calling him to wrath

Yet he must not say, the clergymen are small gods they should be taken as such, 

It is god within them and that within our vulnerable orifices using them;

Rumi said; they are godman, mangod, man of god, god of man

Why would god question god, if one not our mere fleshy lips

Questioning their divine rod and anointed fingers in girls’ velvets and boys’ dross.

Fasasi Abdulrosheed Oladipupo is a Nigerian poet and the author of a micro-chapbook "Sidratul Muntaha" (Ghost City Press, 2022). His work has been published at; Ambit Magazine, Southern Humanities Review, Oxford Review of Books, Olongo Africa, Stand Magazine, Louisiana Literature, GASHER Journal and elsewhere. His work has also been nominated for Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and Best New Poet anthology. 

Art Credit: Pinterest