POETRY

Ariyo Ahmad

                          CREDITS: ELENA GUAL

 

  PORTRAIT OF A BOY HAGGARD IN THE HANDS OF GRIEF 

I traced salvation to this poem like a geographer, navigating for where grief made a country in the map of our skin, I still echo haze of sounds of my father in this house  like the sounds of wind waves through the loosed window, I transport into plethora of ways he laughs and how they fill our stomach like scent of flowers filled the nose at the first sniff / I still remember prayers of my father lying unfulfilled in his heart, I know how it hurts to be wanting of a dream and still not able to fulfil them, some dreams are just too painful to be delivered,  even life itself is not ready to nurse them, that it itches the mind to be aborted, there are lots of stories stucked to the graves teeth, and they are dying to be uncovered,  your face is like a flower in the garden of my head, without sun nor rain it keeps growing into love and hope, appa, grief is just a stubborn weed, it grows where its not wanted and the sweet memory we shared I hope it morph into cutlass to severe all the hurts I don't want and with it i chase my dreams to the house of fulfilment. 

  

HAUNTING MEMORY 

It's heavy once again, this darkness, this body, this grief, Like the burden at the back of Bilal the Negro, a nation falls like matched mango,  my body marked with several suffering like aftermath of a dreadful miraculous accident I wasn't pronounce dead in, it's grace, it's blessings,  to weave death like a catapulted stones, to journey into the lagoon of the past, and dust off haunting memories, I learn to search for dry woods, pile them up & match two stones together with the little furry growing inside of me  to burn the tree of my fear until it's left with ashes, I hoard the sun in my hands folded to gift my dark nightmares. Kindness is a good fruit to gift an enemy. The other morning,  I wake up to find black dot country my body, the first time.   I experience my nightmare taking events in my life, this night is tender like a bruise, to wade such event off, I fold my hands like a cup and whisper Arabic wordings like my mother at the night of majesty to lead me through my night unharmed . This morning,  I feel fresh & fulfilled like a bushmeat that escaped the hunter's trap.

 

  PORTRAIT OF MY FATHER AS A MEMORY 

The past quiver like little grass butt,  swayed by the waning wind, I must say its something like grief,  it comes and go

Dusk settle on rooftop, on mountain,  on parked cars

Whose car engine knock down like my body, tonight.

Grief, set me free as a hawk preying a lizard from above the sky,  my body is  porous to be a container of grief

Cold pain frolick in my abdomen like nematode, my eyes throbbled by the sun sharp sudden shift in cotten 

Father, you are now a thought,  as much as a memory; a visitor at the weakness of my mind to hold joy as breathe 

I grew up like a mango tree, through the stormy wind of grief, through the coarseness of rendezvous rain

I lived through the nightmare that chase laughter off my smoked face like fish, I triumphed through trials 

 Every man has a story, a song finding survival in their

mouth, like a squirrel in a hole 

A room lost the taste of itself when a lamp quietly walks out of it, living the eyes wandering like a burnt butterfly 

When a soul walks out of the body,  they themselves become the emissaries of their sorrow or  joy.

                                            

Ariyo Ahmad, Frontier XI, is a Nigerian poet, A Pushcart nominee, published on Native skin, Kissing Dynamite, Lumiere review and elsewhere. Twitter @ahmad_akanni