Broken Bliss; A Boy Scared of Failure – Poetry by Nigerian Writer, Yahuza Usman

Broken Bliss

Once at a zoo in the glistening mirror
Of night for an unplanned tour with
A dewy-eyed lover that plotted
The strategies to defile my life,
My phone roared a flash.

I unearthed my phone, buried
In the softness of my handbag, with my hands,
And I beheld a message
Greeting the hairs of my shapeless eyelids
With a block of bold letters similar
To the syllables of euphony.

Like a president-elect, a pool of excitement
Watered my heart because, at the time,
The pennilessness that gulps the edges of poverty
Was stunned to feel himself in a ghastly accident,
That a whopping sum of hundred million dollars
Came to my life via a text from the gods.

The depth of my bliss pushed me closer
To a lion, and like a rabbit, I dug a hole
To bury myself in the grave of hosanna
For I was beyond flesh to be called a boy.

Yet, my mother splashed wakeup water
On the floor of my eyes and thundered my name
Like a carcass that would never rise with the sun.

A Boy Scared of Failure

“All the sacred images your father named you after
a week after you were born are what give you wings.”
My mother’s voice pierced the right flesh of my left ear
as I sat, doubting the maturity of my voice
to mimic God’s favourite song.

I coalesced a melange of chaotic falls
and enigmatic ups into the flesh
containing a hope advocate in my heart.

My heart doesn’t believe in its ability
to severely scatter the scent
of forlorn hope dangling in the salty river,
drowning my eyes.

Mama, I asked, with a hoarse voice
like that of a man stranded in the desert
with nothing to call his: am I
really going to drown the Nile
into my eyes, or, mama, will my eyes
be buoyant enough to remain afloat
if the Nile’s raging velocity tries
to subdue the size of my brittle eyes?

Mama’s face offered me a broad grin,
and her voice, like the chirping of birds,
kept repeating a chorus song that would
hardly snuggle my heart and would
never go away from my bliss.

She said,
“My boy, go and conquer the world.
The seven heavens and earth are,
my boy, too small to host the depth of the fortunes
your fearless wings would gain.”