To Be a Nigerian Poet; Words Are Not Enough; We Once Were Rosebuds – Three Poems By Nigerian Writer, Muheez Olawale

To Be a Nigerian Poet

is never to find light because even the fieriest sun
gets swallowed by the night.

is to fall in love with black ink because it is
the only way to bathe myself into glowing words.

is to let my veins vomit pains on this paper that
it may, one day, become a weathered scroll that reminds
the world of the cries immanent in a boy’s DNA.

is to uproot my family tree because pain
resides here somewhere in earth’s secrefying cheeks.

is to scrape congealed blood off highways
like archaeologists digging up history because
lifelines raced into the orifices of hungry potholes,
crashing headlessly into headlines.

is to wrestle the dictionary in search of words
well-receptacled enough to swallow the pains & craze
that trail the footprints of my pen.

is to feed my dreams helium all day
to make them wrestle the clouds to own the skies,
defying gravity, dreading crash.

Words Are Not Enough

how many metaphors and ironies do i need
to garland my tears
before this poem breathes my pain?
how many words do we weave
into a halyard to catch a
f
a
l
l
i
n
g
poet?

sometimes, words are not enough,
so you let your weight between line
breaks,
and you plunge us into the plains
in-between the lines. because sometimes,
silence screams the loudest.

We Once Were Rosebuds

growing in life’s cradled hands,
stealing sunlight to shine smiles.
but time bloomed us into petals,
bright enough to be plucked.

life flung us far apart.
i’m staring right at you, but it’s only
a moving picture on my phone screen.
your laughter crawls like a robot’s.
your smile appears filtered.

i fear time never stopped tearing us apart.
you’re still on my phone screen, but
farther from the camera.
your laughter flutters in the air.
your smile is too fuzzy to reciprocate.

you’re fading into a stranger
— i don’t know if it’s the tears blinding me,
or you dissolving into memories.
one petal festoons a dancing heart,
the other scars a grave with memories.

but i’m stretching forth my arm
and calling out your name.
before the sun sets on your browning self,
let’s retrace our steps back to sunrise,
to regain ourselves and the tenderness.

before we wither into grayscale yesterdays
tucked under pillows and dreams,
let’s bathe ourselves with springs of love
till we become an indivisible one
that rags not to time.