1st letter.
i am probably a bird with broken wings. sometimes i walk. sometimes i fly, no, I didn’t. see my world: a second away from peculiar. firstly, i am fifty-five kilometers away from the portrait you made out of my poetry shaped: with love twice the distance of the earth to the sun, with 80% of plain discipleship like an industrial liquor which finds its ambrosia back to the throat of flies that die the hermetic death of drunkard. i am but a self portrait as a bird of passage with false wings. who said pigeons are symbols of loyalties? faith is the bird that refuses to sell his friend to the foreign merchant even with world full of perquisite.
the first paragraph was an expensive fake. i am but a bird of full crescent & full wings. i make it to the infinite sky, owing to the sacrifices of my false wings. see my world: as industrious as an ant. in the season of still weather: i grow more wings than required because my arms are made of bed —-full of roses & its scent mirrors a paradise. a paradise, where the wobbling of symbiosis is panacea to the poisoned well. come, pay my world a visit, perhaps in December & see me digging a grave for my shame with my bare feet. what’s made of your wings? i know you would ask me that question. i wonder if my lips only is able to explain the coined pedals of betrayal that’d lived in my bones?
on the flashcards:
lion = (ا) watermelon = (ب) / “alif & baa”
about music, about the lyrics
lost & found, the dying lyrics in my mother’s tongue
undress itself… / in arabic/
her left fingers, wedged
sensitively on the black crane zither
telegraphing/…
her right hand held the pick of water as
i sit in front of what i remember as the first passage of heaven
sing. she says:… in the language of paradise
& i sing to the portrait of
a flag held by lion, ferrying an arabic letter ” ا ” alif
in the left. watermelon seen, dancing to my lyrics of ” ب ” baa
repeat after me, she says; on three
1, 2, 3…
alif < a-lif ” ا ”
baa <b-aa ” ب ”
taa < t-aa ” ت ”
she conjoins me with the meters of paradise glinting in her body
at every end of the lyrics—
my tongue touches her tongue’s sweet song.
the season i started growing roses in my father’s garden, i knew
I’d bedded a threat for other plants to sprout callously
like a summer monsoon. for i knew
the grace of roses is a burden to the entire orchard.
i would go to the garden, sip the throat
of the roses & the cosmopolitan it’s turning — only
to imprison other plants in a dusty palace like an emperor—
who commit treason against his throne. ponder
if my threat alone is able to unearth their loins?
some months later, the news of the roses
ruling the garden broke to me. &
the plants in it were like rays of sunflowers, blooming
outside of my skepticism. that’s where i disagree
with the saying “the grass get greener, where you
water it”. i know some plants are stupid plants
they just need some threats to grow.
S. Abdulwasi’h Olaitan is a Nigerian introverted poet & essayist. writing from a hole 54 kilometers away from Kwara State. He’s a lover of God and his parents. His works had been anthologized or forthcoming on different literary magazines, such as The graveyard zine’s magazine, O.P.A (Our Poetry archive), Avant Appalachia ezine, Ta Adesa Magazine, United Global Renaissance (UGR), Poetry Soup, empire arts and culture, beautiful minds community MMXVI and elsewhere. He’s the Author of four Poetry chapbooks: The Story I Never Tell, Life An Objet D’art, Fate That Went Astray & We’re History That Doesn’t Know How To Die. You can reach him on Facebook.
