big bang!
matter is never ruined
& when you have a body as old as the universe
you should know
there is nothing you can help with silence.
even sharp sand, granite & glaciers blindly seep water through slacking pores and these things, you hear
far in your home in Botswana where language is as silky as coffin cloth.
you don’t have to slice your skin and see mirrors
to learn that your grief spreads like hyacinth
and it is the colour of what births rainbows | a seasonal pus
where the sun cannot be given to scalps.
on a black road is a songbird,
skin broken by light only,
littering graveyards,
ahabi ruling chapels,
cloaking slumber on tongues laden with debris.
tongues with debris are always white
and in silence, so is the way to love.
you want to love but god is shedding like leaves,
it is winter in the world again
and god isn’t silent.
silence you see
is god woken in a black man’s dream.
Header photograph © Martins Deep.
Olúwádáre Pópóọla is a Nigerian poet, a student of Microbiology and a Sports Writer for a media company. He writes from a city named by a rock and longs to see the world without discrimination of any form. Learning the art of imagery, his poems are up/forthcoming on Glass Poetry, The Shore, Kissing Dynamite Journal, Mineral Lit. Magazine, Feral, Roadrunner Review, Cypress Poetry Journal, and elsewhere.