LOVE UNEXPRESSED
Before father evolved home into nest of blocks
we lived in house of fading glory with shivering walls
diminutive and discreet, which swallowed my solitude.
There, I saw her perch on a tree behind our window
whose whispering roots sank in my lonely heart.
She loves chores, but I wonder if love was ever one of them.
She lives with a young couple with a young baby girl
who loves playing in the serenity of my arms:
this goodness has purpose and this purpose has a vision;
This vision loves to see the young pretty damsel
whose feathers forms an ocean of colours
blushing my confidence of enchanting words.
When I look at her spotless face,
my heart dance in the rhythms of her smiles;
those smiles once shattered the rage of the sun.
Her voice is a song that sinks into me;
but this tree is sloppy and my palms shiver,
my eyes become frozen at the sight of her wings.
The eve of our departure to father’s miracle of sand
was our last meeting, the last of our night songs,
song of usual words and unusual beating of hearts.
She plucked a feather from her wing and gave me,
when it reached my palm, it touched the depth of my soul.
This feather is the most sincere word that ever touched me.
It punctured my soul, and I became flooded with rivulets
of memory, longing, ocean of wishes that the sun of dreams
cannot dry, haunting me with love unexpressed.
Elemide Benjamin is a biochemistry student of Funaab. He is a poet, short story writer, and spoken word poet. His poems have been published in anthologies both online and hardcopy. He is the visioneer of The Great Minds, a nongovernmental organization that is youth-oriented, towards achieving a society of youths with balanced life.
IN YOUR LAUGHTER – OYIN OLUDIPE
(for Ami)
In your laughter, heavens linger
And I wonder if the rainbows quiver
On your song’s tenderness—as I—
As hair—as all the world that spins on your tongue
When shards of your presence touch me here,
Shredded in thunders. In your laughter,
Paths resonate, a season desires veneration
In dreams, and all epiphanies of a brittle sky
Unfetter the prisoned heart—and glow…
But not from any other but itself
Upon the hour of immolation.
In your laughter, the noon succumbs,
And fantasies flutter like a nest of transcendent birds
Coursing to air-roots, to sudden plunges
Of the heart in sugar seams and melodic veins;
Eternities dance in your laughter—as air—
They dance—as that defiance of sand—
As the desire of wind—in instant passion—
As the courage of fire…
I know your laughter
I know your laughter—
O I know your laughter, like the hurricanes
Of my midnight skull, the tickle beneath my scalp,
The manuscript beneath my desk, or that
Primordial rein of the telephone ballad
In quiet recesses of my fear
In your laughter, my silence is a story
In your laughter, my solitude recedes.
Oyin Oludipe is the Nonfiction Editor of EXPOUND: A Magazine of Arts and
Aesthetics. He is a contributing poet to the anthology, "Black
Communion: Poems of 100 New African Poets".
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