(Written after Gachugau\u2019s \u2018Promenade\u2019)<\/i><\/p>\n
Certain thoughts are brutal to
\nmy own fears<\/p>\n
I am a traveller at night, I write
\nthe night with every face I met<\/p>\n
In a sense, I am either my poems
\nor the man talking in my poems.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
My woman wears her pudding well
\never faithful, ever knowing
\none rod and one pestle
\nher anger lives in pointed fingers
\nand silent chuckles of grown stares.<\/p>\n
My woman loves her lover well
\nbut who else will love her
\nwhen she carries the
\nworld’s troubles in her breast
\nyet missing so much in her heart?
\nWhen her body knows
\nthe shape of shame?
\nWhen her thighs are twice
\nthe size of guilt?<\/p>\n
But my love for her is a kiss,
\na kiss ever knowing that
\nkisses are external,
\nmy love for her is a love
\na love ever knowing that
\nlove is internal<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Harmattan in Ilorin<\/em><\/p>\n It is the first flip of the day they paint heaven grey, grey It was the grey smoke <\/p>\n When we first met and then I turn to you, love snugged in sheet and now we lay but by my father\u2019s grave and at the evening birth of Night tales have passed forth <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Prologue (Written after Gachugau\u2019s \u2018Promenade\u2019) Certain thoughts are brutal to my own fears I am a traveller at night, I write the night with every face I met In a sense, I am either my poems or the man talking in my poems. To A Fat Woman by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2290,"parent":229,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1397","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1397"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2232,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1397\/revisions\/2232"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/229"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nand the fog sit, back against the
\nflecks of the sun, a recursive
\nwind motored cold
\ndrives the air, new day
\ninto sudden March, and<\/p>\n
\nlike this grey plaster
\nthat wears my lips, I walk
\nlike haze (remembering separately
\nLondon and the snow covered roads)
\nto rears running backwards
\nforward into dust storms.<\/p>\n
\nof the day that shame pergola
\nand the greens race to
\nsleep with dirt
\nwhere yellow flu heralds
\nbrown death.<\/p>\nOlokun<\/h2>\n
\nit was at night
\nand the big moon smiled
\nat our silent stare
\nfilled with slow songs
\nof shore birds<\/p>\n
\n(you, daughter from the
\nmarriage of tides and wind coils)<\/p>\n
\nof tides with us
\nas we moan in blue depth
\nlike lovers lost in sea lust<\/p>\n
\nspent on crossroads
\nand you worry whether
\nI\u2019ll come back to you<\/p>\n
\nI swear
\nthat my love for you
\nis a bird that come and go<\/p>\n
\na new spring
\nyou will find me
\nmouth filled with the coolness
\nof your tides
\nlike a lover to your breast<\/p>\nThe Last Fang<\/h2>\n
\nthis is the last fang of the new world
\namong this rattle\u2019s fury, red glare
\nof man\u2019s love in flame.
\nIn vast sugar fields, I serve
\nsun\u2019s scorching gleams on my back
\nnauseating odours of burnt flesh
\nSpent, and then
\na maize bed on a
\ncold January night
\ncompanion in the horrors
\nof dreamland.
\nI schooled me, with miracles
\nof deliverance, threaded
\nthe path of home and
\nlost my toes
\nfor filled with void my cries they were
\nI hammer freedom:
\nan anger that bows
\nto the sandals of white toes.
\nMan suffers man, cold blood
\nan injunction sprout from the harem of guile
\nthis is the last fang
\ninto freedom come<\/p>\n