Writings / Poetry: Wale Owoade

Olokun

When we first met
it was at night
and the big moon smiled
at our silent stare
filled with slow songs
of shore birds

and then I turn to you,
(you, daughter from the
marriage of tides and wind coils)

love snugged in sheet
of tides with us
as we moan in blue depth
like lovers lost in sea lust

and now we lay
spent on crossroads
and you worry whether
I’ll come back to you

but by my father’s grave
I swear
that my love for you
is a bird that come and go

and at the evening birth of
a new spring
you will find me
mouth filled with the coolness
of your tides
like a lover to your breast

The Last Fang

Night tales have passed forth
this is the last fang of the new world
among this rattle’s fury, red glare
of man’s love in flame.
In vast sugar fields, I serve
sun’s scorching gleams on my back
nauseating odours of burnt flesh
Spent, and then
a maize bed on a
cold January night
companion in the horrors
of dreamland.
I schooled me, with miracles
of deliverance, threaded
the path of home and
lost my toes
for filled with void my cries they were
I hammer freedom:
an anger that bows
to the sandals of white toes.
Man suffers man, cold blood
an injunction sprout from the harem of guile
this is the last fang
into freedom come

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