HALCYON
Forgive my dearth of quietude but within
my mouth nests a grave silence, a carnivore
foraging on every word that seeks to glide
on the silver tiles of my teeth. Sometimes,
silence doesn't covey peace but a chaos
that slithers in quiet strides like a thief
in the night, sauntering through the alleyway
of the soul. The calmness in my cranium
speaks to me, whimpering like a wounded
deer in the fangs of a leopard. The truth is,
I cannot outrun this sky of darkness chasing
me into an abyss. In all my wanderlust, I
cannot hide from the omnipresent eyes
of my god. I mean, I bow to the deity of
depression. I mean, my body is a temple
& depression, my god resides in me, like
a nun chanting the mantras of dystopia.
Oyo state, 2022
GLOSSOLALIA
I tongue loss the same way a burnt finger
trebles the anguish of a candlelight.
A wreath of soothing pain calms
the storms of the bruise. & the body,
an ennui of former things, sinks into
a river of evanescence, dives & drowns
unscathed. We also die slowly & our
God thrutches with care, the streams
throbbing down the terrain of our throats.
At the delta, a hand flickers- dumping boulders
into the creek- to say I am a creation
of death & my genesis is a wishbone, a life.
& at the sight of torsos yanking off shoulders,
pupils beam like starlit scepters in admiration,
earnestly thirsting for the completion of
God's blueprint. Perhaps, life is an ephemeral
question & death: the factorial of an infinite answer.
Oyo State, 2022
A LIFE BY DEATH
I too want a life by death;
a grave with bones wrecking,
a corpse with shivering shudders,
a life worth preserving, worth
dying to live for. [as it should be]
I want to swallow bullets & ivy
& spit death out like a spittle. I want
to walk into a sea of rosewater
& become a testament of bloom. I too
want a life worth living to die for.
Like a pupa unfurling into the indigo
of a butterfly chiffon, I too want to
wear a garment taut with the weft of
beauty. Or do I ask too much, for an
existence that makes dead bones jealous
& quiver for a spasm of life. I too want a
life fiddled by the fingers of joy
like a flute of felicity.
Oyo State, 2022
Adesiyan Oluwapelumi,TPC XI, is a young genre-bending creative who scribes from Ibadan, Nigeria. An Honourable Mention in the 2022 Coexist Lit International Metamorphosis Writing Contest, Winner of the Cheshire White Ribbon Day Creative Competition & a shortlist in the August/September 2022 edition of the Brigitte Poirson Poetry Contest. His works are published/forthcoming in Visual Verse, Kissing Dynamite, ice Floe Press, Unstamatic, Kahalari Review, Eunoia Review, Fiery Scribe Review, Salamander Ink, African Writer Magazine, Brittle Paper, Lumiere Review, Opinion Nigeria, CultureCult Press & elsewhere. He reads poetry for The Kitchen Table Quarterly. He tweets @ademindpoems.
https://www.twitter.com/ademindpoems