To Stay Bald Before Self-harm
Some images are orifices that compel us
to unknown nooks.
There are many terraces in my torso,
each schlepping me for sojourn.
I am the tadpole who lives in the vague side
of a leeway,
memorising balladry that I have not drafted.
maybe this is why they say
I am too far from the castle.
my sister often walks into my blackout,
and pulls the casement open.
In her mind, this is the simplest way
to give me a crescent.
She didn’t know that light is a pretending
darkness.
the boy who lives in my kisser for decades
says this is the safest place to stay.
I am trying to quaff the lie but it stops
halfway in my throat
I do not want to brood myself often
for I might forget how to live along the line
I am trying to stay naked before self-harm.
—–
Babe, In This Silence There Is Much Insecurity To Kill All My Trust
(after Chidiebere Sullivan)
I oil my thinking off the rust of doubts
till the dried tree in my body flowers
This chemistry of lack, was filtered out
with the sieve of your presence.
The world is created on WhatsApp,
We were both unknown distances
till we met and became a place.
Everybody wanted to visit,
but we made a solid block fence
around this city.
Now in this silence, I can hear a voice
in there, trying to own this city.
—–
Dissection Of My Mother’s Silence
I’ve learnt that silence has a sound
And sometimes it can be loudest. On a phone call
Yesterday, there was a firmament in my mother’s voice
And sometimes it seemed to be fracturing
It seemed to be drizzling, it seemed there were too many
Vultures hovering in the cosmos, their gaze bleeding
Yet my mother was giggling. I could
Not understand, even when I asked;
how are you doing mother? She held a minute in her
Mouth and I wonder what was after her breath,
At the other side everything was still
Even the air lost its locomotion.
Then she smooched my ears with a smile
And said I should not wander in her body
Like a hyena in the desert
Because she is a flower blossoming.
I call my body halfway from the voyage
Into her silence, my mind plastered with luminaries.
I plummeted the call but her stillness
Swayed like a furious ocean
I caught myself afloat pondering
In the frail surface.
And truth is, I lost the art of the night
In convincing the body to the berth
My eyes a sentinel over my chamber.
I could catch the sound of tears
On the roof of my heart
I could feel a body breaking
Into thousands of nouns
So huge they could not flee through the mouth.
Even though I knew my mother knows
how to grip fire in her body
And come out as grinning ashes,
I tossed my body to war through imagination.
—–
Poems (c) Philip Chijioke Abonyi
Image: ChatGPT remixed