Ayoade Olamide | Poetry

i have given myself to all that surrounds me like puddles of fire. 

my body, punctuated with stretch-marks of reeking smoke,

& this is how my grief is given an identity—by burning.

i've given myself to the universe like a nomad making 

a paradise out of desert lands, out of a shadow that 

grows from the amount of light it engulfs.

many months back, i wrote nothing out of something, 

something out of nothing—my silence, as void as the space,

as empty as death, like a body without traces of its soul. 

i love everything grief, & everything grief loves me too, 

everything black quivers my heart like a silent earthquake,

& i seem to find comfort in it, i really do find comfort in it. 

my body carries too many plaintive songs as broken metaphors,

i stare at the mirror whenever i try to break into a miracle,

whenever i try to find the cicatrix that grows on me like punctuation marks.

light is just too far from my reach, how do i recognize its color?

how do i embrace the universe without leaving a quake on its back?

i am long gone like a dog that refuses to heed to the hunter's whistle. 

this is just a poem to show you how forsaken i have been, to show 

you how a boy tries to carve psalms on his tongue without bleeding,

without becoming a pronoun for everything that folds into damnation.