Enem,
you wrestle too many hills
yet earth is not your footstool.
you do not fear boulders yet grains of sand
teach your eyes how to cry.
Orlando, on
a million distant shores, you dream
of the love of galaxies.
pray you don't find it in the songs of dead angels
Sadé, swimming in
your pool of tumescence, you cauterize
your cry -
you are a hot knife away from filleting self.
Randy, this poem is a collection of lies but
who says truths don't kill too?
Elewa,
do you not know how to curse a kiss?
or has the fable of love
distracted your tongue from suffering.
Ridwan,
if only you could teleport enemies in your sleep
to show them how you god
in your dreams
but how many deaths have you died to sustain life?
Ava,
what drifts farther than
a lonely log of wooden friendship?
memories?
Nsidibe.
you crack wishes open like kernel
your teeth will learn soon
to rupture for stars.
did nobody teach you the wisdom of despair?
Sigh.
All these many incarnations - with names
revealed in injury time poetry.
is wit not the most comforting excuse
when quiescence is destined to hurt?
so I splay myself
into fragments of the imagination
to divest the tragedy of being
into unsuspecting characters
in unsuspecting poems
hoping they stretch far too thin
and break for me.
