morning shower
washed over by glancing
clouds destroying
themselves
a slow tipping of one
place into another
me. a stop in the way.
within lost temperance
gloated at the soak being
soaked
joyless fuck but sure captain
took to the bilge pumps
and purged.
water splashing off clammy
surface layered stale from
leaked toxins shut tight
under the run from
sky
to sea.
what did not stick, or
was imbibed
pooled around lifting
an oily sheen from the
ground.
imagining the dirt as blame
the breadth of broken
sky spoke
boozed baptism
wretch
Who is @James
My name is Ogungbesan Adedoyinsola, I am 20 years old. I was born in Lagos state, Nigeria. And I have lived in Lagos, since I was born.
Sometime many years ago, I was diagnosed with cerebral malaria and had serious episodes of convulsions. After undergoing several blood transfusion. My condition became critical, I was in comma for nearly a week. Hours to when the doctors concluded that it best I was let to rest. The life that everyone thought had ended, opened my eyes.
It took me time to fully recover, but after few years I was fully functional, but had lost some vital memories of my childhood. I got along just fine and friends in school. But my home was not in order. My dad, who is always smoking and drinking had a hot temper, my mom who claims she did not marry my father out of love. She was raped by father when she was 18 years or so, got pregnant and was forced to marry the father of the baby in her womb. Due, to family heritage and respect. She became his bride.
The baby in her womb, that is my older sister, the first of four children.
The rest are boys, and I happen to be the last of them all.
My mom left my father when I was a baby, to raise us by herself and with the help of her father, who later died that very year.
She struggled to put us in school, with little help from friends and family, to manage through hard times.
My sister graduated from college years after, only to start my mothers life cycle, in a more fetish way. She's with two daughters now and no job. Her husband also does not have a constant job. Seriously I don't know what he does. You can tell from the look of her first daughter that they're malnourished.
My older brother, the first boy is currently serving in Kano state as an interim Economics teacher, which ends sometime in September. He has no actual plan for his life, and he his gradually walking in the footsteps of my father. Not caring for his well being psychologically, chain of girl friends, etc.
The second boy, did well for himself, but failed to achieve the goal he had set for himself, due to peer pressure. He works in a bank, but his consciousness to the things of the world, is gradually taking him on a downward heel.
I, the most stubborn of all, have looked into the steps of my predecessor and noticed that, if I continue in this environment, I would likely end up like them. So I stopped going to class. Because I must rewrite my family history. I sit in the library all day thinking of things I can do, not to end up like them. I sleep at the staircase towards the library. My life is totally isolated from everyone. I had to stop going to class because the state of my country is dire, the future is bleak. The same thing happens again and again.
I don't want to end up as poor as my family is. So all the post I have on prose are done with tears and hope. I sleep most of the night very hungry. Sometimes I beg, so that I have to live to survive another day. I believe I can change the world, but, I cannot do so from where I am. I have worn a single trouser for over month now. To be fair, prose is all have. The money I should use to eat, I use it to prose. I need a change in environment. This is a cry from my innermost heart. If you're out there and you can take me from this forsaken place, please help me. I'm a man broke with a smiling teeth.
Dawn Beauty
It was the striking beauty
Of dawn
Which caught my eye
The glint of early light
Reflecting off the liquid droplets
Accumulated on both leaf
And thorn
This precious flower's ruby lips
Had begun opening as if it
Were yawning
One could just imagine
Each of the layers opening
One by one
Drinking in the day
Growing more beautiful
With time
The right shade
What if there weren't any restraints on color?
Just people walking day to day
Unaware that the melanin in their skin
Was a deterrent to the law
Police don't like mixing colors because theyll bleed through eventually
They always bleed through, eventually
Leaving separate but equal laws with the other two-fifths of our opinions
Their favorite colors
Are the fifty shades of violence
Our pain, their pleasure
The climax of it all is to wipe us out of history
And it's already happening
Remember how they tried to white out
Rodney king with police brutality?
How tre'van Martin was shot
Out of the picture because he wanted a little color in his life?
Young metro said he trusted him
But bullets were already bombarding the boys body
Red skittles leak filling in chalk outlines
Graffiti of mangled bodies litter the ground like graveyards
Life splattered out
In a vile hue-
Man, art is heartless
Can't you see?
We've been framed
Innocent people are getting painted in the wrong light
There the only portraits of blacks
Wanted
Segregation stemmed back to
How we organized our pencil boxes
Dark colors one side
Light on the other
Black and white contrast each other
Opposite sides of the spectrum
Clashing in a wide array of violence
And you can go back even further
Back in the day
If you asked a slave what color they
Used to define their history
They would tell you they used what they saw the most...
Red white and blue
Patriotic to the untrained ear
But every word I stitch in this poetic quilt
Has an underlying meaning
Like the rainbow/poetic veins that bleed life on the page
picturing the pains of everyday turmoil
Sweating
Crying
Bleeding
Red
The blood of millions of slaves
Beaten out of them
Whips at the tips of tongues
Stinging words crack at the black of their backs
Sticks and stones could break your bones
And words will finish the job
Never able to defend themselves for fear of the
White
Cotton plants
Were the only things black people could pick
Not their environment
Their friends
Their lives
They were chained conveyor belts
If one came out of line
It was over with
It turned out that
Slaves couldn't be beaten black
So they were beaten black
ripe for the picking
strange fruits swing in the wind
turning a sickly shade of
Blue
Bruises upon bruises
Swollen ankles and callused hands
Were all they had to show for indentured service...
Looking up to an endless sky
They envied it
In was the strongest symbol of
"freedom"
Maybe one day
They can be as vast as the open sky
All these aspects couldn't fill in
Skin that has succumbed the actions of people who threw shade at them
From outside the contours
Their lives were just page after page of
The same blunt trauma for so long
Bones snap like color pencils
Under pressure of constant abuse
Self esteem torn down for fear of them being raised up
I wonder if they ever had enough?!
I wonder how many children were brave enough
To step out of their box and try something new
To rewrite this script of discrimination
So everyone had a speaking part
What if...
There wasn't any restraints on color choice?
Maybe we can start coloring outside the lines
Or use whatever shade of culture you want to use
And maybe that big picture of
Every race holding hands in harmony
That was colored perfectly!
Not with just with the white shade
Or the night shade
Because there is no one right shade
It might be a little rough around the edges
But we all get the idea
it will bring color
To the black and white world
We live in now
I met her today.
She is soft, like gentle fingers running through hair.
The thorns in my hand hurt, like loud, angry words and quiet, hateful words.
I see little tears on her, like the tears sparkling in the eyes of the one staring at me.
She reflects burning passion, and yet, is as calm as the fresh breeze.
She reminds me of someone, but I don't know who. So I sit down next to her, enjoying the orange sky.
stitching is not meant to be undone
it's so difficult to move on
when your soul is knitted to mine
i can feel the tension of the yarn
as i try to break away from you
unraveling and yanking
excruciating pain rakes my body
and by doing so my edges
become rough and uneven
as some of me remains with you
my feeble stringy self despairs
at the loss
knowing my uselessness without
your color in my life
it's so difficult to move on
but at least now you can't just string me along.
at least, that.
