A BRIEF POEM ABOUT HUNGER
(after Agarau)

you always want to gift your
life to a lifeless thing — maybe what sieves
some wars from a strange vein into your body, or
what takes part of your darkness
& burns it              burns it
till you become fire burning yourself
into a special kind of poem              some poems
hate wearing clothes —you, & you’re a diction
making enquiries into history of wounds
as if trying to confirm debris in an empty room after war,
you, like tears off a cliff,
f a l l i n g
back to a heartless dark poem,
or edges of an epitaph
or another question that makes you eat a bottle
of unknown pills fearlessly.
you always want to gift your
life to a lifeless thing
but dear god, you aren’t a Father Christmas.

———————–

IN SOLIDARITY OF YOUR GRIEF

when I asked how are you:
don’t lie, for you were the speed
on vehicles going to uncertain places,
don’t lie, for half of a dead moon bounced
in your heart before you said “I’m fine”
— you, an art in every broken design.
a loop of sadness rushes into places
youname after your body, absent like
an abandoned canoe,
& absence is
a hole you keep what couldn’t keep you in honey,
& you disengage easily like a shore unfolding
from thousand waves,
you enter the bathroom & your darkness hides
in soap. they didn’t go.
you go to bars. froth from your cup rises like thorns
knitting the hem of your body, they fall back.
you carry it to church, & you flip like a canon
of war demarcated by echoes. you came home
& I asked again, “how are you“, you said,
“you’ve been the sadness of everywhere you went”
———————–
Poems © Mesioye Johnson
Image: Pixabay.com modified