LIES ARE TRUE

I live with ghosts picking
Meat pieces off my plate.
I chase them about a crux
Where sanity scuffles for equilibrium
We run about,
Laugh,
Tease like lovers in a garden where shrubs
And thorns
Bear florid petals.

Nightmare and dream are shades
Of one meaning.
Lies are true.
Fiction and truth share
Lexical kinship.

I know,

Children keep ugly pets
Until molars of prejudice
Begin to unglue.

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MEETING ABSENCE

Muffled grunts draw the boy
To the dusk-shrouded gut
Of the open mouth of a car window.
The grunting man’s shirt soaks
Of a punctured throat’s wail
His eyes are a glassy dim
His hand fails to fill up his throat
The boy chokes on a gasp and feels
Life flee his voice.
He recovers his twitching knees.
Here, guests meet hosts’ absence.
He crawls back the way he came,
Into the safety of dusk
Not forgetting to leave behind a wish
That the grunting man quickly stills.

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STUBS

This flood cannot be contained
But we submit to a wind
That lines us up in its way,

We are shadows
Scrambling for fragments
Of smashed light.

Hearts strike harmonious strings,
Unsheathing us to drown
In secrets dressed as song.

Halos crown shadows and make
The world a kingdom
Where everyone is king,

A sprout blooms
Into a forest for life to sneak in and axe
Memories into stubs.

And then,
We hate most what we’ve loved.
And love more what is lost.

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Poems © Nurain Oladimeji
Image: Keoni Cabral via Flickr