MISSING DREAMS
Desolate house in the comfortless dark
of a stillborn night, hearkening to the
patter of feet that have scarred sorely
wounded foundation;
playing back the midnight voice
of memory…
Gloom sheathes,
bone-deep melancholy,
-scabbarded steel-
whispering the hollow song
of barren gourds,
haunting refrains
that forever tail
fools who dare to peek
in a lightning storm
at the cracked mirror
of missing dreams,
and hope to see
the cross-eyed shine
of forgotten suns…
A tumble.
Into the pleasurewell
of dreamy eyes.
I touch your skin again;
brownies…
(the molten rust of sweet chocolate!)
Sun-crested and water-cocooned that faraway
Sunday at the sea-side,
nested in the tender twines
of calling arms…
A little piece of this heart.
A little piece of that heart.
Wind-steered feather chasing the sun,
looking to trap scraps of blessings
from the loft-legged bounty
of fully-measured gods.
Shivers spirit silently across waters.
The gods in their secret hideaway,
jaundiced with the sour fever of jealousy,
tainted the radiant flower, wanderers,
fading stars traversing the snaky stairwell
purportedly the pathway to paradise.
Gods lie
Love died.
Trapped you and I
in the storm’s boiling core;
the blazing bed of a combat zone.
The gods lied.
This chain…
Untried knot.
Kindred keystone we’d hoped
would conjoin like naked wires…
It crushed!
Bubbles in the clamp-jaws of fate.
The canoe drank of the murky waves.
We bobbed and sobbed a watery farewell
to the magic that was us…
Love dies.
Gods lie.
Darkness…
Impotent blankness of dead bullets.
Night comes softly,
Mellow wine seeping into unguarded veins…
Bashful ocean lapping the feet
of a lover moon in bloom.
Darkness reigns and memories claw
savagely out of demon-seeds cracked
wide like earth-quaked eggs,
phantoms out to invade sightless sleep,
eyeless dreams…
Yesterday was ours, Oluwabunmi,
but echoes surrender ghosts.
This night, I chant you a memory,
witnessed by this midnight sun.
I peep into the period before the yawn
to grab the last sun of our lost days,
the lost sun of our last days…
Oluwabunmi,
I chant you alone this memory.
May magic make us again!
Make magic make us again!
———–
HANG HEAD
The vultures are come for a feast.
Serve your first-born sons.
Grill their ears.
Barbeque their eyeballs.
And when the party departs,
we shall all hang head and cry…
———–
Poetry © Sola Osofisan
Image by Artist and zabiyaka from Pixabay (modified)