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Shittu Fowora Poem
There is no ‘you’ or ‘I’
Except that you choose
to call the fat clouds a name
and make them feel like overlords upon the others.
And, there is neither ‘you’ nor ‘I’
when we collect in droplets into rain
and percolate the crevices between rocks and questions.
The free flowing water you rinse your feet in
Collects the geography of the places you’ve been to
That the same water you now wash your hands with, is what
You once called ‘dirty’ and fed to the gutters of nevermore.
There is no ‘you’ or ‘I’, save ‘we’
We, driblets of water
Garnering into puddles,
Some, redeemed in pots of human bellies.
And, there is neither ‘you’ nor ‘I’
Little dribs charged with pain, break out
As saline rain, bouncing off troubled eyes,
A cesspool of wails in the offing.
And some others, not ‘you’, not ‘I’
Distraught to meet this uncertain world
Are lagged in rocks, trapped prisoners.
We are all waters, variously hued
To boil in teapots and warm the mien of takers
And a few, crystallized into heart-shaped cubes,
Are nursed between the parched tongues of lovers.
Loin waters all! Congealed over time
Sneaked into places like shy rivers
Collecting genetic snapshots of their bearers
Then those ones frozen by fear, iceberg-solid
Make the routes of our ideas unpassable
A few, like calm ponds
Unperturbed by gravity and noise
Undress before the caress of the setting sun
We all are waters,
Not you, not I, but we; streaming
In endless pursuit on the surface
While selfsame dispatch, gather like roots undersea.
**previously published in Sentinel Quarterly Review
Copyright © Shittu Fowora | Year Posted 2015
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Details |
Shittu Fowora Poem
the first
tongue
you tasted;
nay!
the pounding
of heart
that followed—
guile or guilt?
you,
a farmer
and each till,
a harvest
of naive torsos;
philistia.
angels hatting nurses' cap
tumble
in hills
popping sounds,
grenades
through tunnels
playgrounds,
scamper about
in red-wet-dripping
skirts
dancing to fear.
a little boy
of four
seated
in defiance
upon his
mother's remains
weeping
his last,
protesting
against God
and machines.
if only once
that the essence
of living
is the wastage
and passage
of time;
and that death,
a scattered form
of love,
is merely the sleep
of atoms.
**previously published in ArcPoetry.
Copyright © Shittu Fowora | Year Posted 2015
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