Heaven. Fluttering wings in airful embrace
Glistening soles garbed in Efun’s crust
Like the white man’s chalk – sprinkled on gates in sunspots.
Hell. Seat of the cinders of the first fire.
Hovering halo of idle clouds in gaze
At the first bird which soared, unreturned.
Eternal flame – his lugubrious hands in the cornfield,
In bounty harvest of bleached voices from skeletal figures.
Heavell is here – boulders of this cemetery
Where crimson holds the
Hands of tens of thousand through
One faithful Creed.
Where the spittle from infant lips
Wells up to the void waters of the dark beginning –
And like hanging day, their tangled voices
Creep into the church bells – breathing chimes of silence.
Heavenwards – Heaven is now void; the fallen stars,
The bevy of birds, Adaba in hell-flips, and the rain
In cruel baptism of the earth, are the bark from Jehovah’s ferry.
Hellwards – The cymbal-earth in resonance;
Ashes from the eternal flame in holy matrimony;
The inaudible screams, swallowed by a ravel of light.
Only here remains – heavell.
Here.
At dawn, Alagangan is pacing the rafter of dreary dawns,
For the boneless child in Kwashiorkor stomach;
For the mother in embrace of shrouded son’s tapestry;
For the dappled cells of vein-visible skulls
To lay quietly to sleep.
The Universe Is Tired of Fighting for the Weak
She also is laying quietly to sleep after the last feeble man has been armed.
Alagangan – death.
ADEPOJU ISAIAH GBENGA
is a poet from Osun State Nigeria. He’s the chairman of HillTop Creative Arts Foundation, coordinator at Praxis Hangouts, staff writer at Augment Review, participant of 2021 Whitefield Foundation program, Stilt volunteer, and editor at Tribesmen and Writers’ Global Movement. His works are published on Writers’ Space Africa, Africa Writer Magazine, Artmosterrific, Libretto magazine, Ebedi journal 2020, The Shallow Tales Review (Issue 28 and 30), Nigeria Review, Opinion Nigeria Newspaper, Writers’ Egg Magazine Bristol UK, Mystery Publishers Anthology Kenya, and elsewhere. He likes good poetry.
