I Will Write About This Sunset Someday
A collection of poems on love, identity, resilience and hope — from Taiwo Akinyemi
Lost In Symphony
arabian fragrance in your pitch-black tote bag.
you were smelling in a language i didn’t understand.
your endless braids tamed in a brown king-size scarf
were calling me home. i finally found the one who is
more than enough.
you were beaming at a painting on the porcelain wall.
&i was thinking black girls shouldn’t pay
to be in art galleries.
chili suya tastes better in the evening time.
we walked the crowded street, yet it’s just you and me.
the exit of the sunset is not the end, and even
the absence of the moonlight is insignificant
when i am lost in your symphony.
Defense Mechanism
& when you’re made
in the colour they hate,
the personality that inconveniences
them and you speak in the voice that makes them squirm.
when you’re molded
in the shape they detest,
built in the curves imperfect
to their standards and they hiss like
an irritable cat at the sight of you.
when the world
tells you to hide or hides
for you. when the woman on the
train pays double to be seated far away from you.
when the world
rejects you, do you
make hate or love from the hate received?
do you try to make them love you? do you
try to change who you are?
when the world
rejects you, do you
take it out on your brother?
The Lost Generation
Gen Z, the lost generation, they call us.
But didn’t we all start out lost?
The Silent Generation groping in the haze
of the Great Depression and the world wars?
The Baby Boomers hiping their way through
a world they don’t feel they belong in?
Gen X combing their way through the dredge
of the scandals of the 1960s and 1970s?
The Millennials fresh out of 9/11, fretting
their way through the financial failures?
True, we’re the generation at the edge,
the generation running out of alphabets.But the end of something has always been
the beginning of another.
And when what’s lost is found, we will leave
the world to a generation of alphas.
I Will Write About This Sunset Someday
i will write about this sunset someday.
as every sunset
brings a different sunset
with it.
one came with
the bleating of sheep on a
quiet evening.
another with the
painting of a golden cloud kissing the
brown rusty roof of my
grandpa’s house.
i’m seated on this
empty pavilion and making a wish
on the sun on the horizon, hoping
that it brings you
to me.
Taiwo Akinyemi is a Nigerian poet and short-story writer. His poems have appeared in publications such as Isele Magazine, Praxis Magazine, Odd Magazine, OkadaBooks, and Literary yard. He tweets at @taikinyemi.
