Poems for the Sober
Four poems on social consciousness and the collective human experience — from Kolawole Samuel Adebayo
God, Look at Us
God, look at us
walking in trepidation,
walking into fire fueled
by other black skins like ours,
walking into the mystery
of death in bodies
broken by stones
before they are charred.
God, look at us
thrown out of tall buildings,
look at us landing on stone pebbles
with our backs, look at us bursting
from inside, look at us saying your
name before we are smoked
by our brothers.
God, look at us, Abels —
look at your sons, Cains.
Look at us
tweeted on Twitter,
look at us, filigrees of ghosts,
look at us becoming
songs of mourners.
We walked into a city
in search of light
but were led into flames —
another kind of light —
we walked into our brothers’ arms
& were embraced into
suffocation.
The city is filled with bones,
our bones, filled with burnt bodies,
our bodies, filled with wails
carved into the mouths of mothers.
Here is a city of separation —
5 heads are made to leave their bodies
by the compulsion of cutlass.
God, look at us —
we are smoke
rising up
into heaven.
Look at us.
From a Conversation on a Bus
And we, the people, will not rise
Until the gunshots faraway
Find our homes.
We will not rise to fight
The wanton governments
Until our fathers’ voices wear eternal silence,
Until our mothers’ bones are crushed by terrorists.
We will not speak in unison
Against an evil administration
Until what is afar comes near.
What is a nation of alive men
Walking as ghosts?
Here is government not
Of the people nor by the people
Nor for the people.
And yet, we will not speak,
We will live our lives as dumb men.
We will watch the looters wedge holes into our purse.
We will hail the reinvention of slave trade.
The economy wears local chains
Made from foreign materials.
Feet and hands bound,
The GDP crashes like a sandcastle.
And we the people will watch,
Will watch & watch
Until we die.
Lost Seeds
àkèré¹ is crying
in the abandoned pond
beside my window. the darkness
is everywhere on a moonless night.
it enters into my heart & into my fingers
& into the url space of my phone browser
in the shape of letters like Andrew’s crucifix.
3 times Andrew’s crucifix is equal to xxx…
in the darkness within my room,
i am a lady wearing a lingerie
inside my palms. & i hypnotise
the man between my legs
with my gait & allure.
i enter myself
within my palms.
& i jerk like a body
suffering an electrocution.
my breath is turning
into the whisper of a wind.
then it rises & becomes the sound
of tyres warring a tarred road: screech.
i spill my babies
onto the brown floor.
my room is a graveyard
full of little children
buried in the cemetery
of handkerchiefs, tissue papers, & used clothes.
every night,
when àkèré cries,
i am a murderer
emptying myself onto the floor,
turning a generation of frail bodies
into mere spots upon the circumference
of inanimate objects. dead before they ever arrived.
in my arrival [coming] is the death of a thousand nations.
- àkèré: Yoruba word for “frog” in South-western Nigeria.
Learning From Columbus
A door
stands unopened
until a knock, until
the laying of hands.
Discovery is not a ship
sitting by the sea —
unmoved.
Columbus sets feet
on a ship, sets
the ship
on a sea
& sails
into vegetations
waiting to be gardened.
To find America
is no mistake.
He who seeks
shall fold his palms
into fists,
shall knock,
shall find the door
open its mouth,
shall be received
by what waits
in the room
for the racer
who crosses
the finish line.
Nigerian poet, Kolawole Samuel Adebayo, is an old soul in a young body whose poems seek to awaken the human consciousness. His works have appeared on Glass Poetry, Button Poetry, Voicemail Poems, Burning House Press, Kreative Diadem, Praxis Magazine, and elsewhere. Kolawole won the April Edition of the Brigitte Poirson Poetry Contest (BPPC) in 2017. He can be reached on Twitter @samofthevoice.
