Of Broken Boys & Rocks
Taiwo Hassan
I step into this city with knotted thoughts
and a heart beating into numbness.
I morph into my destination and
feel dust replacing the doubts in me.
Here, rays of an afternoon sun are a reminder
of lost words that never found a home in my marrow,
the skies double as a cemetery for icarused promises
and the wind is a soothing salve for scars
that still retreat into their pinkness.
I pass by Ìbarà and streetlights tear into my childhood,
my innocence stretches into a mirage
and i catch myself in a sea of familiar noises.
In Láfẹnwá, I swim in random gazes that settle
long enough to be another synonym for dew.
I find myself in torn husks and cackles of burning coals,
in piles of deflated tomatoes and jarring contrasts of greens.,
in controlled chaos of colors, in children
shaped by weight of their wares,
in flooded paths that tug at my feet,
coaxing answers, as if to say
they also need to know why my prints
don't adorn their surfaces anymore.
I wade through these waters into untamed fields
littered with morning glories and once again,
I'm reminded that I, too, once held joy in my hands.
Some things about your first home, they say
never concurs to change—the songs of Ebenezer Obey
blasting through a radio, my neighbor’s vents dissolving
into aromas of burning fufu and the full moon
on my mother's face.
This time, I taste crescents
in the smiles she wrings for me.
I see something shatter
and pray it's not her spirit.
Slowly, I find myself diluted into a stranger
in a city I was named after.
I step into this city with knotted thoughts
and a heart beating into numbness.
I morph into my destination and
feel dust replacing the doubts in me.
Here, rays of an afternoon sun are a reminder
of lost words that never found a home in my marrow,
the skies double as a cemetery for icarused promises
and the wind is a soothing salve for scars
that still retreat into their pinkness.
I pass by Ìbarà and streetlights tear into my childhood,
my innocence stretches into a mirage
and i catch myself in a sea of familiar noises.
In Láfẹnwá, I swim in random gazes that settle
long enough to be another synonym for dew.
I find myself in torn husks and cackles of burning coals,
in piles of deflated tomatoes and jarring contrasts of greens.,
in controlled chaos of colors, in children
shaped by weight of their wares,
in flooded paths that tug at my feet,
coaxing answers, as if to say
they also need to know why my prints
don't adorn their surfaces anymore.
I wade through these waters into untamed fields
littered with morning glories and once again,
I'm reminded that I, too, once held joy in my hands.
Some things about your first home, they say
never concurs to change—the songs of Ebenezer Obey
blasting through a radio, my neighbor’s vents dissolving
into aromas of burning fufu and the full moon
on my mother's face.
This time, I taste crescents
in the smiles she wrings for me.
I see something shatter
and pray it's not her spirit.
Slowly, I find myself diluted into a stranger
in a city I was named after.
Taiwo Hassan is a writer of Yorùbá descent, a poet and a vocalist. A 2x Best Of The Net Nominee, his poems have appeared in trampset, Kissing Dynamite, Lucent Dreaming, The Shore, Brittle Paper, Dust Poetry Magazine, Ice Floe Press, Wizards In Space and several other places. He's also an undergraduate student of Demography and Social Statistics at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ilé-Ifẹ̀, Osun State, Nigeria. His debut chapbook, Birds Don't Fly For Pleasure is published by River Glass Books
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