The Face of Death
Staring at the shell of the harmattan stars
Under the shadow of death
Ignoring the wars of the world
Of cockroaches and mysterious dinosaurs
Then before I wink my eyes
Like a fired comet I was chased
Helter-skelter to the gloomy hole
Of horrific animals and one-legged phantoms
& I reminiscent nothing in the hole
But my encounter with a hag
Shouldering a black shaggy scarf
Not knowing it's the ugly face of death
My Memories
When I remember
The beautiful garden
We used to sit
My eyes turn red
And my teeth shiver
When I remember
The beautiful memories
We shared in mother's arms
My smiles wilt like a flower
And I terribly quiver
When I remember
How we were count glistening stars
How she shrouds my pains
I feel lonely
Like to jump into a monsters’ river
The Requiem of a Hobo
my body was eaten, like a fruitless plant by the wind.
mother sat with her perched mouth
supplicating for a safe home.
but it's never the same; the road was painted grey.
I looked into the eyes of the rumbling sky
then a voice came, broke the door & chewed the cayuse. then my legs hovered, like a cursed lame.
I'd no burrow—a place I could call a home. and the winterwind gave me a blanket of cold, and there, I read the threnody of a bum. and I wrote a requiem—how I slept in the cold; how I died and resurrected in the winding wind. I wrote in silence, “if I'd have known, I wouldn't have stepped out from mother home.” I missed the soft palms of grandmother. I missed the poems of my bed. I missed home.
Salim Yakubu Akko is a writer and poet. He is a World Voices Magazine’s Nigerian correspondent and a guest contributor at Applied Worldwide. He has his works published/forthcoming in Upwrite Magazine Nigeria, Scratch Poetry Magazine, Calabar Poetry Magazine and Trouvaille Review.
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