I AND MY OTHER SELVES
I am the sun of strangled vows,
I have on my street of thought
the architecture of hell.
I am the daughter of nutured veracity,
I have on the walls of my mind
the geography of Elysium.
I have navigated the sea
of scorns and trod barefooted,
the street of cheers.
And over the years,
I, and my other selves
have come to know
how lethal,
the sting
of perfidy,
how sweet,
the nectar
of fidelity.
REMEMBER
Abdulmueed, that you're a mantra
on world's lips, that you're a canary
whose invigorating
song the purling world awaits,
like a lover on blue bodice expecting
her beloved in a lustrous garden.
Remember Abdulmueed,
the root of your balmy name,
that the dawn
of grief is a mirage, a dust,
w o n ' t b
e e t e r n a l.
Remember Abdulmueed,
you're a salve to centuries
of anguish, that you're a glowing
cynosure in the sky of dismay.
Remember Abdulmueed,
that you're nothing, yet,
in your nothingness— a universe.
WHEN LIVING BECOMES STONY
In the cathedral of hope
faith dwindle and pulverise
gradually, tender mind
becomes sturdy, then, blind
to the gleam of light.
Breeze of vices lures heart
with its intoxicating spell,
till it dances gently like a child to its tune,
till it wilts slowly its humanity like autumn trees.
In the shadow of surfeit air
lungs gasp, pine and pray
for death's divine dunk.
Abdulmueed
Balogun is a Nigerian Poet and an undergraduate at the University of Ibadan.
He is a 2021 HUES Foundation Scholar,
A poetry reader at The Global Youth Review and runner up in the REFORM
NAIJA writing contest- "FREEWILL" in November, 2020.
His poems have been published / are forthcoming in: Avalon Literary Review, Ligeia Magazine, Poesis Literary Journal, Fevers of Mind (Poets of 2020), Subnivean Magazine and elsewhere.
He tweets from: AbdmueedA
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