Three Poems by Abdulmueed Balogun

 

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