Three Poems by Mahbubat Kanyinsola Salahudeen

 

//The Beginning Of Another End//

 

my days are a calendar of pain

my nights are like a thousand pins embedding

themselves into the succulent graves on my tongue

 

where did life go when I wanted to live,

where was living when I yearned & needed

to feel alive

 

everyday on my calendar of pain has

a bad habit of nestling inside me without

permission and nights are a kissing shadow

 

of tribulations and mourning the loss of yet

another life that continues without existence

 

shrouded in blankets of solitude or sinking

into something empty

I still want to live,

to move forward, time for me is still

 

standing at a standstill waiting_

waiting for me to catch up

I am re-birthing myself and writing all

all of these poems &

 

breathing them life & making them fly

maybe everything will make sense

& break free from the museless and emptiness

of days and nights words can't birth

 

I am un-knotting myself and drawing each

breath

maybe everything will bring me back

to life

 

or maybe this end is just the beginning

of another end and when the time comes

I will live again 

 

 

//I Really Am A Metaphor For Grief //

 

three sixty five days ago _ was when death sneaked into our home

and wrapped a towel around your knee dragging you far into a

 

night that ceased to become day. the night you were christened by 

death, i mean the night you turned an undertaker's item stuffed down

 

the belly of earth you became a new name stached in history. the air

reeked of the aura of tongues sore with grieving songs. when i say

 

coated paper now hold your presence at home, i mean the photograph

of you are everywhere. alone. in a suit frame in the living room, full

 

taped on our wall which wears the colour of the earth that gulped

you down its throat like wine out of bottle into its brown body

 

sometime ago, perhaps before or after you journeyed to the sky,

i mean the night death willed you to God, you munched softly on the

 

morsels of Amala as though you were afraid to swallow. you wobbled

gently on the Agbantara, it belched a creaking sound that screamed of

 

its weakness, with eyes that appeared retreating to their caves you

beckoned to me and told me about death_ how you thought it to be a

 

dilated fence _ of dread & how you saw it as a rough, rugged sea you'd

never have the prowess to sail across. the night trenodies tossed our

 

lullabies into thorns, i mean the black, blank night death tightened its

fangs around your body, before the men washed you over and over

 

before mother's body snapped like a weakened tree branch & before

father sowed you beneath the infertility of the soil, you raised alarms of

 

seeing death shimmering at you at the doorstep, i was by your side

on the cold, concrete floor _ one hand caressing your hair follicles, the

 

other interlocked with yours when death worked his fingers into the knot

muscles against your spine; the news of your death fell into my ears like

 

pins into tranquil water. yesterday was when i passed by your grave, i

still feel your unsettling presence & so i cursed iku, and the doctor that

 

pronounced you dead, and the Keke that conveyed your body and the

earth you were tucked into_ the earth that interlocked my view. i wrote

 

this poem when I heard a poet say _ we are mere characters entertaining

God _ and then I wonder whether God was watching when death swooped

 

down and carried you off; gliding away with you grasped in hooked claws_

into his wilderness so take this poem God, as a gift of thanks. i hope you get entertained 

 

 

//A New Dawn As The Chaos Of A True Beginning//

 

but what have i got to do with living,

being alive is often a death sentence &

a condensed cloud of unfulfilled dreams.

 

shrouded in a divorce between soul & body,

i have vacated this cave of chaos you call

 

life. in the course of events, we become

slaves preyed by memories and shackles, waiting

 

to be broken by the blandness and tartness

of days and nights words can not birth.

 

at the break of day when my eyes tear into the beginning

of a new dawn, life & strife echo in my

mind when i meditate between being awake and

 

staying alive. i emerge but forget myself at home_

myself at home. i am home. yet i fail

 

to remember myself. the beginning

of a new

dawn becomes the chaos of a true beginning of

 

a life that continues without existence. these days,

I dine by myself, the world is s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d

 

on the other side, glaring through a video

recorder. but some place inside me do

 

not meet. and so in a year about to die, obituaries lit

mag began publishing more works than any

literary journal, say: death calls for submission

 

and so I submitted my soul like a poem

to be published in its come-to-die issue

Mahbubat Kanyinsola Salahudeen - is a writer, poet and spoken words artist. Her works have featured or forthcoming at several places including Spillwords magazine, Brittle Paper, Ice Flow press, Ninshar Arts and elsewhere. Her friends call her Raven.