Agnostic – Ọbáfẹ́mi Thanni
I longed for prodigal privileges. To have
my foolish heart – home of first doubts – silenced.
Resisting my longing, I unread your word. Learned
to be good without you.
Blessed is the Past, Most Eternal, Most Merciful – Ọbáfẹ́mi Thanni
A man confesses, my country is killing me, and it is forever.
The greatness of horror is in tense. Beauty and terror preening before hourmirrors.
A man confesses, I loved. I loved this land, and his broken heart leaps off the edge breaking hearts inch towards.
The Festival – Ọbáfẹ́mi Thanni
I sit in the hours before lullabies shut my eyes, taking census of my sorrows—the tenderness lost, the boisterous children who turn my mind on itself, the silence after a good joke, the period swollen with distance in a lover’s postscript, the fickle warmth of touch, the October earth offering water before a corpse fills its mouth
