Written piece
My Poetry, My World
Paul Olayioye
Nigeria
About this piece
Poetry has been my source of therapy, especially with the constant conflict in my life and in my country. What moves through my poetry is more of grief. So I wrote this poem to explain how this grief functions in my poetry world, how it affects my life and my personality.
Like litany on a tongue splintered
& bleeding, poetry is a thread I sow
the depressive cut on my heart.
Each verse, following the syringe
piercing me like old truth. I muzzle
the aftermath pain with clung teeth.
Outside on the lawn, I read poetry
like an addict swallowing mollies.
I read the poetry of Christian Wiman,
Kaveh Akbar. I cling Ocean Vuoung
& drag my wounded self along the shore.
The morning, like the clean tongue of
sea, washes off the scar. Poetry is
a daily therapy, a ballroom I keep
my grief happy. On paper, we fall in
love & fall far away from each other.
In poetry, I look at my grief as one sees
his reflection on water. Flapping.
Waving. Only on water does reflection
becomes transient. I touch its face
& it quickly touch me too. I swear
only in poetry does a thing as blade
becomes humane. Personification
as the blade spells it on my skin, as
it smiles under the sunlight & my
velvet drops. Suicide is an under-
statement. In poetry, I offer myself
to the scaffold & still wake up under
a guillotine. My skin is so scared
it pares easily. What moves through
my poetry is so much, a tsunami
of different streams. At the end, I
cleave a boy broken under the austerity
of growing.