Do not believe what you see on TV
I’m so afraid of being happy it is the closest thing to shame
……………The world would still have itself
All noise & no sound/all rush & no reaching
If I wasn’t here
……………A breakfast club between its teeth
I’m reconsidering dying old
Who the fuck wants to stay that long
……………& bored
Under the cold desert sun
Not these oases tapped like fresh wine from humanpores & tearducts
……………Not this sand thicker than blood & water gushing from Jesus’ side
Pushing a bouquet of leftover bones towards god’s nose
I will lie & I will disguise
……………Turn off the lights & fall abysmal
I feel nothing but beautiful
Leave my breath to you
……………This tickling like a rush of spiderlimbs over skin
Gorgeous god
I want to love without changing myself
……………Spare my demons in place of martyrdom
Want to fall & fall on rock
Till it learns the language of soft
……………Till my body is what you see when a country ungags itself
& swallows a hand grenade
Life is a promise broken before the words form
……………So I cut myself sometimes to see how much remains
Of me
If I exist in small doses or a rush of adrenaline
……………Believing if I called each tooth a tooth
It’d stop them from biting down
But an embrace seen from too much distance are arms
……………Spread out in crucifixion
I knew I’d broken my halo the moment I ran my tongue
Over my lips one morning & couldn’t taste the previous night’s girl
……………Heard my heart falter – each beat wearing thin
Don’t judge me (or do if you mustn’t help it)
Masturbation is the body saying it can handle itself
……………& I’m a rookie in love with girls
Whose skin & lipstick covers/mascara & fingernails
Are drawn in the language of night
……………Whose mothers do not smile the proud/knowing smile of mothers with daughters
Who seek lonely men as a junkie does his poison
Teach their idle tongues to walk the path of cleavage
……………Lips to adore each nipple with nibbles
Down to french the desert between the embrace of warm thighs
Until I saw the streets you were walking down
……………I didn’t know I was the one in your shadow & soles
Rotting/screaming all alone/trapped in the echo
Maybe we should give heed to the preacher’s homily
……………He’s not the devil asking to interpret stone into loaf
But still…
My body is its own city & life is short in this city
……………You a northern star hanging over it like a mistletoe
Or to put mildly
An outlaw swinging under the gallows
……………So when all is almost said & undone
You’d not empty dust unto dust
No
……………You’d burn it & to a fierce eastern wind cast it
That a prisoner to freedom it may be
Wandering back & forth into your closing arms
……………For people like us do not know life unless it is spelt backwards
We die by own hands before god’s noose reaches our throats
I’m the prodigal & you the favorite
……………Leading me far from this crimson spar
Beyond the mountain called Christ
I’m no longer the bones in your closet
……………Come on now
Come hang your cloths
Jk Anowe holds a BA in French from the University of Benin, Nigeria, and is a 2015 recipient of the Festus Iyayi Award for Excellence in Poetry from the same university. Poems have been nominated for the Best On The Net Nomination and appears in Brittle Paper, Elsewhere Lit, Praxis Magazine Online, Gnarled Oak, Poetry Life & Times, Expound Magazine and elsewhere. He lives, teaches and writes (when he’s not consumed by wanderlust) from somewhere in Nigeria.