Lord Adedayo Adeyemi Agarau Vs Lord Mesioye Affable Johnson~by Ayoola Goodness Olanrewaju

Great People of Poetry Island!!!

Welcome to the arena of poetic justling between two sWordsmiths:

Lord Adedayo Adeyemi Agarau

Vs

Lord Mesioye Affable Johnson

 

Poem 1

the taste of family

it tastes like dirge, the mourning
breaking from the mouth of a new born,
it tastes like the bitterness in the mouth of
mothers who search for dried skulls of their husbands
in a city where angels bear the weight of country men
—it tastes like absence, my father’s shadow left
after him and we still search this room with torches
we run our fingers through the walls for directions,
something must lead us back home/ for the paths
that lead home is broken like heart of my lovers
—it tastes like crimson, a testimony of death
spilling like oil in the body of a country, my brother fell
and we all heard him groan, like dying for a county is
as sensual as finding home after a long stroll through his woman’s body
—it tastes like my mother’s body, she broke it for us like bread
and we ate like unfathered children, we ate like unfathered demons
—my mother’s body is a confinement of dirges
we all sing with her eyes.

Poem 2

JOURNEY TO NOTHING

i

there are two poles next street, stretching

memories of mother on its dripping chest — a signpost

for all breaths bidding their sons farewell

between sighs of a home burying its head under the feet

of a night song having father’s name as soft lyrics. my lover

was an interlude breaking smiles at a funeral of worships,while

mother dared a journey to a thorny dusk and became a volunteer

of red paints to show her love in a breaking news in February.

when we hold ourselves in memories,

something holds us in itself as memories too, but who knows?

ii

this city is the last drop of voice

in the resounding gnashes of innocent veins

strangulating the tears finding home in boys’ skin;

their blood describes way to baptism into a river of ashes

while another fire starts under a girl’s feet, a mountain of fire

behind her, where should she find salvation, front? back? under?

or just stand still and become a prophecy of rotten tongues?

I am holding my sighs still…

iii

I released them in papa’s room now held by cobwebs

in image of my rusted mother till he comes back— a taboo,

but,

memories are places we find lost ones in nothing

when everywhere called home is burning in their names,

find me in one now , find another home — nothing.

Let the Poetic Combat Begin!!!