with you I-X

I

adunni...

i broke my heart over the sun of december
eclipsed by the moon of emptiness...

it was without you...

i come with wounded dreams
i writhe from pains singeing my blood...

will you again stitch me
from the rays of your sun
and needle me with love?

that i may live again
my dreams...

my heart with you.

II

i have stirred the web of my dreams
it is nothing without you...

like the cloudy bowels of harmattan
pregnant with emptiness from emptiness
i nurture nights and novels of loneliness...

but adunni...

before december fades like a frigid ember
will you wake again with my dawn
and save my dusks from loneliness?

that i may spider webs of fruitful dreams
and dream dreams with you...

III

adunni...

i saw the songs of dry leaves and ashes
the red rhythms of fire over the tongues of harmattan
and i remember my fire...my dryness...

without you...

i saw the barrenness of trees pregnant with dust
the sadness of fallen leaves...loss and death
and i remember my barrenness without you...

will you bless me with the rains of love?
that my fire may die and bring bloom for my sterility...

and be green again with you.

IV

you know adunni...

i sat close to the musing of the moon
and played the gospel of my dreaming drums
without you...

she hissed and spewed anger in shooting stars
and my rhythms faded in trembling testaments...

do i have a gospel without your psalmody?

but would you again like a david to my soul
string the harp of psalms over my holed-heart?

that i may pour smiles into the mouth of the moon
rhythms with psalms...a gospel with you...

V
shall i not tell you, adunni?
i have become a drum without rhythms
and my heart plays hide and seek with breath...

how can i beat without you?

the raven came with bad news
that my one penny of feelings is a glowing darkness
that you teared tears bearing the memories of my beasts
the anger that ruined the root of our fine love...

but would you again bury the beasts of memories
and raise me a saint with beauty...

that i may find melody for drums...breath with you...

VI

adunni...

i feel like the muted expressions of the sun
beneath the frowned clouds of harmattan
i am not smiling without you...

i have engraved on the pages of my teeth
the writings of bitterness of my twisted tongue
for how can i walk the miles without your smiles?
my teeth are white-washed sepulchers of dead smiles...

would you again be my genesis of smiles?
that my teeth may write a new testament for revelation...

and smiles with you.

VII

adunni...

i have tattooed the spine of the night
with the cloudiness of my frozen heart
i am a torn thorny twig of thoughts
without you...

i have lent my soul to the wind
and cupped the psalms of clouds into hugging palms
to weep my ruins into your heart
i have no tears again save the broken teeth of harmattan...

would you again bloom roses for my thorns?
that i may find beauty with you...

VIII

my heart is yet traded its breath to the neck bone
and i feel a fear on the palate of my tongue
without you...

i fear my breath shall soon jump out of my mouth
for incompleteness has laid restlessness into my pulses...

but adunni....

would you again on the skin of the season
squeeze the elixir of love into my perforated heart?
your breath into my breath
your life into my life...

that i may find peace for my restless pulses...

IX

adunni...

shall i not strip it quickly?
shall i not unclothe the burning beneath my burning?
how without i am without you...

i regret the day i buried the tonic sofa of our love
into the crooked clefs of anger and manly hubris
i regret the bitter bruises on the laps of the evening
where i once sang you beautiful serenades...

i can no more touch the sky...

but would your love consider again the misery of my man
that i may touch the sky again with you....

X

today is the last page of my scrolls
for your forgiveness
for your with you to my without you...

in my lost to lost i lost you
and my fate is pregnant with a prodigal sadness...

i have tried and failed my teeth for brightness
over the soon birth of the new moon
and my thoughts have slipped into the arms of dark corners...

but adunni...

would you return again with love tonight?
that i may watch the new moon with you...
 
 

Leaves of Ink: Hope of Bright Mornings (Mirror Sestet)

Leaves of Ink: Hope of Bright Mornings (Mirror Sestet): Contributor: Ayoola Goodness Olanrewaju - - Yesterdays bloat with hays Hays once green in the rays of the sun god of yesterdays Pas...

cacophonies

I



and poetry speaks to my poetry
in the echoes of noises in the heart of a hole
this hole is my heart...

these are the tears of my hands
the pains of the claps that killed emptiness and not the flea...



of youthful chants of sorrowful psalms
in the blurring tomorrows of the old testaments...

these toothless wrinkled gluttons still want meat
they crush the characters of tomorrows within gummy teeth...bloody

in the covetousness of mobile adverbials...

II



i hear voices rend in shrills
like the chorus of metals in the skulls of tambourines

like the branches stomped by the wildness of the wind
shaken bruised and broken...

in silenced cacophonies of falls and frails...



and there are the creased voices in the tangle of sheets
craving for folds and smoothness...

tell me where again do we find rhythms for celebration?

when our drum-skins are beaten to tears and tears
when our drummers are maleficent at heart...

III



these voices eat me deep
like a gluttonous distance
who dines on the meals of the fast and furious...

i feel heavy and defeated
like an incomplete destiny of a phrase...



only if these were not cacophonies of dirges
we would have blessed our legs with beads of rhythm...
and dance
even on the face of a can concession...
 
how do one dance the melodies of war?

IV



i swallow a thousand times
to drench in pleas in mucous libation
for the clustered spirits of noises within me...

i hear piercing whines
cacophonies in the pockets of giant terrors...



shall i not scream from their screams
and cream your ears frustrating tingles?

shall i not scream from their severed screams
screams from scorching torture and silence?
and spell your luxury of sleep restless ghouls and cacophonies...

V



when we tuned in the rhythms of felicitations
for the hairs that grew over our baldness...

did our songs not melt into distressed cacophonies?
did we not summon tidal waves of cries for our eyes?

when we found out we have gone bald again...



what stories do we tell our children?
do we tell them the lies they told us?

when we have promised them the candies of hope
and boast brightness for their days of darkness...

tell me...do we return again with this empty hopes?

VI



i feel cacophonies burst in my bowels
like formidable streams of dexterity
in the arms of a passionate drummer...

i am a market of noises
am i a market of noises?



could that be the beats of rains
or the cheers of dancing beads over the belly of the gourd?

ah! it is the weeps of soulful spirits
the spirits of mothers who lost their gold
to the wickedness of the ballot boxes...

VII



they steal away the rays of our brightness
from the blessedness of our suns...
 
they spill darkness on the canvass of our days
the darkness in the city of their hearts...

they play the deaf to our cacophonies of succour...



how they maim our binds of friendliness
with keen daggers of hostility and blood...

they break in asunder our placenta of love
and rip-rape our sister, peace
under uncouth libidos and dangles of wars...

VIII



our peace has the price-tags of wars
the peace we never bought...we never had...

a minute silence...

booms.bursts.fires.blasts.sands.blood.bloods.wails.voices
echoes...cacophonies in pods of paradoxes-deadly and death



if you want peace prepare for war
if you do not want peace prepare for war
if you want war prepare for war...

pieces.piecemeal.wars.peace.pieces.piecemeal.peace.wars
how do wars find peace?

IX



i have walked the night
in the nakedness of darkness...unclad
 
my ears crave for silence...

and within the silence is the loudness
of my heart...louder than silence...



the noises for alms of many mouths
the noises of street children estranged and violated
the noises of the mothers and daily dirges to the sun
the noises of pleading victims...corpses awaiting coffins...

the noises of scenes hollowed, hidden in my heart...

X



and yet it is these noises within me
dry bones fluting for flesh... for life...

craving for breath
the breath of peace from putrid belch of wars...

crying... ‘do not give up on me’



i am a poet of troubled noises
a poet of tears

i shall wing and bellow the ears of heavens...open
i shall scurry and burrow into the soul of poesy...deep
until these cacophonies trade for celebration.

emptiness I-X

I
i

i prey on clusters of darkness
and trap some between the palms of my hands

i stake my fisted-games
over the lashing tongues of fire

i eat the meals of emptiness...

ii

i am a hunter of words
and my heart knows me well

i hunt from an emptiness within
an emptiness, burdened with words...

an emptiness of everything.

II

i
there in the heart of space and time
is a broken nothingness of something...many

emptiness like the dusts of dreams
scattered in the heads of deep sleeps...

the emptiness in the rest in peace...

ii
a poet’s weave is from the threads of nothing
from the deaths of broken and forlorn words
and silence...

a roast of darkness over lines of lights
for transformation.


III

i
 
and in the beginning there is an emptiness
a pen and craving spaces...

a poet and thoughts
lines and then poetry...

and the poetry is good...

ii

here lies the creation of poetry
moulded in an empty emptiness...

like the emptiness in the lifting
within the veins of a trodden thread
 
heavily light.

IV

i
 
poesy is a loom of cadence
in the emptiness of sustained notes...

the loud soundless of soothing sounds
in the soft whispers of slowed lyrics

the magic in tender smiles empty and pure...

ii

a foetus in bloody pools of emptiness
in the wombs of barren silence

in the pregnant echoes of lines...

in the breaths of nibs
of inks from fountains void.

V

i
 
i sit at the shore of waters
and i net not for fishes in the deep...

i fish peaceful stimulus of words
from the hovering emptiness 
on the surfaced silence of shallow waters
 
ii

do you know poetry dances in
the flickers of dust?

empty and light

unscathed
in the slices of the sun rays...
 
VI

i
 
i gaze at the mumblings of insanity
how words drool from the hotness of rants
and emptiness...

i see poetry
and poetry sees me...

ii

give me emptiness
and i shall give you true poetry

for in this emptiness
i am filled...

muses void, weaves of wordy wonders.

VII

i

when your eyes see the world
upside down...

and emptiness hemmed at the
dangling up down, down up

there...is a poetry to right...

ii

i see poetry to right

in the emptiness of a careless loss
in the emptiness of death, dying and death
in the tongues of ruin of an empty fire...

in the emptiness here, on the slate of my heart.

VIII

i

words weaved in the threads of peaceful muse
lie on the bed of leaves...
 
in the beauty of emptiness...deep...

in the comfort of a fluttering emptiness
of a dancing dry leaf to the music of the wind...

ii

now...i feel empty
an emptiness in the abundance of words...

like the emptiness of a mirror 
without a face

i itch of poetry...

IX

i

i fry the flies of failures
in the words of excellence...

failure is a forced poesy
excellence is a true muse...

a true muse... woven from emptiness.

ii

i see dead emptiness breathe
in fluid muses...perfect for thirsts...

in the creation of light lines...empty-
in the purity on the slate of the tongue...

in the nibs of fine poets.

X

i

this heart moulds emptiness...

in the likeness of thoughts
 in the clay of lines

he breathes in it figures of speech
and the emptiness becomes poetry...

ii

be fruitful and multiply
have dominion in lines pure...rhythms

in rich rhymes...vast verses...sweet stanzas...
and let this emptiness...

your starting point to poetry.

reveries

i
as the night spreads the pigment of grey
over the fluffy clothes of the firmament
and the moon tucks in half like a bronze coin
into the breast-pockets of the passing clouds

i lie lost in the garden of your thoughts

between my head and my heart
between my nibs and conversations of sheets
between here and there...

ii

i see the slivery winks of the stellar stares
and i remember our best of laughters
when we raced in the cooling chills of pure water
hand in hand...

the unspeakable sweetness on your lips
and the beam of brightness you saw in my eyes

how we laughed loud and drew lovely echoes
on the jealous face of the roving breeze...
iii

shall i forget quickly?
the griefs and the tears we shared
i remember how you sobbed bitterly
upon the shivers of my shoulders...

how i manned my tears and failed...

how we cried silently
how we both cried silently loud
how we finished crying and cried even more...

iv

i remember the tonic of your voice
when you called my name...

the tremble in my voice
when i looked into your eyes...

the charm of your giggles
that brought rhythms to my cheeks...

the lost into the worlds of angels
when your hair fluttered between the fingers of the wind...

v

like the loss of a lone star
i plead forever twinkles of your thoughts

as they journey farewell into the night...
my eyes birth a teary flow...

between my head and my heart
between my nibs and conversations of sheets
between here and there

you were my here and there that was...

Ayoola Goodness (c)2015

stimulated vibrations I-X

I

i

ilesanmi...

this life is a bullet of words
shot into the depths of craniums...

it is the wails on the lips of thousands
echoes...

i have been hit
and i bleed profusely...

ii

these tears are the wetness of my sore
and my sleeplessness is not of a lost love...

it is the nurse of my worded wound...
i see myriads of lines swirl in my bleeds

i recuperate...i relapse

tell me...
are these my dreams too?


II

i

ilesanmi...

yesterday...how i tried...
to hide from this force within, eating me
from this poetic burden and breeds for words...

but which mother neglects the weeps of her womb?

the wails of empty spaces
the cries of quills, tender...

held me bound!

ii

i wish i could tell the day i gulped this water
fashioned in the rituals of words...

a thirst for a thirst for my thirst
for in my drunkeness, i still thirst

tell me
what happens to a drunkard thirsty for words?


III

i
ilesanmi...

remember when you seek drunkeness at poetic shores
let angels fill your cup the bitter brews of humility
and beware of the sweet brews of pride of angelic demons...

for many men puke poetry pours with the stench of pride
and clothe in the mad yeast of their poetic puff puff

remember...poetry is humble and sane...

ii

remember...poetry is true...
let your poetry spill truth to truthful truth to lying lies...

when you grow wings of poesy
let your wings intertwine humble wings
for in the kindness of poets...you shall soar heights

and please tell me
when my poetry exudes not the prides of humility...

IV

i

ilesanmi...

vibrations ride the corridors of my veins
and have denied my pupils the meal of sleep...

a drunkard of words nurses a thirsty thirst
a constant thirst bound in the deep waters of words

look closely and read the dance of my quill
and score the music played by my flaming fingers.

ii

i write myself lines of lights
for brightness in my springs of darkness...

when dark days may want to roam my sanity
and make my nibs wander
in the ink of attractive ghouls in strange thoughts

hear this today and learn
a poet's time wheels have dark days and very many...

V

i

ilesanmi...

shall we stand a minute silence...
for the death of vowels and consonants of lines

the lines of poesy that bloomed under the moon
and withered at the brightness of dawn

shall we stand a minute silence...
may their muse return if possible.

ii

when lines shall bloom your stem of poesy
find the patience to engrave on pure leaves

for they are like roamings of grieved ghosts
panting for rest in nibs and paradise rooms on leaves...

they are like slimy dreams
and in neglect slither away and die too soon...

shall we stand a minute silence...for lost lines...

VI

i

ilesanmi...

i write from a depth of emptiness
the emptiness of life...

the emptiness i have found within the self of myself
the emptiness craves...calling for creation...

do you know?
poetry creates fine rhythms on void notes...

ii

when you gavel poetry on the slab of creation
let it be on the mines of empty notes
for in emptiness you shall find rhythms...

fine rhythms of light...luminous paths
in the corridors of darkness...

let not your rhythms lie on faltering scales...

VII
i

ilesanmi...

a poet is a metaphor of spontaneous feelings
heavily vast into the lightness of every thoughtful weave
the weaves in the wools of words...

a poet’s wealth is not in the treasury of mints
or the mass of accolades on the cliffs of fame...

it is in the currencies of deep thoughts...

ii

a poet is a baker of poetic powders
a bowl of arts that reunites fragments of poesy...

a kiln of fine rhetoric
a spice bag of figures of speech...

a model of forms and styles...

a platter fashioned in the finesse of thoughts
on which a sumptuous poetry is served!

VIII

i

ilesanmi...

shall i not tell you?
that my head pillows on bundle of quills
and i dream nights into the wilderness of words...

the dream of a poet is a wordy sickness
a persistent urge, a waxing furnace, a thirsty thirst

a poet is a pouch of words...

ii

when words steal you far into the woods of poetry
hunt deep and trap your nibs rich games
fat meats for now and decades to come...

refuse not the desire to get lost
and trouble not your mind for your find

words do find words
your poetry shall find you again...

IX

i

ilesanmi...

when poetry buds burning thoughts
on the plate of your heart
let your nibs find pure patience
and then a perfect peace...

a true bloom of poetry is plucked
in a perfect peace, patiently pure...

ii

let your flaming fingers scorch your thoughts steady
for if hasty...the words may burn to burnt...

tell me
who eats with relish a burnt poetry?

let your eyes assess the beauty of your thoughts
and if ugly...lay it at the altar of poetic priests...

for poetry must first carry the burden of beauty...

X

i

ilesanmi...

poetic strength lies not at the tip of a bottle
or in the rolls of shredded tobacco...

a poet’s might lies in his pouch of words
the heart is the pouch...

a pure poetry pours from the heart
an expression rolled in deep feelings...

ii

if your poetic pours must be pure
wean not your heart from meticulous breasts...

let your muse pour pure pours
not after the contentions for poetic crowns
or after the foolish forces of muses
a poetry forcefully brewed stinks...

poetry is a feeling not forced...

Sorrowful

Your eyes hold memory of sadness
I see your soul this morning
Sick with a sickness of sorrow.
 
Your life is a life of deep sorrow
For your smiles are not prided joys
In your sweetness lingers a great bitterness.
 
Your legs are not happy
I saw you dance last night
Those were not playful but painful steps.
 
You have pretended happiness as helps
You fought a dream a fortnight passed
You war nights to not be sleepy…
 
You are sad now
A look at you, a maintained frown
Your tales of delights were none.
 
You are just alone
Alone in the darkness of your plague
The pattern of pains is in your brow.
 
Your lips are pursed in revenge
You play strings of slights
And told not your story to know!
 
The world has become your foe
Life has been harsh and not fair
Your vengeance is a paradise pledge…
 
To fight with life hurts lives…
A torrent current desires no dives...
 
I wish I know your tale of sorrow
For your safe tomorrow…