Olutayo K Osunsan Poems

Shy like snowflakes, you burn patterns into my head
And all I can do is see them in everything that is transient.

The lady walking by in the paper-bag suit under the
palm of a damp umbrella shedding a fat droplet onto the pavement.
...

If I live on a pebble in the sky,
Then why should I bother asking why.
Why the sky is not always blue.
Why people are not always true.
...

Pieces of midnight sprinkled on the ground. My leg wads through as the blanket ripples and the pieces disappear into the ether. Soaked in the cold with the darkness remolding and the stars collecting. I stood still to see the mirrored constellations of a lucid sky form. Moments before everything was shattered again by the tugging of the wind. For a second or two, it all made sense and everything had its purpose. Till the wind blew it all away into shattered pieces.
...

The blue in black is that sad void that echoes that something is missing. Maybe black is less and definitely not blessed. History tells of it, the future predicts it. The nagging insinuation that poverty is a black man's disease and sickness is his bed of straws. Billie Holiday sang of strange fruits, but maybe they still hang on trees in minds of a dark continent's complexities. It's sad and it's blue because many see it as true. It's sad and true. But it's true: the blue in black is true.
...

Mountains are gray and valleys are green.
There are days and nights.
We will live.
...

My entire life is in your tea cup.

Sometimes you sprinkle sugar
other times you stir viciously.
...

Flapping in the light like a dark omen,
Casting flickering shadows across the room.
In the hour glass the last grain drops and the candle is silenced.
The burnt smell of moth is smeared across the room.
...

Her curly black hair does not glow like crystal brooks on the back of emerald hills
Nor does her face compare to the scent-burst tapestry of a flowery meadow,
But her very presence regulates the beating of my melancholy heart.
...

The day you were born, I saw you.
Crimson like a wild flower yet to bloom,
Your white cry scrapped the silence like a mute TV.
...

I
When I held your hand
The day you were born to me
Life made perfect sense.
...