Remi Raji Poems

Tonight my verse will find you dancing alone
a hurricane of desires will pass me, unknown.

And I the anchor, martyr to your trance,
draped, in the absolution of your absence.
...

As sure as the deceptive day
you're the only cell in my stem
the stomata of unending songs,...
...

when the locusts come, will you greet them
with tears and blood, in the aftermath of fractured years?

when the termites come with fangs of iron
can you be the grit stubbornness of rocks?
...

I
Sometimes a man gets tired of going to sea as now
when the voices I hear speak nothing but shame, and silence.

When the calabash goes to the river and never returns
The carver is drenched in tears, the drinker is famished.
...

no water runs where the Niger flows
no fish swims where the Benue berths

my spirit is grieved, my grief is long like the rivers
i will not forgive i will not forget
...

I come gently
Like the evening rain

I come in silence
Like the dews of a virgin morn
...

But as it was in the beginning...
We have long been lost to the substance of things
We have long sought the shadow of the masquerader
And we puke in pride and laziness.
...

Trapped, double-trapped, triple-trapped
I feel the outlaw's pain
I know the anguish of exile
...

And suddenly my land becomes a bride again

In this memory of decimals
You're a soulful, full-bodied number
the even envy of oddities...
...

I will like to turn you inside out and step into your skin
To be, that sober shadow in the mirror of indifference

Look at me, slowly, behold the irises wherein you hide
Wherein lies the ultrasound of hidden bleeding images
...