by Abdulmueed Balogun
There’s nothing in my heart, tonight,
seeking revenge or forgiveness: absolute
absence of eerie voices & grievous echoes…
No anxiety, whatsoever, on the windowsill
of my battered heart agitating for a chance
to breathe as a storm on my street of thoughts.
Tonight, there are no pains of unrequited love, no trauma
of love-gone-sour gnashing on the wooden ledge of my soul,
yearning for metaphors befitting their ancient anguish.
No apparition of wraiths of puckered memories drooping
their gory faces like doomed bats from the bough of the tree
of remembrance in the rainbow field of my memories.
Tonight, the moon denudes her bountiful bosom of light before the sultry earth
and after donkey’s years of hunting ghosts in my sleep, there’s a likelihood of sleeping,
at last, this blessed night, like a stone, or a log of fallen cypress.
Abdulmueed Balogun is a Nigerian poet, a Pushcart Prize and BOTN Nominee, a 2021 HUES Foundation Scholar & edits poetry for The Global Youth Review. He tweets from: AbdmueedA
Hawaii Pacific Review 