We carry a cross inside our heart
to relieve our necks from dancing
and singing to death, to relieve
our heads from drinking too
much blood to stupor like vampires,
or to forget Noah’s flood
where vanity became the only purity
for worshipping death and beginning
a new road to sunrise.
We hide a cross in our heart
to believe we’re gods
who can drown in too much blood
from liquor leading to stupor to gaze
at our vampire faces in the mirror
running away from sunrise or from
staggering here and there to wet
our starving muscles with music
that our dying and ageing nerves
knows how to strike when drunk
and sober to walk our tired bodies
up the cardinals of revivals with
open canals to Purity.
Pharmacists carry drugs
in their head to invite diseases,
Doctors carry diseases
in their head to invite cures,
teachers carry education
in their head to invite excellence,
and we all carry the opposite of everything,
of every road.
I’m a frame hanged on the chambers of fire,
I’m a frame that cannot be called like names,
a frame that cannot be carved by names
that can be spelt,
a name that cannot be given by any parent,
a flame that cannot be touched by any darkness,
a frame carrying and hiding the four cardinals of beauty
I’m the world,
the word that your ignorant wife
has been biting to pronounce as darling,
honey, sweet pie, circle, sphere or solution.
We all lead to four dimensions,
corners, points and trajectories
like rectangles whose diagonal
is a door to history,
a name, a person,
a frame, a flame,
a body, a flesh or a being.
You read N, S, W and E
that many have confused
as North, South, West and East.
You cannot carry north and set forth,
carry south and sing with your mouth,
carry west and hide Kanye West in a nest
or carry the East with your past.
Your past has no cardinal,
has no revival,
has no canal that can be followed
to make home for a human being.
You’re a name holding North,
a spirit holding South,
a wind holding West and
the experience holding East from fallen into nights.
You rise before sunrise holding N, S, W and E
at the coordinates, you’re not normal at all.
Paul Oluwafemi David is a Nigerian Scientist, Philosopher and Poet, a student of the art of Professor Wole Soyinka and Ben Okiri. A student doctor at the college of human medicine university of Nigeria, Nsukka, his poems have been published in AFRIKANA, AFRICAN WRITER, PRAXIS, PRIDE MAGAZINE NIGERIA, NANTYGREENS, KALAHARI, WORDS, TUCK, BANGALORE, MUSE and THREE DROPS. He’s working on some collections of poetry at the den. He can be reached on facebook viawww.facebook.com/davidfirstnapaul.
