Lycanthropes

 

She told me,

she fears the night

for then, all banished monsters

retreat out of nowhere, recycled into the mind:

daylight guilt drift in

as swans in swarms, offshore to roost.

 

Werewolves of be slain thoughts spring forth

like a country-song retrieved from

dusty war-chest in Scunthrope museums.

These lycanthropes will leave you alone

to your daylight hubris,

of how strong her own mind is.

 

It’s 12 am;

you’re a refugee

fleeing from the war-torn city of daylight

in Yemen and slaughter in Marte,

your soul skitters into sleep:

that still, monochromatic embassy of dreams,

like a lake with no ripples,

but only dreams of how you couldn’t

stop the blind mob from offering that boy as burnt offering;

but instead, committed the scene (sin) to your phone’s memory

and later fed Twitter the blood

as Isa fed the five thousand.

Tonight, these werewolves will visit your soul

for night has lasers that reveal

the blood on your palms,

their very favourites, on your sweat-wet bedspread.

 

 

Amnesia

 

When I wrap my eyes

in the feathers of sleep

do I daydream to elope with my soul

in time, way back or furlongs forth;

perhaps, or in space,

to very immodest regions,

so that my ebony skin may sip

the memories of ice or hot lava-

I swear, sleep is an extension,

a bending of the mind

the brain coerces to rest.

 

but how can I rest

when I’m in the battleground

with no saber, or shield

against these sharp darts

of revealed anecdotes.

 

at times, my soul is a canvas

and these latest dreams are painters

breathing Muse over-dose into still-born poems,

emaciated flash fictions,

It’s always cute how you promise to write that

until daylight nightmare comes to wipe

these memories clean,

dismembering best-seller imagination

while still I lie.

 

Agbaakin O. Jeremiah, a 22-year old NIGERIAN poet and campus Editor is a final year law student in University of Ibadan. He won the maiden Ogidigbo Poetry Prize, PIN Poetry Challenge; and was a six-time finalist of 2016 Briggite Poirson Poetry Contest. He is featured/forthcoming on Tuck Magazine, Sentinel Quarterly, BPPC (Loops of Hope) Anthology, Irawo Anthology, PIN Quarterly, Kalahari Review, Praxis Magazine, Sub-Saharan Magazine, African Writer, and elsewhere.