As sure as the deceptive day
you're the only cell in my stem
the stomata of unending songs,...
Because I crave your lips, and you're not here
I want to forget you, haunted by the paradox in the air
you're the only thing whose epilepsy I have loved
and I have known betrayals not like yours...
Your contradictions have become the theorem
of what it is to love and laugh in the gutters of despair
But I'm also a paradox, born into the treachery of dim decades
I have survived other lives and many deaths.
I want to forget,
I want to forget your face
I want to forget your face in my fear
I want to forget my fear in your face
I want to forget my fear in your face forever...
Because I am possessed, my songs for you will not end
And though the abuse persists
it is in your tears that the diamonds shall grow.
One day when you go out with me, if I live to hold your sight again
the evening will wear a new name, and your familiar places painted new.
I will be the resurrection, you the lives of many who are silenced now.
Remi Raji
Remi Raji is the pen name of Aderemi Raji-Oyelade, a Nigerian poet, scholar, literary organiser and cultural activist. Raji’s first collection of poems – A Harvest of Laughters (1997) – has won national and international recognition.
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