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‘Is it my burden?’ and other poems by Jimlad Abdullateef

By: Jimlad Abdullateef

HOPE
You are a broken shadow
Shattered into prickling pieces with no weapon to muster it.
Your eyes are empty, Tears of anguish roll down your cheek.
You could not see anything fruitful but darkness,
Silence steals your heart
As the windstorm swirls and drives its deluge of darkness towards you.
Waves of despair and destruction lambaste you.
Everyday is a nightmare,
You watch pain force its way into your lungs,
As you could not breathe.
You are tired and hopeless,
Grief and dejection become your Lingua Franca.
You want to glide like a bird
With a thousand wings to fly,
To explore the sky, to see the world pregnant with hope, with love.
Alas!
This is an illusion.
You wish to sail the world, to see the pleasing side of it, your hope is to become the moon, you love to seize the gaze
You want to explode into happiness,
And see your feet tread the path of restoration.
You want a new life.
But this is not coming.
You are not alone in this battle,
Rays of hope rise from the Quran
‘… So be not of the despairing.. ,’ .
The birds shall return,
The dead in you will rise to a great height in the land of the living.
The sun will shine to brighten your day and the rain of depression will cease to fall on your doorsteps.

###

IS IT MY BURDEN?

Is it my burden?
I still beg to know

To see your girls, soiled with disgrace as the ground couldn’t come to their rescue?

Is it my burden that you fall like rustling leaves, bleed everyday and clot with pain with no help whatsoever

And the sun fails to shine at your doorsteps ?

Is it my burden that your voice no longer chokes on the smoke of silence,

That you are no longer beautiful to behold and could not even bat a fly?

Is it my burden that winds of despair lambaste you as waves of pain engulf you as you watch in despair?

Is it my burden that you live in a hut which a storm is enough to blow away,

And that robbery, raping, kidnapping has become delicious food for the villain?

How does it concern me that your mind is overcast with dreadful experience you don’t want to talk about,

To see that your sun sets without giving a sign and the moon to be gazed at refuses to show at night?

Is it my burden that you have not a penny to save and no grass to graze on?

Everyone sings songs of careless thought

As long as I am fine, to hell with those suffering and affected.

I sit in my room drinking from my tumbler, then a wild breeze buzzes in and sounds like a clapper of a mill,

Leaving me in a stream of incapacity as the wind changes the direction of the axe towards me.

I cry bitterly, alas!
The rain of hope did not fail to wash clean my teary eyes.

###

TUMBLER OF MISERY

Lonely in the room beholding the glimmer of sunlight, her eyes beamed in happiness.

A wild breeze buzzed in and sounded like the clapper of a mill and her head started to explode, crushing her into a stream of incapacity as her flesh and blood became frozen with fright in a do or die affair.

The sky became pregnant and the winds of despair lambasted her.

She was soiled with disgrace and a wave of pain engulfed her body as the ground couldn’t come to her rescue

She had always wanted to be a moon we gaze at, but unfortunately the moon refused to show at night.

Left with an everlasting pain, she said,

The sun will shine to dry your teary eyes and the rain of sorrow will fall on the villain.

For the troubled souls, cold and lonely like the wetness of a dog’s nose

For the broken glasses shattered beyond repair

For the ones whose sun set without a notice

###

WAKE UP

I.
Suffering swells like a pregnant sky
Misfortune has befallen us
Things look so hard
Yet we feign ignorance
Of all the turmoil turning us inside out
Wake up from your slumber.

II.
We have lost the touch
Gone far behind at a time
When our voices choke
On the smoke of stillness
And at a time when we stay indoors to stir still waters abroad
When the sky that was clear enough to light a tunnel is now veiled with a fury haze
Wake up from your slumber

III
Do you not see people breathing yet dead inside,
Eating but feeling hungry,
Smiling but the reality is gloomy.
Do you not see as they feel cold yet hot inside?
Falling like rustling leaves,
Placed under the layers of sun
With rain of destruction falling on it.

IV.
Tell us the steps we need to take in order for us to break through the door of misery,
The ways to sail the broken soul to the bank of ease
And the rays of light to brighten the world of those with moonless night.
Tell us how to hold back the sleep of destruction from our teary eyes,
How to console the head of fire erupting to explode into smithereens.

V.
Wake up from that slumber in your fingers,
And show us how far we can go in the air. MIRAGE
Lost in the valley
Wandering like a helpless nomad
I beheld a glinting rays of hope
Then I jumped out of my skin
Beautiful he was to behold
Difficult to oppose
He stole my heart within a jiffy
And gave me a glimpse of hope
He came with teasing
In the garment of ease
But alas!
I was wrong to take him as a friend
His intents came killing
Like a famished fox in the city of fowls
He came to destroy me
Detonated the grenade of chaos
Made me a helpless prey on his razor talons
He snatched away my faith
And left me in the lurch
He caught me unawares
And threw me off the track
Behind are a thousand miles
Measured by my feet
The world is a rumbling sea
Swelling with Pharisees
And so must I be chary of whom I mingle with.

###

Jimoh Abdulateef also known as Jimlad is a poet, a certified Pharmacy Technician and currently a student of Pharmacy (PharmD), University of Ibadan. He writes poems in English and Yoruba, his mother tongue. He likes to engage with people and travels a lot which he believes would enhance his knowledge and inspire his penmanship. He writes from South West, Oyo State,Nigeria.

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