By Olaseni Kehinde Precious
A Crumb of Broken Stones
From a realm of tales, they whispered to my brother, Folarin. His name: a fragile reverie and a daring myth, spun from the threads of hope. As softly as the vanishing whispers of a ghostly spectre, he began to eclipse his own shadow as the world chorused into a cacophony of voices.
“Folarin, you’re an unyielding rock, forged in the fires of time”, they’d say. So he’d quell his heart’s murmurs with tendrils of smoke. “You’re a fir tree, unswayed by tempestuous gales”, they’d say. So he sought refuge in the palace of hungry wolves.
One day, I beseeched Folarin to unveil the resplendent dreams he once treasured, but at night, he returned with a sketch of a monstrous Leviathan. Folarin’s radiant smile, once a rival to the sun’s golden ascent, faded gently into obscurity.
I bear witness to men like Folarin, traversing the earth’s labyrinth with anguish beneath their shirts. They climb the walls of vanity with their hearts whimpering, and soul trembling at each step. Yet, in this realm, it is forbidden to invoke angels.
They weave these men into webs of hoaxes and cast them adrift into the abyss. Sometimes, I hear them pay homage to oblivion in different dialects as they metamorphose into the same minotaur that frightens their dreams.
I speak for every man who dances to melancholic melodies in the wilderness, armed with loaded squirt guns. Today, you can rebuke the beautiful demons, summoning your mind like my brother, Folarin, ravaged into a crumb of broken stones.
Life is but a Fleeting Moment
Life is but a fleeting moment
a dewdrop’s descent on the thirsting meadow
Morning’s veiled kiss,
upon the shrouded cloud’s brow
Life is like an alleyway,
adorned with the ethereal sweet caress.
Yet, it is a flicker of celestial light,
Radiant, but with an ephemeral glamour
We watch the clock march in its sublime grandeur
with its hands, decorated with a fugacious paint
An imminent silence when the bell tolls,
a voyage into the limitless void
Life, oh how fleeting, yet love, its resplendent beauty,
when the skin metamorphoses and bones grow frail,
A reborn smile, like the phoenix, in the awakened heart,
an ocean of hope, in the transient path.
Olaseni Kehinde Precious embodies the multifaceted roles of a poet, content writer, blockchain researcher, and SEO specialist. When not diligently optimising web pages for search engine rankings, Precious can be immersed in creating captivating blockchain content or crafting a literary masterpiece. Her poems have appeared in Brittle Paper, Kalahari Review, Writer Space Africa, SubSaharan, and elsewhere.
Cover photo: Leopictures from Pixabay