2 poems by Abdulrazaq Salihu

Field Transformations

 
The abeyance of clouds fade into void

Does a broken trunk grow another branch?

Have you seen a wall mend its broken body?

I live beside a cloudage of constant change,

My falling skin is enough reason for you to believe,

A cracking lip stretching into an ado of time,

There's an earth folding its breath into my nostrils,

I found it between the smoke of a cooking pot,

Falling skies, inside the thread of a carved pumpkin;

Inside Accra, engulfing the solemn reality of a town;

Engulfing Dakar, encroaching towards a blue tip of

A family's home; encroaching Durban, nesting on the

Palm of chaos; A nest found in lagos,

A tree branch fakes a smile beside a falling wall 

And we're told that bodies 

Are green fields, realizing their grave brown transformations.

Sculptures of Tribalism

In transcriptions, A tribe is a ''Tryb''
And in this recapitulation;

We are men
Taught to feed our tribes to the world

Like carving tribal marks
On the sacred face of death

Men birthing tomorrow's men
Marking our territory of a sinking land

How we squeeze our names
Into the pages of today's tomorrow

And bury in our children's pocket
Sweet names, A bevy of refacing skin,

Wormholes towards the city of blues
And night becomes a twinkle of dust

Moulding the terracotta of yesterday
On my sons face, no grave for you

No tomb for me, no history
Of another tribe transcribing its name in Greek.

ABDULRAZAQ SALIHU is a 17 year old Nigerian poet and writer. He is a member of the Hill top creative arts foundation and has his works published online nationally and internationally.