When Mercy Bids the Eye, Goodbye.
Today, every eye spells evil and smells evil like the silence
worn by our nights. Out there, aubade greets the morning
from a man’s stomach, and he dances to the tune—like
he buries his sadness into the joy that will never come.
At the market, a preacher is preaching heaven with the blaze
of hell in his mouth. We have pecked at the sea in hell and
graffitied its taste on our subconscious so that our ears, eyes,
tongues, legs, and hands are all testaments of what we want and hate.
Here, a liege leads his folks into days that are not smiling;
flails them by bastinadoing till stars fall off their skies.
We read and memorize the tongue of the sky, but rescind
the lessons or tell them off into the mouth of oblivion afterward.
What rules our souls, our world is a rule: “if you want to rule, follow no rules!”
Contributor’s Bio
Odunjo Azeez is a young Nigerian and a lover of Art. He has his works published in Williwash, The Pen Magazine, and elsewhere. He has also co-authored an Anthology of poems titled “WHERE RHYTHM TAKES YOU.”
