Babatunde Waliyullah Adesokan (Toonday)
How many Times shall Things be over?
After Mahmoud Darwish

I have unlearned my own name a number
Of times & the anthem of a nation
That fails to rear me

My name - a pistol of consonants - its barrel
Curling vowels into venoms
Into a threnody of lost things
Into a body without bread
Into a jihad of thirst without milk

My ancestral hymn is a directionless wind
that carries me like a wasted placard, swirling 
around in a nation that is broken & bruised

I watch the trisected moon become a crescent
Nights wrapping days into months
Into a blanket of haunting past
Into what was, into what could be
Into a vowel & a vent of pains 

*

Find Me

Find me in a country where ashes write
better than a peaceful ink. In the wreath
left behind in a cemetery of no songs. In
the shadow that encroaches on homes
with hollow & broken windows. Find me
in the love letters that are never opened.
Tears that dried when grief becomes a
daily rant. In the falcons that dream but
could not fly. In the broken limps of the
matador. In the rage of the charging bull
which has been incarcerated from love.
In the splurge of crushed limbs & broken
skulls that died screaming. Find me in
a boy who picks tattered remains of
a country flag to wrap his torn limbs.
Find me in the trampled rose that still
smells after the bomb, after the tomb.