Taofeek Ayeyemi

What Shams Tebriz Meant When He Said “You Can Study
God Through Everything And Everyone in the Universe,
Because God is Not Confined in a Mosque, Synagogue, or
Church. But if You are Still in Need of Knowing Where
Exactly His Abode is, there is Only One Place To Look For
Him: in the Heart of a True Lover. There is No One Who
Has Lived After Seeing Him, Just Like There is No One Who
Has Died After Seeing Him. Whoever Finds Him Will
Remain With Him Forever” is that Our Body is a Temple
Ignited By His Moonlight


[ˈtɛmp(ə)l]

a building devoted to the worship 1, or regarded as the
dwelling place 2,of a god 3 or gods 4 or other objects
5 of religious reverence 6.

___________________________

1 the moon spills over my body & divides my shadow into
two, it spills into the graveyard & makes the tombstones longer
than the tombs, it pours itself into the pond & tadpoles break into
its body. i fold my gaze into a mirror directed at a swarm of birds
circling the bluest point of the canopy; where the sea extreme
meets with the sky.

what is moon if not a happy sun.
i fetch hope from the faces of birds
like roadside water leaves;
every night i watch the flight of birds as if
to tell them to bring down the moon.
while growing, to me, the moon
is a portrait; a portrait showing god
bowing to himself.

i ask men of god
how things can play
exactly the way
we had wished them,
& they say hope is trapped
in the throat of submission,

in the mouth of prostration, that
god is not that far: a mere thought of him
accompanied by raised hands & he has
arrived.

2 sufficit huic tumulus,
cui non sufficeret orbis,*
reads the board beside
my temple bell / a moonlight
surprise / calling to dervishes
from taverns and whorehouses.
this body is a temple for all /
but no one will enter without
putting off his shoes.

i hear the coming of Nebuchadnezzar. i did not run, i didn’t cower
like an earthworm burrowing into the soil at the sight of a salt monger.
i didn't wail at the vibrating hoofprints of the Roman’s stallions, roaring
like intermittent thunderclaps revolting for the coming of a rain prevented
from falling. i'm a dung hill - open to the wet, to the dry, to the moon, to the sun,
to the pious, to the sinful, to the repentant and the ones with hardened hearts.

3 the lord is my shepherd; i shall not want:

a. he maketh me a creek of flowing water. a pasture taking colours
b. he maketh my yawn the breathe of a devil lizard, call it a dragon
c. my body abeautiful prison for a travelling soul & spirit
d. his name: so pure i have to wash myself to say it
e. yea, though with thy moon my body forgets darkness but what do we write home about moonless nights
f. i fold my prayers to thee like a shawl & they refold into nests for fledglings
g. thou watch good birds build nests in my body with grasses of autumn
h. surely this body is a temple beside a knee-deep lake hosting fishes
i. & bird, & i will dwell in this temple till the trumpet, notwithstanding
j. all of the above...

4 sultry noon . . .
nothing to show in the plate
of shea butter

summer heat – the sharp touch of
a seaweed

this poem has no rain, no dews,
no river to breath cold breeze over our body.
this poem is not the air of harmattan:
dry by noon & cold at night;
it has no word such as cold.
soothing. relief. calmness. et al...

(this poem is not a haiku)

it has no season.
no knife to cut
or slice an orange
into my throat.

i

it's lines are but men immortalized
into statues. they are trees sipping
life from the bowel of the rich earth.

5 father walked into the forest / fell a tree / carved it into a
body / last night i saw him prostrating to what he carved / mother
picked irons & metals on the roadside / on her way from the
market / arranged them into a pile of something / she is presently
at the backyard / kneeling before it / with a plate of palm oil in the
palms of her stretched hands; / they are not alone - / when the
year ends / a hundred will return home from distant lands / to
dance by the river / with steps reeking of testimonies.

6 this body is crying for clothes,
but only gets outgrown dresses & hand-me-downs,
as if to say: luck is not on your side.
the gourd of fate is weak. it leaks hope.
i want to run away from the alcove of fate
into an expanse field. but my legs have become
the feet of a millipede: they uncoil at a touch &
coil back into silence. silence also speaks, it says:

*the space in this tomb now suffices for him, for whom the whole
world was too confined.