Mukoli

On God’s Own Soil & Other Poems

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On God’s Own Soil

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The Union Jack sweeps past rooftop. my arm—light-struck
into at ease. lips, blended with a chorus for whatever 
chased us down here: my dear relatives, spilled everywhere 
across another man’s land. the repercussion keep defying 
newer ways we rehearse, to get past it.

banner laid still, hawking God’s own phrase.
I lavish each taxi-drive, trying to mouth the alphabets.
my age grade calls me a misfit,
for my inability to voice their lingo in bone-clean accent.

I indulge their ignorance with both hands clasped—as if to say 
‘pardon me, beloved rival’. red skinned mulatto of rough grace:
all the terror to scare me down mournful alley, screaming: 

‘black boys are in danger of going extinct’. tell me, where between 
luxury & survival does my presence pose a threat? each march-past 
in honor of this state, breaks us into a foreign queue—as we encroach 
the stadium in our numbers, wielding flutes & rustful tambourine. 
the boy scout, fashioning trumpets from their lung.

remembrance holds a longing that is ripe. in a company of four, 
I identify as mouth-organ—troubling the front teeth. 
my mood sieves the awful notes.

an officer weigh Ma’s necklace in his hand, debone silver from 
the pendant hanging across her sternum & brands it exhibit.
Ma clinches the leftover trinket, orbiting it round her neck.
the Union Jack—on swaying past the ruffled prairie, 
discharge its vibrant limb effortless against the warm bright cloud.

I squander each penny I could afford at a toy store, shopping for 
surprise packs. once, I ran into a fishbone locket, circle it round Ma’s neck.
& while she belabours the rickety truck, a country’s banner 
swallow us whole on God’s own soil.

Rerouting

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The sun oils the stadium in lilac remorse: sky-angelo. 
paintbrush, leaving the day colorblind.
dawn folds into a masking tape,
rolls us onto a crosswalk—en route Lagos.

placards-carrying-youths holding up the crime that keeps a moustache, to God.
as if to say: look how the heavens veto against our future.

I resign to the simple wonder that his torso area often seemed 
sullied from wee, Man diapers. a walking latrine.

when I wax lyrical, your countenance prays the blade of my tongue.
liquid worship—blunting your body from the stabs of my curse words.
you misplace language in every river you swim.

in the year of migration, I sit—unmoved by water,
dip my fingerling toes as clickbait:
a shoal of lost boats, breeding underneath.

a sailor drags his burden of shipwreck unassisted, across seas,
& cowries come roost on my knee.
walnuts, breaking on a whim of leaf.

each day, I take part in history,
prop my dripping fist against plastic—
as if to lay in wait of snail.
imagine you scoop yourself from home soil,
as if I mean, by genetic transplant:

the failed horticulturist’ move that leaves you to wilt on another man’s border,
biting hard on a balustrade tethered to the Union Jack.
mouth, agape to oxygen & the architectural praise for a country’s anthem.

your incisor inherits the sun’s beam in a shouting light.
the stadium cheering you on, as you make your way back to us.

Flotsam: My Cesspit of Ancestral Heirloom

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The night shreds us apart amidst shouting light, & insomnia ravages me.
I remain indecisive in my want:
“to leave or not to live between shoreless borders”
I stay up, waterlogged in red & a tummy bloat.
as a routine, I ransack the remains of me 
& it yields an eye patch.

the collected water in there reveals:
the distance between sinked bodies & a flotsam is a paddle,
the word for drowning begins with stiffness.
what is not staying afloat comes out in a body bag.

we lend our loins to osmosis. 
to say you have arms here, is to stretch them beyond limit—
sporting the bright surface of water.

back stroke is survival skill: 
a posture memorized from birth.
I found novel styles in my bid to outlive breathlessness,
fashion my rib into a failsafe device.

I go into every accident—headfirst.
the cesspit claimed by frogs is an ancestral heirloom. 

in the gutters of my imagination,
I debunk the cloud, unnaming the ashes.
I choose to be something sky-hitting.

when we happen on scrap metals, 
we invent toy boats from them.
the raw beam of fireflies, illuminating our deeds.
our thumbprints, swallowing rust & browning under light: a lesson in colors.

we taught our bodies to torture ropes into fishing nets.

I breathe all through the knotting,
till the day turns slippery as something to be caught.

Gun is a Part of Speech

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The night Babel collapsed, our town brim with dirge—how it once
                                                                  brimmed with rural dust.  
each adult male turned philosopher, digging into loam.
thumb, 
                                                asserting clay in cursive brightness. 
here, I pray lush grain into waiting palm. sorrow, blooming from 
                                                the soft of your skin. your body toppled 
over in worship—
the way an inverted comma mourns a letter halfway; aiming for nearness.
                                               the word in quote holding dead syllables: 
language, handpicked—bone-clean as thread from a map of wound.
                                                I assume life ushers grief as a sibilant 
tearing the mouth & the roof our bodies, 
                                                where teenagers lay lapping blood soup. 
when I question Ma for things the universe restrains, 
                                                 my loin makes the first count.
the universe, loosening its grip with each loss that turns into luster.
in the aftermath of war, 
Ma folds the small of her into a corner, supplicating blindly on vinyl floor.
                                     a worship whitening the wall. the room’s mouth—
sealed shut.
                                     shutter that takes the thumping & fist of intruders
who break past doors, seeking bodies to gaslight into silence. 
does it trigger you – to descend from a lineage of guns,
                                                                the bullet interrogates my tremor.
the language for run, plastered to my tongue.
I attest to trauma that precedes the assault. the Union Jack, flaccid as a 
                                                                heartbeat pulsing in the dying heat.
I attest to black soots—the way it troubles the larynx. there are no words to say: 
in the spelling of boom,
                                        gun is a part of speech in a dialect Ma cannot afford.
see how my country assimilates gunshots 
the way a consonant 
                              takes schwa /ə/ into custody, but do not take Ma under its wing.
the vowel, upturned as a rifle.
                                               a boy ago, Ma hands me a list of the unmentionable.
If they come blazing, say ‘sorry’,
                                                If they come for your throat, do not plead the blood. 
they too, are attentive in their want to draw blood from us. we stretch phonemes 
across our breastbones,
                                        curious for sound at interval. I owe my asthma to all the inhaling 
                this town denies me. the way the air, by default, slice through our midriff.
how we blur into breathlessness. I mourn a town that would not mourn me in return.
                                         an editor tells me to tone down on grief, each time I begin 
a poem without birds.
                          I would have him know, I lack the patience for soft feathered imagery, 

because we were raised to outpace bullets.
                                           say—I could language my grievance without soots afflicting my larynx,
I would demand for a throat fluting worship. I would demand to dream in past perfect tense:
           where my being alive isn’t dependent on a gun’s pace. tissues of clay, unfolding to brown our bodies.
                                           we cut our lungs open & melody spills from it.
tell me, aren’t we deserving of a sound that do not turn the living into a corpse?

I Write my Rebellion in Disappearing Language

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I—snipers away, was once capable of detonation.
now, I’m reduced to this thing, teething brightly on wires & microwave sensor:
wailing devices that yeehaws intruder to scampering—
the way sound straightens the tip of my body into alertness.

I awake, full of shouting.
estate walls flattened to a neat collapse.

the mugshot holds a crime that keeps a moustache.
its racial stink traced to my lineage.

what if it were a negro is not investigate enough.
my lips, wonder-riddened of names that fits the roll call.
our black license placed for the highest bidder:
this country that is all border & nothing else.

I approach a phone booth & rifle light surrounds me.
I make for Accident lane.
see what a town is named after:
perfect excuse to fill a body with so much accidental discharge—
it yawns into tributaries: a motionless debate.

a gang of beret, pistol-loaded, squares up to us.
when a finger snaps, the sergeant attempts asphyxiation on our throats,
& we reward him with black temper.

one body eats fire, & the rest flattens to the ground.

*

isn’t it a myth, how I still own a loin to write you this verse?

the constitution probes my effrontery to name a sonnet after its victim.
says, harm hasn’t known me yet,
so the hypocrisy in scripting their agony in first person pronoun.

same me who was chased by a pistol-mouth down Allen avenue.
a thousand evidence brought to my hearing,
while sordid hands ransack my manuscript—
not knowing I write my rebellion in disappearing language.

I lack subtle ways to put this:
living is one delicate chore I could do all month, without returning Ma’s voicemail.

I am in search of newer methods to body her in my thoughts,
the way negro speak of bodies.
the way Floyd flagged down a cop for small talk,
only to be talked into his grave.
as we write his demise in disappearing language,
while the cops spiral bind what’s left to have him shipped down home soil.

I reckon, nothing shoulders a body past water, if it’s not family.
not the vassal, or the vessel, or the viscous tide.

I desire to happen as a metaphor in one of one of Danez smith’s sonnet.
but I was born defenceless, without wonder.
of what use is a fence anyway, if the body is standing?

I wake up to an open field, no walls guiding our bodies.
whatever terror walks in our direction, would have return home well-fed.

each evening, my loin straightens into alertness.
I fist the rib of my imagination to achieve a black pulse.

Shanghai: From First Cry to Abattoir

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They say, the closest to a prayer house around here reads kilometres apart.
you drive a mile & know a bullet before benediction.

we snatched a duplex from an assailant’s bloodied hands 
& made campfire off its sticks.

a peasant uses a racial slur on Ma & pays dearly 
in plots of land—auctioned to us at half its price.
some loot stink of misgiving.

just as every domesticated specie,
our life cycle is from first cry to abattoir.

when Ma think of each of her fetus lost in its unhatched state, 
she smashes an egg on both lap.
the runny yellow, pooling dead center where blood catches.

I go down with cramp to meet her fingertip—lodging a crate below me:
a kindness in my book.

say the minute that holds the gun’s mouth affords us the time 
to feign wealthiness in our dying,
we would throw up both hands like there is value to surrender.

we own this loin for trouble & still lack the currency to bail it.
imagine we came into life defenceless,
with no agency for chaos:
‘Sammy & a burden of pushovers slugging it out.’

I could supplicate in all the dialect that stirs a deity.
except, our trauma do not buy into religion.

yet, I pray for all my unhatched siblings holding it up there.
our twin loins braided in belief,
womb excavated before us.

we’re drop shipped here to obey the assignment of passing away.

may this breathlessness be a lasting solution, be oxygen.
be the drainage that filters bad blood out from our lineage.

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