after Adedayo Adeyemi Agarau’s “For boys who went’
For Boys of Shattered Dreams…
Their bones fragment on earth’s closure
Like the punctured walls of Borno —
A preposition of dreams and death
Binding the encrimson of dirges
Searching home on their lips
Like an owl finding haven in the burning
Shadows of a sun god.
Their skin once shared the alphabets of tattooed d-r-e-a-m-s
Where each letter spelt out the phonology of scattered phonemes
Like primitive lips pouring colonies of eulogy
On an impotent shrine.
They are boys who went,
They are boys who whistled songs of plea
To the ears of a fading night,
They are boys who didn’t go on a pilgrimage of shattered dreams
But only peeped through the spectacles of hollow bones.
They are boys who sang songs of unrhythmic verses
Like incantations to wake a dying god;
They are boys who built hope like a hut of ghost building mansions on an impotent back…
