What is Important Always Endures
"Command me to be well" - Hozier
What to begin with, a twinge the magnitude
of its victim, aneurysm of anxieties fitted
with the heart's mechanism.
Beloved, I think I am a tree that parades grief
as a skin tone, each death I have witnessed
is a weed that smells of multiplication.
Wilted greens, branches made resistant
to heaven's deluge. A shortness of breath is
how my body is recognizable as opposed
to the rest. Beloved, time is an animal
with a pace that brings upon my head
a hail of dust blended with disappointment.
I believe that in the place of your palms
rests a basin of comfort & a pond to sail.
"Command me to be well" - Hozier
What to begin with, a twinge the magnitude
of its victim, aneurysm of anxieties fitted
with the heart's mechanism.
Beloved, I think I am a tree that parades grief
as a skin tone, each death I have witnessed
is a weed that smells of multiplication.
Wilted greens, branches made resistant
to heaven's deluge. A shortness of breath is
how my body is recognizable as opposed
to the rest. Beloved, time is an animal
with a pace that brings upon my head
a hail of dust blended with disappointment.
I believe that in the place of your palms
rests a basin of comfort & a pond to sail.
Soliloquy
"Offer me that deathless death" - Hozier
Today, I am to sweep the grave
of my grandfather, a monument ripe
with a dust storm's residue. Dead
for thirty five years, I flood the grave
with a sight heightened by this task.
I remove the sand, extract leaves
pale as the air that surround a ghost.
To a man I never met, a family member
that idles in the throat of the earth, I
try not to overdo the prospect of my death.
Whether it'll be daylight unable to rustle
the sleep in my body, shards of glass
that open a catalogue of wounds
in my stomach or a violent tide of
ulcers that run my belly aground.
I wish for an ending that will have
me outline nothing of sensation.
"Offer me that deathless death" - Hozier
Today, I am to sweep the grave
of my grandfather, a monument ripe
with a dust storm's residue. Dead
for thirty five years, I flood the grave
with a sight heightened by this task.
I remove the sand, extract leaves
pale as the air that surround a ghost.
To a man I never met, a family member
that idles in the throat of the earth, I
try not to overdo the prospect of my death.
Whether it'll be daylight unable to rustle
the sleep in my body, shards of glass
that open a catalogue of wounds
in my stomach or a violent tide of
ulcers that run my belly aground.
I wish for an ending that will have
me outline nothing of sensation.
Michael Akuchie, Igbo-Esan-born poet, has had poems appear in Dovecote, Anomaly, The Mantle, Inverse Journal, Glass, The Roadrunner Review & elsewhere. An Orison Anthology nominee and 2020 Roadrunner Poetry Prize Winner, he tweets @Michael_Akuchie. He is a final year undergrad in English & Literature at the University of Benin, Nigeria.