The Boy Called God
The boy called God walked among thorns,
had his rags as wings, and the winds as ash
There’s a transposing where he merged into
my dream as a folklore wounded with rhymes
The boy called God groomed a lily from the wounds
mooring on his tongue, it ate a decaying aurora there,
and there it blossomed, mortally.
The boy called God painted himself into winds
& colourful phoenixes, an athame of obsidian flame
locked his wrist in a tango of silk & monsoons.
The potash at the edges of his name has a name
itself the lily knew it the lily called it
it answered with moths. So if this crude joy
opening up in his belly withers, it will not matter
The calyxes in his dimples trapped enough sunshine
to outlast the night, to power two miracles at both ends
of the dream I, as a wounded boy walking into fire,
and I, as a lily-boy walking out of ashes.
James Blunt Screaming In My Head At The Protest Ground & I’m Grinning Too Hard For A Song That Ends With Sighs
Endless echo of prime afternoon.
This heat: byworks.
The smell of roasted cashew nuts
rise out of the back of her hands.
Her hairs
hurl mountain lions with wild wings.
whip the winds. whip my breaths.
Bloody me. sweaty me. [she chirrs
& I quench my last anxiety
i run my tongue along the metal song,
questioning de syntaxy of magnets]
For one, God knew, and she doesn’t.
She shouts the solidarity. her teeth
hold the glitters of ice mountains
When we shook hands i felt
this confluence of energies.
It was warm. her hand in mine
makes sense of the sunshine craze.
This glow. this flow.
see the way we alloy together
like a divine pair.
If this were another lifeform
she’d be the quiet that welcomes
my hurricane
The copple of a rock of a flood.
Biography
Olumide Manuel’s poetry has been featured on or forthcoming in Frontier Poetry, Feral Poetry, Club Plum Literary Journal, Sublunary Review, Twyckenham Notes, Gigantic Sequins, Grand Little Things and so on. He tweets @Olu_midemanuel