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Pray For Me. - Poems For Review - Nairaland

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Pray For Me. by llaykorn: 7:39pm On May 24, 2017
I.
Habeebah,

I am busy searching history for footprints. So pray for me, and tell Mama to do so too. I carry a torch to the houses of men who dance to the distant cries of infants. To the houses of men who threw war in our midst and raze them to the ground. Mama will not know until she listens to the news - that bombs have learned how to speak our language and bullets rise and play with little children like ghosts in haunted towns, so pray for me.

II.
A single bracelet does not jingle. A single stick may smoke; it will never burn. I do not ask that you pick a torch too and follow my footprints into the bushes from where I shoot arrows to pierce the evil in the hearts of men. But there is a way that you cup your hands and say Allah. The word sticks to the walls of my throat anytime I try - it's the smoke that causes it. Habeebah, tell Mama that my fear is not the end for peace is the end. My fear is time. My fear is time. There are things I will not be able to do. We are here today, tomorrow. Can we predict the moments that follow? What if tomorrow comes without you? What if tomorrow comes without me? What if dusk arrives with the scent of our bloods? We will never be able to voice all the broken syllables that lie in our bellies like morsels of pounded yam.

Nor will we ever finish saying our goodbyes to boys who die in empty rooms, to girls who get wrapped and deposited like gifts on days after the blasts.

III.
When you cup your hands like Mama taught us to do, and whisper Allah, pray for me. Pray for boys and girls who do not remember to sing love songs because of dirges. Boys and girls who cannot write sonnets because of elegies. Boys who don't want to remember formulae and equations because they want to forget memories. Pray for forgiveness; for me, for you, for Mama. Pray that I don't die before Ramadhan. Pray that I come home. Pray for enough water to quench the cities of fire inside our stomachs.

Your brother.

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Re: Pray For Me. by elfico(m): 4:52am On May 29, 2017
thumbs up
Re: Pray For Me. by JigsawKillah(m): 12:55pm On Jun 01, 2017
Prose poetry or whatever it is called. This is good, Llaykorn
Re: Pray For Me. by alfredolski(m): 11:32am On Jun 08, 2017
this is lovely, keep it up. I've been following your works overtime now and I really laud your sense of description....
when I say "following", I mean reading some of ur poems not following URL threads.... Anyway keep it up man

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The Words Without Life / Same High / 30 Days Of Poetry Season 2, Day 13, Unbreak My Heart (pix Inside)

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