For Giyazah
I pray you, merciful God, always give me the strength
To listen to my inner self, when everything
Around me becomes rebellious,
Israelites at the entry of the promised land,
Stifling the breath of my green hope.
I’ve lived through the untimely departure of loved ones,
Through the flames of love-gone-sour, through
The storm of perfidy—let the rest of my days be
A testament to the existence of miracles.
Good God, there she’s, the rigid friend you’ve given me
In this treacherous world, trapped in the cocoon of disquietude;
And you know her happiness fuels the long in the tooth engine
Of my euphoria, Her sadness, like a sickle, seems to bring
My end a century closer, do not torment me through her.
Let my homies bask in eternal radiance, and God, if you stamp
This August wish, you shall sure have me off your endless
List of troubled souls.
She came, with her aura of quelling flames,
At the brink of my explosion, just when I had thought
The flesh and bones of true comradeship had been devoured
By famished vultures, she rekindled without even trying,
The wick of tenderness in my calcifying soul.
Abdulmueed Balogun Adewale is a black poet and an undergrad at the University of Ibadan. He’s a Pushcart prize and BOTN Nominee. A 2021 HUES Foundation Scholar and a poetry editor at The Global Youth Review. He prays silently in his heart, that his verses outlive him. He was a finalist in the 2021 Wingless Dreamer Book of Black Poetry Contest, Winner 2021 Annual Kreative Diadem Poetry Contest. His poems have been published in: Brittle Paper, Soundings East Magazine, Hawaii Pacific Review, ROOM, Watershed Review, Decolonial Passage, Poetry Column-NND, The Westchester Review, The Oakland Arts Review, The Night Heron Barks Review, Subnivean Magazine, Short Vine and elsewhere. He tweets from: AbdmueedA.