Poems by Abdulbasit Yusuff
THE BIOLOGY OF DARKNESS
On nights thick with the dark of depression
I flip through old biology notes
So much science has to say about
Light, darkness & adaptation
Where all these are metaphors
For good, evil & all that’s between
& my hands find the chapter
On sight & sensory organs
Let me paraphrase:
“On settled in the dark
The iris, like your heart, contracts
& your pupils dilate
To swallow in the dark
You soon find sight in the dark
& in it, you revel
& rebel?
So much so that when the light bulb goes on
You curse; as the light fries your visual purple
You rebel; you shut your eyes
You hate the polychromatic colours”
You are partially blind
You don’t want this light-light
You want the dark-light
Addendum:
Perhaps if beauty is relative
Light is, too?
You tell me.
THE ONE THAT CRIED BEAUTIFULLY
we watched him enter into himself
like a snail
his body sturdy, yet patterned beautifully
in spirals
we didn’t see that his smiles got straighter
they did get straighter
a war was going on in those confines
like water boiling angrily in a teakettle
& when the kettle, I mean, his body, hissed
we didn’t hear too. or we did hear
but you see, we thought he was blowing a tune –
a sweet soulful tune
we hailed his skill. the beauty with which he carved
solemnity
music that was a product of deep introspection
we thought this way, you know
we didn’t know then that introspection could be
a metaphor for lonely souls craving asylums within
themselves
territorial. that’s what the bodies of men are.
so when he rolled into his body
his body tossed him out like vomit…
so he was left hanging between his innards
& an outside that never listens
he was left hanging
hanging
hang
i
n
g
dead
from a tree
the tune he was playing was his dirge.
HEALING
hung on my yellow painted wall is a clock
erasing with its tick-tock singing hands
all the wounds painted on the canvas of my mind
look how time
in its clockwise dance
navigates from dry to rainy season
giving rise to blooming flowers
About the Poet
Abdulbasit Yusuff writes from Abuja, Nigeria. When he is not talking about football or re-watching the action scenes of blockbuster movies, he writes short poems and sleep. Some of his works have been published on Tuck Magazine, Kalahari Review and “Spark of Hope: an anthology of poems for saving lives”.
