Portriat Of My Brother As A Living Dead Body – Idowu Odeyemi

My brother sleeps and snore everyday
like the creationist God
resting on the seventh day
Even thou the God
worked for six days
my brother days are nothing
like God’s six working days
my brother does nothing with his own days
(my brother days can be express with the Hindus concept of samsara)

Tell me,
which kind of big boy
wears his father’s pants, at age 24,
to his fiancée’s family house?

My brother is like sadness:
anytime he enters our father’s house
joy becomes smokes
that vanquishes with air and becomes incorporeal
and sadness becomes a concrete
plastered on our broken faces
as if smokes don’t come from fire
and fire is not the reason we have gold that glimmers

My brother is a clown:
a man who becomes a con man
then bought a 12 inches mattress (his first empirical achievement),
at the age of 27,
then brings it to his father’s house
and expects his mother to start dancing
around the city
singing his praises.

From the Biblical account of everything beautiful
man must not eat dust
but dust must eat man
Before brother time on god-swollen foot goes into extinction
And dust eats him
I hope these word do not become cacophonies to him
But a symphony
To attain the Nirvana
He desires on earth

I hope these words will one day
throw a club into his heart
and open his eyes
to see that green grass cannot be seen
in the hottest place
in the Sahara

This portrait of my brother as a living dead body is harsh
But I hope it gives him a reason to find his soul
in the darkest place on earth.

About the contributor: Idowu Odeyemi is a Nigerian poet, essayist and writer of fiction. His poems have appeared on Kahalari review, Merak magazine among others.