Lyrics

This is my only kind of high.
The only way I Nigerian myself into pages and screens
without being a victim of bloodshed,
feeling the weight of the world below my throat.
This is the language of my body;
how I reach the climax of art,
fixing tea into my lines because nobody cares
as long as I metaphorically prove that poetry is the tea
I dip this bread of grief I call a body.
I breathe these lines like they are oxygen–
the one thing that makes sense when the world
and everything it harbours falls like the walls of Jericho.
When you ask, "Who poetry epp?",
I call on my ancestors whose breaths were
fire enough to be called dragons.
I morph my stanzas from smoke to incense because
this poetry epp me, myself and I; my body soul and spirit.
I keep an unfinished poem close to my heart like my world revolves around it,
like it is the shards of my imperfection, the pieces of my glory.
Can you not see that poetry is the stage where this visionary tells her story?
This culture is not only a way of life but a devotion;
a vessel of communication for children
whose tongues have been burnt by fear, by pain;
the mouthpiece of youths whose spines freeze everyday,
the minute they wake, nowhere is safe.
This art is the concern of every soul scouting for justice.
Ask poets and they will tell you how pages have become a home after family,
how punchlines transform into arenas of liberty.
When you ask again, "Who poetry epp?",
I'll jump into your face like an oversabi boy
because these lines they burst my brain,
not like balloons when we were eight
or wahala wey dey cause migraine, but, happiness.
Poetry is fulfillment.