THIRD MAINLAND BRIDGE

Flame is the fellowship

Of nuclear colours with waving arms; cover

this with your hands and you

will know how my heart was before

I dived into the welcoming body

of humming death. I dived!

Death at times is not death but a relief,

you feel relief in your head when you

send two agents of Paracetamol to the ache.

That is what quit notice did to Awele whose

husband, a motor conductor, packed with shovels

like marshed beef under Dangote’s rubber feet.

She and her children are headache

to the landlord and his bungalow head.

You see the female Job travelling from bridges to bridges,

haunted by every knot but hunting hope.

But those agents don’t kill without hurting some things,

the bullets must land somewhere, at least.

Gustatory whips lash me even in the liquid belly,

words nail me on the cross for leaving my

wealth behind and choosing this calm, this relief.

‘O, he left this big house, see the interior! O, look

at his Nissan SUV of the latest model.’

 They forget that sorrow is not a monopolised commodity.

Not for only those ornated in rags that condescend banana

groves. It belongs to us too in good interior and exterior,

beragged in clothes that signpost dollars and fame.

We all here is a congregation of the frustrated.

Frustration itself is an army of individual events

burning the soul like soles bared to bitumen for.

 The burns of it in our souls

 are our momentum for this stony decision to find relief.

Here both the rich and poor release life the same way, like sleepers.

Once we entered the belly, molecules would quench our thirst

As they entered our nostrils, mouths, ears and eyes. We would cry

but who would see tears in this firmament of water? We shouted

But our voices were gagged with loins of water, we wanted life back

yet we were releasing it like in a slumber, it fell when sharks swam

close, making us their sausages, rich and poor, stars and stones.

Know this, our exteriors may crusade satisfaction,

But many interiors are cracked walls like the legs

of meshai in harmattan. My brother is a businessman

Sorrows are unlimited liabilities my brother taught me about

and every human has their shares, so is joy too.

Money is alien to satisfaction

and satisfaction alien to money

love and happiness are wings that bear it.

Eli eli lama sabachthani in this Golgotha, under the feet of

Third Mainland Bridge? Now I take my last gulp, it is finished.

                                                                OLADIMEJI DAMILOLA

THIRD MAINLAND BRIDGE