A Poet Drowning

A Poet Drowning

A poet in denial

considers drowning

an escape into unfamiliar

places;

like secrets women

keep in coy surrender.

To the poet, poetry, like women,

is an innuendo caressing a body

falling apart -

so he keeps drowning

in the veil of deeper meanings.

A poet may rise like fire

from the fecund slums of Ibadan,

the red earth of the Congo,

the coal-tarred language of Kikuyu,

but this simple beginnings

must rise into monuments like

five-star hotels in Frankfurt

before he listens to the voice

that seams through

the fabric of the heart.

Until then, he keeps drowning

to be found in a bottle of beer.

Noah Oladele