Welcome to Word Play Wednesday!
Word Play Wednesday is a weekly feature of written and spoken word poetry. I will be sharing my written and spoken word poems in addition to poems by other like wonderful Poets both past and present. If you are interested in sharing some of your poetry, feel free to buzz me and we can work something out.
I hope that you enjoy reading and listening to our thoughts, feelings and rants and in many ways relate to some of them.
Enjoy!
This week I will be sharing one of my favorite poems by Dami Ajayi which was published in his collection of poems – ‘A Woman’s Body Is A Country’. I highly recommend this collection.
This poem is titled:
I Know What Lagos Does To Dreams
Lagos undresses them slowly like a nubile
without blemish.
Lagos clambers by like a crab
with stuttering footsteps.
Lagos wriggles past-
entropy in motion.
This city is audacious without remorse.
It will leave you spent, hoarse
from frightening memories.
Lagos of lurid things.
Lagos of finery.
A palimpsest hurriedly rewritten.
Owambe punctured by one-chances,
a shakedown from a hustle drum
of syncopated Pentecostal rhythms.
This vigil won’t part red seas or the lagoon,
this chorus of hallelujahs won’t saunter
beyond eaves.
This offering of pittance,
this basket of blood & sweat & tears,
threadbare & tax-free.
& heaven is an uptown lagos residence-
Lekki, disyllabic, sitting in the ocean’s mouth,
daring, suicidal.
– Dami Ajayi in ‘A Woman’s Body Is A Country’
Dami Ajayi: Bio
Dami Ajayi is a poet, essayist, music critic, digital publisher and medical doctor. His debut book of poems, Clinical Blues, runner up for ANA Poetry Prize, was also shortlisted for the Melita Hume Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in BBC Radio 4, Prosopisia, World Poetry Book, Badilisha Poetry X-Change, Enkare Magazine and elsewhere. His other writings have been published in the Guardian UK, Chimurenga Chronic, Die Zeit, Wawa Review of Books, OlisaTV and Bakwa Magazine.
