When You Figure Out

Ogah Friday David

“to breathe is a fraud”

[this is an unbosomed secret, a chaperone’s murmuring parable] 

— “it is a gift, or fairly like it. . . with a gleam: mint

and pristine”, a celibate I assume. it is

a virtuous reproach deposed from

gods and woven to men;

[to breathe is an anathema],

a bewitched parcel [a mortal scar] that dies someday; but

the death of it — not death per se. . . a benediction for triumph.

 

The homily is all a timid

       paradox; it is both a messiah and a gamble — the

truth leans only on the hinges of doubt, or on the alters

of the one that reasons.       though I practice to breathe

today, the warbling air stifles: it fractures its bones,

like an unchaste saint would when his garbs troubles

— yes, to breathe is to cheat the guiltless and naive temper of the ozone.

Ogah Friday David is an Abuja based poet, writer, and a Student Reporter/OAP with the University of Abuja Radio. He is from Otukpo LGA of Benue State, Nigeria. He has three featured poems in Nantygreens Magazine, and upcoming features in The Rising Phoenix Review, International Human Rights Art Festival Publishes, and EBOqills. David is an undergraduate in the department of Languages and Linguistics, University of Abuja.