Two Poems

By Deji Adesoye

Friday, August 18, 2019.

Everywhere within Your Uterus

My selfishness towers above all edges, like Mapo Hall

My songs and lore dance round me and myself

I walk before the mirror in one narcissist act

Imagine what I see? The body of me is

Like a roe inside a fish

I look more closely it turns like a tadpole

In the living freshness of April stream

I became a laboratory and the scientist at once

Ah, my body is a natal organism everywhere

Within your uterus

Wherever you carry your body, there too I go

Wherever your spirit leads, right away I follow

You break your body into fragments of stress

I chew the bread of love with umbilical touch

You brew your blood into tonics of affection

I sip life through the straw of your vein

And right where you hatch me I fall into your palms

When I stood to walk, I walk in your hand

I grew and stroll with the moon, in your side

You’re not at the table, jaws boycott their act

The breeze rash when you’re not on the mat

Who says this 'self' isn't bigger than myself

Baby the self is fuller than the song of myself

It is a tiny nut within your mammoth shell.

The Tortoise is the Shell

The tortoise is a living nut within its shell

The tortoise is the nut the tortoise is the shell

The tortoise is the sum of its flesh and shell

The engineer draws the lockdown

He removes his metal hat

And the cyclist completes his trip

And flings his crash helmet

The snail does not learn to use its shell

The snail does not cope with its shell

The snail does not sweat under its shell

The shell is a hindrance to the value of the walnut

But the elegance of the tortoise is his crackled shell

The beauty of the snail is her deep loam bungalow

You are my shell, Seun, I am your shell

I am tortoise, I am the snail

I am the equation of flesh and shell

I am shell, you are flesh

I am the equation of you and me

Deji Adesoye is a Nigerian philosopher, writer and poet. His works have appeared on Bravearts Africa, Kalahari Review, BrittlePaper.com, Ijagun Poetry Journal, the Ann Arbor Review etc. He is the author of Anony Mous, a poetry ebook. Many of his works are also featured on his blogsite www.dejidesoyemi.wordpess.com