Black revelation by Akinola Amina
When a man is sick in the mind / he bears it, he bears it looking at the moon with nothing to do / not even to fight / for "how can you fight guns with bare hands" ?
& one by one / the light of his heart turns out / the heart becomes empty, leaning like a tired house / In the shattered ribs of this world.
The heart becomes a quiet house/ where flowers grow & nothing moves but the shadows of dead dreams / nothing moves / but the quiet hum of the night hanging over his body /over life / over surviving.
& this planet treats him with the left hand of a stranger in dismay / it offers him a room out of several rooms to live, cry and sleep in.
leaving him to nothing forever / nor laughter or tears, as everything moves slowly from the silk of his skin / to the roughness of his grave
nothing stays with him/ except the granite that covers his hunted mind / except the rose that sends fragrance to his bones and dust / nothing stays with a man forever / except what the world offers his remnants.
Akinola Amina is a poet, a girl child activist and an advocate for mental health. Her poems are up or forthcoming on The shallow tales review,Kalaharireviews,ngigareviews, Al miraatul magazine, Icefloe press , fieryscriblereviews, shamsrumi, and others . Her poem was shortlisted for the Arise Africa writers contest anthology 2020 and her poem featured in the writers Hub anthology of Independence 2020 .she writes from Lagos.