Darling,
Everything becomes beautiful around you.
This miracle repeats itself
all the time in your presence,
Just like yesterday evening
when i held your hands,
& we took a stroll along the park.
There, ordinary noises
like the buzz of the evening breeze
& the chirping of crickets
convalesced into a sound like music

Talking and laughing to each other,
it was as though we exchanged contents
of our hearts and you had just what i needed
and needed just what I had,
and when night came around,
as we walked back home,
it was as though the moon and stars
have discovered a new way to shine
Darling,
everything becomes beautiful around you.

In my nightly solitude
When you are not next to me,
Everything
                    w  h  i  s  p  e  r  s
                            to me
                    and every time
           I strain my ears to hear them
                I behold your name
                           f                                      
                               l
                                   o
                                     a
                                        t
                                           i
                                             n
                                                g
                                     In the wind

I have known sadness
When in the solitude of my dark room
I looked to the blank ceiling, my mind
Impregnated with alien emotions
Seeing that the happiness I used to know
Has scampered off to a phantom horizon—
Untouchable….

And that she who used to be my lover
Has become a ghost of memory that haunts me
And I have been divorced from the colours of splendour
With which she like the artist
Once painted my world like a canvass
Into a cathedral filled with angelic oblation
Of a children choir chanting latin hymns

Now, happiness is buried in a tomb-like quiet
Covered by heavy stone of abstract thoughts
Surrounded with my heart’s frightening silence
Further worsened by her—death—to whom my thoughts
Are now betrothed, who bids me to join her
As she comes into my head every dusk
Dressed like a charming bride to lead me out
Through a door, she and she only offers.

obim,
the most beautiful thing about loving you
are the things i learn about love;
how it can be synonym for wings
and how loving the right woman
was a metaphor for flying, higher
than all the hurdles that used to be a blockade

igosirim na ihu n’anya bu ije
you taught me that love was a journey
and one with purpose
so that it explained a reason
for holding on to life
when difficulties scatter all over
like question marks on a blank sheet
the love we shared became the answer
that explained the destination
at the end of the obscure roads that life was

obim, loving you made me into a philosopher
that searched for optimism
in the unlikeliest of places which turned out
to be the most beautiful

because everything becomes beautiful around you
and when we are out together at night,
I see the face of hope, redressed
in the twinkle stars far up in the sky
when we walk around the parks in the evening,
I perceive music in the chirping of crickets
when we hold hands as we walked together
and you press mine, I feel myself melting into you

it is not that the problems of life go away
sometimes, they come knocking on my door
dressed in their intimidating doses
then I remember, it is you who shares this path with me
and that love is a synonym for wings
and loving you, a metaphor for flying past hurdles
so I fasten my seatbelts and fly
obim, loving you is a safe journey through these rough roads.

I find myself speaking with God
In the company of my solitude;
As though he is present in the long walks
along paths lined with trees
Where the only noises are those of leaves of trees
rustled by the wind
And the only voices are those of birds
Who lend their beaks to the wind
As though I was another Adam
Searching for God’s footstep
As I walk over the garden
Muttering the litanies of my sins and imperfections
Ruing all that I have done which I should not have
And all I didn’t do which I should have done
Wondering what became of the little boy I once was
And how I seem like a sea
Where fragments of a sank ship floats
And the remnant of his innocence is scattered about
Like  flotsam, impossible to reassemble

I let God listen to the pains in my voice
Of being a failed sailor
Drowning the sojourners who gave me trust
Yet my second journey remains uncertain
And not-in-tandem with the wind

There is no healing for me in the world
I already added iodine to her wounds
In her pains, she screams at my conscience
And I recoil into my solitude on this solitary path
And I find myself speaking to God in my heart,
Where I find him

Darling,
When you look at me, I really hope
That beyond mask of a smile on my face,
You will see the sad little boy in me
Who has lost his place and is seeking to return
But the small world has become so large for him
He is yet unable to find his way home

When I look at you, I really hope
That beyond the love that twinkles in my eyes
You see a boy whose heart life has broken
into smithereens of sorrow and pain*
And within me, there is a dead dream that I mourn
Every time it crosses my heart, my head burrowed
in pain

Each time, I try to help you find the light, I am
Only trying to find mine by helping you find yours
I am seeking the face of God in you
I want to discover in you, a new religion
And let it guide the path of my life
To a special kind of light that hovers around you
\
Every time I dream of you, a new dream
Wakes up in me, I see myself in a new path
Walking in fresh hope and renewed vitality,
Every time I kiss you, I want to crawl
Into your mouth of goals and reach for them
Like a well measured shot seeking the goal post

Every time I feel the painful memories of past dreams
Traffic through my head, I switch my mind to you
Because you are my rediscovery of everything
I thought that was lost never to be found again
Do not deny me access to any path that leads to you
For your heart has become the home to my dreams