Welcome to Hard Times

Under the hard stares of armed guards, the work parties dragged corpses to the ovens or simply threw them into the mass burial pit. Passersby couldn’t see over the fence, but they could hear what sounded like the tinny music of kiddie rides. Until you asked why I was smiling, I hadn’t even realized I was. Mysteries always ultimately seep to the surface. I’ve tried to learn to live with this, to not overly analyze or philosophize, and just observe. Out walking before dark, I saw today, amid the lingering grays and browns of winter, dead-looking trees beside the road just beginning to bud, gnarled, knobby fingers of fierce invalids.

A Cautionary Tale

My wife and I were sitting at a wobbly little table in the window of the bakery/café. As we waited for our superhot coffees to cool, the town’s orphans and foster children were paraded past in chains. Some of the people clustered on the sidewalk behind police barriers wore white arm bands or had white ribbons pinned to their coats, but whether a symbol of support or a silent form of protest, I don’t know. We could hear ripples of gunfire coming from the direction of the warehouses, the local militia shooting into alleys and cellars where they suspected fugitives from the dragnet might be hiding. The soul of man prevails, I remember my wife quoting, but only when moral struggle is present. Any wonder I love her? The gunfire sounded more intense now. I lifted the paper coffee cup to my lips and took a careful sip. 

A Whole New Ball Game

A massive glacier heads for home. The catcher tears off his hockey-style face mask and shockingly the top half of his face with it. In the visitors’ dugout, the manager is busy applying Kabbalistic numerology in an attempt to uncover a hidden message in the uniform numbers of the players still on the bench. Slowly a dirigible emblazoned with a death’s skull logo comes floating over the stadium. The first base umpire points up and signals for timeout and then flees the field as fast as his sizable bulk permits, setting off a general rush toward the exits. Women are knocked down and children trampled, but vendors in the stands just go on howling, Beer here! The next day’s sports pages carry no references to Marx or Lenin or the withering away of the state.

The Personal Is Political

My words echo before I can say or even formulate them. It’s been that way since you went in for tests and didn’t come back out. Now the Russians and Ukrainians are centerstage singing a tortured love duet. I’ve taken an oath against modernity, the sheer vacuousness of it, real people who base their identities on fictional characters. Rumor is that the North Koreans have a missile that can hit the West Coast. I’m no ornithologist or any other kind of -ologist, but the gulls flutter in the wind like dirty scraps of paper. 

Before the Fall

I was three years old, maybe four, lying on my stomach on the itchy wool carpet and filling with ecstatic scribbles the blank pages of an old business ledger my father had brought home from work, the future, with its mistakes and setbacks, the hot smell of scorched metal, still unscripted, undefined, formless, and my heart still a soft red peach without a savage bite taken out of it.

100 DEAD BABIES

the conductor’s wand rises
suspended in the air
for a speechless moment
one hundred dead babies wail away
a mute harmony on the floor 
of the orchestra pit
& the audience sways gently
to the thunderous roar 
of the  air conditioning unit
and a billion goosebumps 
tickle their arms
and nipples 
while the rest of the 
nation sways in unison
as they veg-out
on a lethal dose of CNN

3/7, 7:10 am

choose your week, name your month
can’t stick a label on time
my breath won’t bring anything closer
the floor tries to influence my direction
     doesn’t trust stillness

if the light could switch itself off
the faucet would rather chant than sing
i almost forgot the stove, the subtle differences
     of the flames’ shapes and colors
a dozen or so sparkling vibrations
     orbiting my skull’s bald plain

thin fog no match for the sun
the sun never sleeps
always a car moving somewhere nearby
as my walls expand incrementally, unsure what to do 
     with the space tween interior and ex-
like the surprise of a line of jam
     tween two volumes of cake

as long as i cover my hands, feet and head
if my mouth skips a breath 
     something else will catch it up
whether my heart is bass or drums
     my eyes violins or flutes

take the time to make space
my internal compass searching for its sun
sky so vacant the stars can’t sleep

 
What If Sun and Earth Are Ovens

A hole in my working pond as if something screamed in
resolving spin, momentum, heat and appetite
as the stillest pond continues breathing
with the sun’s warmth exhaling before midnight, mindnight
when the dough immediately springs back when pressed it’s time
to keep it from fermenting any further:
                                bread with sausage,
bread with fermented cod, a loin of pork rolled in rock salt
to clear a path through the snow of hunger, this internal mountain pass
so steep you can only carry water and a cloak with many empty pockets

since I’m next to a bakery I like I’m hungry and must go in
used to be a warehouse, indoor soccer, testing grounds for
paper airplanes hurled by the lifters in the basement gym
powering the ovens with their cardio

where do they hide all the pumps that hold up the tallest buildings,
keep Miami above water, why does no one say our major earthquake 
will be caused by all the new weight on the land of this
former delta of two large rivers negotiating a mutual surrender

after a billion years of yeast, tectonic dough folding toward the seethe
with permanent icing and seasonal convection above, our subductions
beginning to overheat and who knows what mutant crystal lattices
what heavy meatal muscles, inert and anonymous gases
releasing their eons of choreography as the dance floor
unzips everything’s jeans we have no idea what amazon will be selling
or what we’ll pay to stay here, the imaginary numbers of address,
the lack of  durable seismic surfing gear, the temperature
when I’m hungriest, the shopping lists in solar flares

 
When Time Could Dance and Stutter 

hollow as the breeze
  take the skin off my arm 
and see a busy neighborhood
    storefronts to live above
how many years of path 

window reflecting what’s several blocks away
who gets to scent this late morning

two dogs walking each other
because chocolate melts, cause oats
won’t leave the bowl voluntarily

last day of May, and June was stopped at customs
sent back to wherever the future is
like an underground spring not caring 
which way’s downstream, the cat 
who’s a different species each night 
drilling at dawn’s door

clothes demand to be worn
clocks don’t need to think about moving
news breath,    traffic breath
my lenses fog despite the temperature
I pour a little coffee into my milk
all the chairs are full,  no one’s home

waiting for the rain to set the agenda for a dry week
striking my finger against the sidewalk
as if a match
becoming a mini-sun
a transformative flashlight

on the tightrope of noon
no one is ready to roar
with more days unseasonable than seasonable
what do we call this time
as if ‘June’ means anything out of context
out of habit, out of frustration

 
Unscription    

suddenly sepia, watching myself
the air is frictionless, thin, breathable as normal
or have my lungs acclimated

so many feet in this crowd—which are mine
in the event of the inevitable 
camera catching car, everyone gets out
and the car keeps going
I’m not in the road but on a the porch of a plantation
now a care facility, or a banquet hall
where is this

walking into empty places
clearcut 20 years ago and nothing’s changed
the doorknob comes off the door stays closed
window shutting like an eye
a chimney three miniature people are escaping from
the chimney of my neck:
is my head smoke or a stork’s nest

I’m running on the inside, trying to inflate,
the sunlight’s picky about which windows 
to shine through, one window nudging another
the street too dry to reflect, mind wiped
by weeks of rain, not racing the earth’s rotation
but never wanting the day to be dry enough
to go out in, driving without windshield wipers
the air smells like gasoline, I doubt the existence of stars

rising from my fetal curl cause this is my stop
either the stairs up or the stairs down
like a parking garage with more birds in it than cars
staircases remind me of bow strings, of bass strings
notes the ears can’t hear but from chest to groin can

after dinner all the lights and walls go away
an on-shore  breeze, a deep orange full moon 
just clearing the ocean’s border
not sweat but salty rain from inside me

 
Retrospeculative

if rain fell as one thin sheet every couple minutes
would wind cooperate.
drive for a slice, cut for tomorrow
lean out the wall where a window should be

how do i shift gears in this living room
a 27 inch rear view
dialing 911 gets me helicopters

outside two o’clock is riddled with potholes
a million clocks step backwards at once—
no one wants to be now, ready but not willing, 
clinging to the recent past coz it’s still edible 
so many garden hoses migrating toward the ocean

i only wear shoes so i don’t root
if i was naked i might photosynthesize
and what would that do for the economy

i’m feeling retrospeculative
is the future north or east
would it take a billion staying up all night
for the sun to hesitate, whether out of curiosity
or self-doubt

like china, every continent should be a single time zone
no more of getting there before you left
a day no one remembered to experience
even the calendar goes right from 22 to 24
it’s usually Wednesday who complains

people used to be able to assemble clocks
but time could never be fixed
space is constant but room keeps shrinking
as do lots and apartments
not a walk-in closet but a studio
soon be a world where those over 5’ 10”
will either stay outside or develop back problems

i was once able to see the future
but my vision got corrected
i can’t decide which of the labels in my pantry
is my name, how to know which can wants to open

what i think is outside is a warehouse
i can’t see the other end of
one path is red, the other is slippery
there’ll either be a place to lie down
or a place to swim, the mice and fish
are slow enough to read but their
evaporating language, how a couple of my muscles
want to break off and fend for themselves

when i get this far inside
when the right direction’s not the answer
if i can get a majority of my parts
to believe they’re someone else
we just might reassemble

My Mother

My mother my mother !
I want us to always be together
like kidney and blood
whenever You're not glad
 tears I must drop

If you go on trip
I will trap myself in a cage

my love for you has no price
yeah ! never can it be priced
worthier it's than bride price
not even that of the princess

our home darkness
in it no light shines
when You are not around

all food taste naught
even if cooked with salt
never will it have taste.

no attire accessorizes
your beauty
you turn it into comely

 you glisten
the Moon
In the sky

any food not cooked 
by you
tasteless is what it is
I love you my mother.
 
©️ Yusuf Salisu Muhammad. 

Yusuf Salisu Muhammad writes from Katsina state. He is Currently studying at Umaru Musa Yar'adua University, Katsina state of Nigeria.

Mr. Love
By
Yusuf Salisu Muhammad

Your love calls my name
 which is always in a red
in my heart is a white,white man
it shines like a star
oh ! he is a gold
ah!, love you are a bété de scéne
that no one angry at
oh ! Mr. love recall
when I chatted you
You confided in me
you will never betray
  & never bite me
so if you dare do
I will retaliate.

Yusuf Salisu Muhammad writes from Katsina state.He is Currently studying at Umaru Musa Yar'adua University,Katsina state of Nigeria.

A Psalm for your body

i tongue this hill                                                                                     your body   o woman
this pure ground of worship                                                                 is a journey to horeb 
 a goddess I must appease
I must wet with petals of songs
 here is  my voice    take it: 
the mower plying your sacred lawn
from your scriptures
I eat the torah of longing &
fill the desert of my bones with chapters of your dew

o woman you are genesis                                                        you are fire & rain & clouds
you are leviticus                                                                  you are the storm that cannot be
you are revelation                                                               gathered in the mouth of a brook 
everything beautiful and broken                                          teeth of a knife eating the 
                                                              poisonous bud of history                                   
even God knows: when hunger 
tickles a woman's heart when the molars in her song 
becomes the gasp of a dying bird 
silence becomes a name screeching  in the dark
these hands     your hands   are alabsters of memories
every touch     every song they make prays me into 
an altar of fresh wine     all shades of sweet-darkeness & honey
 o sweet honey      sweet shepherd of my soul    
come ferry this heart to a house filled with colours

The Soldier's Will

You can take all his weapon
But you can't take from him the spirit of a champion 

You can take his fellow brethren
But you can't take away from him his divine amen

You can take away his food
But you can't take away from him the knowledge of his hood

You can take away his health
But you can't take away from him the beauty of his eternal wealth

You can take away his frivolities
But you can't take away from him the fullness of his priorities

You can take from him the presence of wars
But you can't take away from him the ' 'eternality' of the cause

You can take away from him his meal
But you can't take away from him the Soldier's Will

My New Face of personality

My face is burnt;
Should I hurt my thought?
Fire tries to end my facial physicality;
Should I affect my reality?
I had no idea my face with experience such;
Should I negatively talk about it much?

I realized  beauty comes from within;
My facial look is just kidding;
When the need for character steps in

I realized my current facial condition is to make me reach a decision;
Separate the grains from the chaffs of my situation;
Appreciate a true friend and frown at a false companion.

Now...

It has motivated to smile in the face of life's hurdles
It has  inspired to surmount life struggles
It has courageously positioned me to always stand tall
It has amazingly strengthened me to see direction, despite a standing wall
It has helped me define character in a proper perspective
It has shown me why focus should be my prerogative.

Though my face was burnt, causing facial deformity but...

My facial deformity is not up for mockery;
It is a situation that makes a good story
My facial deformity is not up for ridicule;
It is a situation that makes a good life riddle
My facial deformity is not up for caricature
It is a situation that makes the building-up of an amazing creature