The black orphan boy says

By Ajani Samuel Victor

Everything is music. The saunter of dried leaves
in a bereaved city. The crackle of creaks
in a deserted home. The prana of my mother on the physician’s mat.

I wish to psalm my life into a vintage
of amen and hosannas,
to twirl my tongue and
fashion a nectar of lyrics,
toot a trumpet and not clog its pores
with tears. But no matter how you toss it,
grief will always be a tongue in the mouth
of a motherless child.

In this poem, winter mocks the nakedness of an orphan.
I rise every morning like the glory of manhood
with a whisper in God’s ears;
that I am a grain of sand sprinkled in an ocean.
A prodigal pebble in a quarry.
A missing page
in the chronicles of existence.

This is no tale, the closer I was to joy
was the eve of mother’s malady.
Tell me, what ritual exfoliates the misery
of a hopeless man?
What music revives the bones of a dying boy?

BIO:
Ajani Samuel Victor, Frontier II, is a black writer from the trenches. His work has appeared/forthcoming on Blue marble Review, TST Review, Roughcut Press, Augment Review, and elsewhere. He was the winner of 2021 Prisoner of Love Poetry Contest.