The Hymn We Need is The Pure God of Madness

By Osahon Oka

The modern age has partitioned the sky
into insurmountable edges, borders that hum

in their aloof country with our secrets.
Roads sleep like a dazed animal, thunderstruck

by the constant fragile hurtling, the screaming metal god.
Heaps of gravel and grime gleam with the hope of gems,

their light as feverish as the prayer we once carried
in our feet. We are the light of this new world, embers

of a half forgotten god. At our journey crossing
the doorstep, plantain leaves smoked, their broken fingers

piping air. Clouds dipped into the blue sea glass, frothed
and eddied and sipped the impure ozone. It is that hymn

we hear; the pillaged cathedral of crust
burrowing into the soaked rag of grief. And the sun,

its setting long since overdue, cascades and ballasts,
refusing to abdicate our flesh. What we now desire

is the exorcism of night, that soft quivering bird.
This empire’s roots gangrened with crude

clots our tongues. This is the hymn we need:
the pure god of madness, the bootlegged rum

bottle shaved to a thimble full of bliss by the sadness
of fallen sugarcane stems. Stagger under

the overhead bridges of stilted bird songs. Search deep
the scar tissue of any river along the way.

From their blackest heart, a heat is rising. It will flood
the city with a thirsty mouth. It will drink

the dank nectar down the drain pipe and carry
the cardboard god of wealth back into its rusty machinery

under the swollen bridge, under the loud weeping
of the remnants. The blooming war torn smoke

will not surrender to lightning, acne craters pockmarking
the distant rustle of carnage resting its weary palms

on the concrete teeth of long dislodged dreams,
and break apart like flight resurfacing

from a sideways plunge, beak filled with memory
and dross. No, it will tailor the city to its soul;

the darkest black window blind, the unseeing flesh
of machine tooled and oiled, dope sick angels:

wingless and soft. Sleepless and quiet.

BIO:
Osahon Oka is a Nigerian. He is one of the winners of the Visual Verse Autumn Writing Prize 2022. He is also a winner of Brigitte Poirson Poetry Contest, June 2017. His writing has been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology and the Pushcart Prize. His poems have appeared on literary spaces including but not limited to Lit Quarterly, Jalada Africa, PepperCoast Lit, Down River Road Review.