Fallen Walls, Mere Floating Portions

For Ejaz Choudry

Summer window fractures with an open-ended pestilence:
of kamikaze flies settling on black blood fresh from carbon cycle;
of that life which matters—traveling back from offering itself
to the firmament—to relive a placard reason for (re-)incarnation;

of Regis—a Toronto hybrid ladybird somersaulting her balcony;
deck-neck; causing a degauss effect—homely, like a toddler’s innocence
when sharing a carelessly placed piece of the magnet with its household’s 
intolerant LCD TV screen. Or diasporan, like the arrival of immigrants:
ready to stay, as color-works of upset streams.

My grandpa’s neckbeard is ostrich-scarce. His bruise—
red as a plagued pool, fresh from an out-bathroom fall
is the foremost warning to the holders of his body.
He dries up at every glance, his collar bones melt his breathing.
& his orbs are goals of slow blindness. However, responsibility recycles.

In the room of the living, I am coffee ready.
To add his whiteness jumble: “Salt or sugar?”
He can’t pick two words at a time, not even his favorite fruits–
(lemon & Lebanon) from a browser tray.
I school his daily Montessori—

“These are no pills. Repeat after me, they are not felons on-the-run in my throat,”
before shutting down everything. Everywhere—including 
the convenience store, he gambles in his head.
91.1, correct decimal place of Canada’s Jazz FM, & no one’s listening—
[this is how humans suspect a god is using them without consent]—

witnessing armed spiders crawling a high-rise building
for gunpoint mental checks & balances; a piece of bloody music that catches
Grandpa’s reflexes where its instrumental could see them.
Clearly, apart from his refraining panic pulse.
Frontpage—bulletin columns: a flower vase shrills the street//
because forensics can’t tell the root// of the fire that deforested Horeb(ly)//
at Moses’ eavesdropping sandals.

Following page: “...as always, the world remains a snooker board
with Zuma masks emitting nuclear balls.”
Summer window welcomes ghoul appearances on a Morningstar sunset.
& of all seen through the (safe) orange light,
unread fine print Father’s Day letter(s) litter my heart.

& you're not alone, Kinetic dolls freak me out! But as Grandpa once said,
“Until you start creasing into linens of goatee wrinkles,
as yards’ Halloween emblem,”
spooky but cool as hell.

ξ

BAYOWA, Ayomide Micheal is a Nigerian-Canadian poet, filmmaker and student of Theatre Studies and Creative Writing at the University of Toronto, Canada. He was longlisted for the Nigerian Students Poetry Prize 2018 and shortlisted for both the Eriata Oribabhor Poetry Prize (EOPP) 2018 and the 2019 Christopher Okigbo Interuniversity Poetry Prize. In 2020 he was the runner-up of the On-Spot Poetry Writing Contest and winner of the July 2020 Open Drawer Poetry Contest. He was the runner-up of the University of Toronto “ELLY-IN-ACTION” Virtual Competition 2021, a top-ten gold entrant of the 9th Open Eurasian Literary Festival, London. He is the first-place winner of the June/ July 2021 Edition of the Bi-monthly Brigitte Poirson Poetry Contest (BPPC). He is a semi-finalist of the 2021 Cave Canem Poetry Prize and the first-runner up of the 2021 K. Valerie Connor Poetry Prize (Student Category). His works are published in Barren Magazine, Kalahari Review, Agbowo, African Writers, AFAS review, Kreative Diadem, Praxis Magazine, and Stone of Madness Press.