2 Poems by Abuoya Eruot

Unholy Testimony

 

“i will instruct you & teach you in the way you should go…”

—Psalm 32:8

 

 

yet the devil keeps conquering / and dragging your images / into

a house of avid fire, / while you sit there idle: doing nothing. i grew up

 

believing in heavenly names. / & lost my knees and voice / reciting rosary

and chanting hosanna in the highest.

 

a man so close to god is a man of great fortune / father would say

faith is a light that scares darkness

 

away from our world / a canoe that sails men to a land / of eternal peace.

but i am sick of believing

 

in powerless mantras. / & looking up to a deity / who doesn’t see me

flailing my hands / above my head, / whenever i am drowning;

 

whenever i am / suffocating in a dark hole / i am tired of flipping holy pages

searching for perpetual bliss. / so today

 

i’ll lay down the cross. & crumble my faith. / & find solace in the dark. / &

begin to search peace / from within.

 

for what use is a candlelight /

when you’re swallowed by storm and darkness?

 

Someday, we’ll all have a handshake with Silence

 

we’re fallen seeds left on earth

to be pecked by darkness. we’re on a blind journey

to meet silence someday. at a place

where the sky kisses a salty body of water.

 

somewhere,

a boy is a breathing corpse: he dies

every night & resurrects at daybreak; only to become

a dead body walking amongst the living.

 

somewhere,

before a girl tightens her eyelids, she prays to heaven

for a safe spot in the graveyard.

because she’s a shadow

tired of fighting its way out of the dark.

 

sometimes,

living becomes annoying as the sound

of a midnight mosquito.

 

we’re living and dying at the same time.

which is to say: we breathe for a while.

 

& someday, we’ll wake up in a self-contained room

where no moonlight or sunlight can penetrate.

 

 

Abuoya Eruot writes from Paynesville, Liberia. His work has been published on African Writer, Praxis Magazine, Ngiga Review, Blueminaret, and elsewhere.