If Life Were A Poem-Favour Chukwuemeka

No one told us

or compelled us to read,

yet we would sit

savouring the solemnity

of poems

written with unwashed hands

sipping cups of green tea.

Often love tales rated 18,

sung with emotions high.

Of hate speech raw and untainted

and polite stories of homicide

beheld upon our laps.

No one told us

that we could handpick characters

in whom we delight

yet never become.

The ones who survived through blemish

Painted in stanzas and lyrics.

Free and deserving,

our bones began to hope

for the magic encrypted,

shrouded in pages by sages

called poets.

We saved precious lines

hoping they’d somehow

free us

or perhaps enslave us

in the small possibilities

that chariots could ride on sea

and whales float on dry land.

We didn’t have

the spirits the poets owned

yet we choose to believe

that life could be poems.

So we read each one over

to rid any disbelief.