in a video,
i watch how chaos chases a boy from home.
on the runway,
a rifle points him towards heaven’s gate
& a bullet catches up with him.
like a pinball arcade,
a boy is fired into strange horizons
& the only way home is a road that leads nowhere.
in a country not far from here,
blood has washed humanity off its borders.
bones are mistaken for bricks,
pandemonium sways like pendulum,
rockets swinging from both sides,
& there, a boy stuck at the center of chaos,
where the only thing that brings light is fire.
he watches how fire eats up his home
& doesn’t spare his family.
tears flowing into storm,
but it isn’t enough to kill the fire.
in another video,
a girl is badly hurt.
her voice
collapsing like her father,
her home, her country.
her body, buried under burning clouds,
becomes a log of hope.
& the birds,
have taken all that’s left of it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Image Credit: Starboyscotty <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Agboola Tariq A., Swan II, is an unfolding poet from Western Nigeria & an undergraduate student of law at the University of Ibadan. He explores in his writing, self \/ identity & spaces he occupies. Some of his works are forthcoming\/in Brittle Paper, Eunoia Review, Olumo Review, IceFloe Press, The Hellebore Press, Variety Pack, Fiery Scribe Review, The Poetry Journal & elsewhere. He tweets: @Agboola_Tariq_A<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" in a video,i watch how chaos chases a boy from home.on the runway,a rifle points him towards heaven’s gate& a bullet catches up with him.like a pinball arcade,a boy is fired into strange horizons& the only way home is a road that leads nowhere.in a country not far from here,blood has washed humanity off its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":980,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[7,8,9,10,11,6],"class_list":["post-486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-issue-1","category-poetry","tag-african-poet","tag-contemporary-nigerian-poets-2","tag-nigerian-literature","tag-nigerian-poet","tag-nigerian-poetry","tag-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akpatamag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Author’s Bio<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n