Harmattan is ended...

My dance in the mist floats into memory
painted in sepia tones
A stranger would imagine I was happy
What would that stranger think if they saw me now?
My optimism is shed
A cocoon is burst
But rather than a winged being of dainty delight
a beetle comes crawling out

My memories of the previous year return
My writings, crossed fingers and coin flips all seem meaningless now because
just like that
a cycle is complete
another year is done
and questions scratch at my brain

Did you grow? Did you achieve?
Your goals, your dreams still remain
Child of man, you failed
Your life retains no value still

O mother Time I apologise
I stand as a beetle where a butterfly should
Just let me be
I mean you no harm
It's tough living in a world
where life throws not lemons but turds
from which biosolids cannot be fashioned

I speak into the wind
Hoping I don't get aired
It's difficult to find time's perspective
The sands are ever shifting
And new grains of rock are blasted into existence
Every day
Every hour
Every minute
Every second

Then a subtle sigh turns my head
A zephyr breaths
And a lilting melody fills my ear

Cast a gaze into the crystal glass, my child
Let me speak to you
Let me read to you the future
You don't need a medium
A phone will do nicely

God bless @jack
The one who stole fire from Olympus
For the world has been compressed
And is carried in pockets of men in lite or full sizes

Cast a gaze my child
For there is no special skill needed in this business
There is no special talent for ESP
The equation is quite simple
Past predates present predates future

I know of what the blue bird sings
My throat is coated in honey
My belly in gall
The spirit of the blue bird is upon me
I know what it says
And you will too
Just cast your gaze my child

***

Mother Time grasps the sheets
as cyclones of agony sweep her up and toss her about
Her uterus contracts
as her vagina dilates
A year is crowning

A child's morning bucket overflows
The trickling drops of water
from an apologetic tap
have filled the bucket at last
A child left
But a full grown woman returned
With a world of opportunity in her heart
And a ripening apple in her waist
Men will launch themselves at her
Eager to keep the doctor away
And she will laugh and tease them
deftly dodging their dastardly desires
Where a human being once was, a dribbler remains
skillfully slaloming her way through society's stiff standards
To their eyes she is a prize and a threat
A thing to suckle and subjugate
Pleasure and pain are perfectly parallel
It's perspective that counts

A man drew out his dreams in ink
When the rubber had not yet been torn off
When the schnapps had not yet been sprayed
And the wedding night was still fresh in the mind
But romance never lasts
At least the feeling doesn't
And a man's dreams were set aside
As time and tide would neither wait nor be tamed

The world is changing
The rains refuse to die
The sky darkens where it should shine
The wind blows where it likes
Sahara's gold makes mines out of farmland
Ancient boundaries are shifting
but within the corridors of power
such evils are as Voldemort
never to be named
or even thought of
But nature never respected persons or power
A breeze knocks on the anthill door
The ants will not open up
until a hurricane returns

People who eat their yam in famine
are thronging again
The cake is about to be shared
by pot-bellied parents
on behalf of the bloated birthday boy
While the famished linger outside the walls
It's a man-eat-man world outside these ivory towers
And the tongues of the famished are keen for blood
Exhausted with eating bony limbs and rugged flesh
the celebrant poses a tantalising entrée

Mother Time grasps the sheets again
and releases from her throat
One last bellow of pain
As her progeny slides out
and lets out a gusty cry
as he is placed in his mother's arms
and is pacified by her nourishment—

"If this is what awaits me in the future, what hope remains?"
I speak into the wind
Hoping time doesn't pass me by
Silently wishing I got aired the first time
I speak
and a gale replies
Whipping up decades of dust
Drying out my skin into ashy paper

And I'm reminded by the billows of belief
That Harmattan will come again
The floods won't last forever
And the rains won't fall for all time

A new year is born
Self-doubts be gone
Fate's loom works still
And hope will not depart until
Time ceases...
Or men do...

Whichever one comes first.

Author's Note:

And that's a wrap, esteemed guests. The final note. And thus the journey of a year comes to a conclusion. It's been one battle after another, I've fought crippling depression and months of self-doubt to be here, writing this message of thanks. Thank you for reading, thank you for sticking by me during this journey. I'm truly, truly grateful to all of you.

This may likely be the last time I write on Wattpad. But it will not be the last time I write. I have too many ideas to let that happen.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. This Ryūsei kid is very grateful.

Oluwatimilehin Bankole☄️