The Book of Souls

by Saheed Akeem Abolaji

The letters keep coming
Jotting on the sheets-
Scriptures of complicated tomes,
Painting each page with dark image and symbol,
The vacuum never ends
And the volume still has enough room for stories.

The man mutters,
Vibrating to the surge of the rain.
The plant won't yield good grains,
The cloth never dries,
Moist, and feeble on the string, stained by sediment
Of a small river from the fragment of rain.
Tale of last summer could not be told,
The scorch of the sun denied the growth of trees.

Again, on SUNMIN mountain's summit
lies a dead man; a warrior and a hero.
How dead body decays so fast,
His armour still remains
But a vulture's hairy nose
couldn't stop sniffing the scent.

Every leap year,
Doors are left unclosed,
Marked and jabbed by sorrowful hands
Of family whose brethren's dead bodies wrapped
With white lit garment, lifted and buried in a coffin.
The land weakens and tames,
The war ravages in a way that the land loses its fecundity.

Stories of dead souls keep pluming
Dotting scary pictures and paragons,
The vacuum never ends
And the volume still has enough room for stories.

Saheed Akeem Abolaji is a Nigerian writer, historian and a poet. A book lover who enjoys listening to music.