LOVE AFTER LOVE

Poetry by Abdulmueed Balogun Adewale

for once I'm thinking—

what if I started writing

bright things, happy memories—

that wouldn't be labeled a crime

before the jury of your prejudice

or would it?

if I relentlessly weaved, days & nights,

poems where my skin isn't on fire,

where no one is mourning the demise

of a beloved, where my beloved

wouldn't turn love into gasoline,

her departure into a matchstick

to torch me out of sanity...

wouldn't it be remarkable?

wouldn't it be remarkable,

if i summoned the courage to desert

all the places in my head that no longer

echo my names, which I find myself

involuntarily like a zombie

returning to with my nomadic legs

on lonely nights to perform autopsies

on cold-dead promises hoping

for the miracle of warmth?

for once

in my sleep

i want to stop holding

a butcher's knife against the fleshy neck

of those that strangled our vows

of forever, cease conjuring love

as a slaughterhouse where I'm

nothing but a sacrificial lamb.

wouldn't it be remarkable,

dear reader,

if pain, not the means to it, no longer exists in the world?

BIO: Abdulmueed Balogun Adewale is a black poet & pilgrim from the city of brown tenements. A Pushcart prize and BOTN Nominee. He was shortlisted for the 2024 Gerald Kraak Prize. His poems have been published in: Boudin, The Coachella Review, The Oakland Arts Review, The Mid-Atlantic Review, Progenitor Art and Literary Journal, Zaum Magazine, Ember, Brittle Paper, The Westchester Review, Soundings East Magazine, Hawaii Pacific Review, Red Cedar Review and elsewhere. He tweets from: AbdmueedA