The Theory of Bodies
Sometimes,
I think of bodies as words
that break into syllables:
weak and strong,
and out of this paradox,
the mind thaws as fluid,
reaching out to the body
to take a shape.
The body becomes a syntax of riddles
and these riddles are just the beginning
of a journey to a self-discovery
that bodies, like the world,
are parentheses occupied
by mass, gravity and ideas;
ideas stretched into extended metaphors.
I imagine that there is a space
within these parentheses for a bomb,
arms for guns, clubs, machetes
and an imagination to stage
a nightmare in a language of
things unsaid;
like Rwanda 1994 –
reduced to a relic of skulls,
or the dusty remains of 9/11,
Biafra, Congo, Burundi, or
the Holocaust;
drowning memories
that remind us when
we relax and gossip of
lust and desires,
make love in muffled vowels,
or laugh to anecdotes
of sex and cheap beers
that we have also been
lost in the paradox of ourselves.
NOAH OLADELE
Photography by Vadim Stein
