The Theory of Bodies by Noah Oladele

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