DELIVERANCE
(opening prayer).
amen (the service began);
then we became a congregation of choruses,
hymns gliding through our tongues
as we became a choir of hallelujah songs.
this is how we empty our consciences on the altar
of our lips,
this is how prayer forces our veins
to quake,
to leak,
to shrink;
until we forget our bodies
& roll into voices of unknown beings
tearing the atmosphere apart,
uttering dialects the winds can’t decipher
we turn into spirits, by castigating
our skins
& by screaming our souls out.
they said:
sermons have their ways of
painting out our lives before our eyes,
prayers have their ways of
squeezing us into cold blood,
but deliverance is a wind
that turns us into fragments,
particles
& crumbs for our voices to devour.
(closing prayer).
Amao Williams Praise: Poet, freelancer, photographer and a phlegmatic. A final year student, studying Physiology in Osun State University. He lives and writes from Lagos, Nigeria.