TRANSCRIPT

 I'm Myka Kielbon, and this is The Slowdown.

We asked you, our listeners, to help us select poems for the show. Today, instead of hearing a moment of reflection from Maggie, you'll hear from a member of our Slowdown community. Enjoy.

 I am Abdulmueed Balogun Adewale from Ibadan, Nigeria. Of late, I've been contemplating the choices I've made till I got here. For example, I've been reflecting on my undergraduate days. I spent a lot of my time running, and I spent those times, too, on poetry. Then I was thinking, are those times actually worth it? So that's just been the reflection for me.

But still, I think sometimes you can actually do without poetry — just like taking a pause from it — and to experience life outside of poetry and literature. So sometimes I kind of feel the same joy that I feel whenever I'm reading poetry when I'm running. So for me, both of them are quite on the same scale and they kind of have the same weight.

The people I have in my life that make living worthy, presently, they are just my nephews and my niece. A number of times I've been thinking about giving up or trying to stop doing the things I'm doing, like panting after some dreams. I've been contemplating a lot to just give up the chase. But whenever I remember them, whenever they come to mind, I feel renewed. I feel replenished. I feel a different sense of direction. For now, they are like my compass, and they are the reason why I'm still going very strong.

I think poetry, it kind of gives me a reassurance that my life so far has not been a waste. It's more of a reflection of how every day, as you live, a part of you with us. So for me, I've been living my life very conscious that each moment, like this very moment, could be my last. So I'm learning to appreciate everything despite everything, despite the war and the mayhem and the chaos in the world. It's appreciating the little that I have.

Today's poem is an invitation for you to live more freely. The poem urges us to take a pause in our day-to-day activities to reflect on our lives, to look around us, experience the little things despite all odds.

Gratification to the survivors of daily damnations
by Oladejo Abdullah Feranmi

Thanks to the clouds on fire, the burning sunset,
and every diminishing as beautiful as time.
Thanks to the moments that are not yours,
the soft part of the world you are in
when you tiptoe to your mother’s room,
the unending seconds until you hear her snore
because the lost lyrics of the living
will always escape through the mouth.
Thanks to the quietness she drew from the well of nights
and bottled for you by dawn—for the lilacs,
the roses, and the thorns blooming in your mouth.
We pocket the heart until we know what to do with it.
Nature introduces spring to us like visitors.
Living and leaving, we multitask at our best.
When you get home, stare around like it’s another man’s.
Like this can be here, like that can be beautiful.
Cigar this life and light it with the sun.
Breathe this poem in. Own a spot on a cliff or an edge
or somewhere that can carry a stamp of your body.
Become. Open a book and see this trapped time
I left for you to live all over.

“Gratification to the survivors of daily damnations” by Oladejo Abdullah Feranmi. Used by permission of the poet.

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