The truth about us

OctPoWriMo 2024, Day 31

I bring the bitters to our shared table. 
I have none of the hope they’ve asked 
the poets to paint 

into a better world. I know nothing 
of the hydroponics we must cultivate 
to pure the nitrous air, 

to mulch the rising water, to form the new 
pigments of sustenance. The sheet music says 
Brightly and Sforzando

but I have returned, diminished, with crypto-
phyte algae, and their low-light survival.
I am lazy because my computations 

have not yielded any optimism. I want saffron 
in my air quality report. I want my periscope 
to see more than the dark, 

more than mutant dung beetles yarning globes 
of what used to be people for their young. 
I want to announce the return 

of simpler and more trusting times, an era of eyes 
at kneecaps, in demigration from the face, 
and their sinking retreat from the horrors.

 
You want, I want, you want me to want good news.
I bring the bitters to our shared table 
under deframed houses and their dusting 

of white phosphorous showing 
our pacification, 
our glowing villenage.

© Tolu Oloruntoba

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Notes

1. The title is from the James Baldwin speech “The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity”:
   ”the poets (by which I mean all artists) are finally the only people who know the truth about us. Soldiers don’t. Statesmen don’t. Priests don’t. Union leaders don’t. Only poets.” I can think of no better or more potent manifesto / description of the artistic condition / affliction.

2. RE: stanza 3, one of my guilty-pleasure Xitter accounts (from when I was still properly there) is Threatening Music Notation. There are some really hilarious ones.

3. I virtually attended yesterday’s Alchemy Lecture, “The City of Our Dreaming,” given by V. Mitch McEwen, Laleh Khalili, Gabriela Leandro Pereira, and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. Moderated by the incomparable Christina Sharpe. The visions of these alchemists for a better world, and better cities, made me hopeful but also wonder why I tend to be more pessimistic. As was said in the lecture, poets are being called upon in this moment to sketch out the dimensions of a better world than this one. I got nothing. I want to imagine better but my imagination is broken, it would seem.

4. An idiomatic expression in Yoruba refers to the lost and good times at the youth of the world as a time when “eyes were at the knees.” One gem from the literature is this article on the knee-eye-brain axis.

5. The state of Israel has been bombing Lebanon with white phosphorous in heavily populated areas, in violation of international humanitarian law.

6. Photo by Kalyn Kostov: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-standing-on-rocks-3460500/

7. I’m relieved and surprised to have completed the 31 days of OctPoWriMo this year. Thank you for reading, and for your encouragement.