Eleazer Obeng, “The Devil’s Snare”: that silent, oppressive evil
The sun is up, it seems like a new day
sigh. you are still here. It’s not.
How did you get in? I cry.
Hubbub waters my anxiety.
sprouting doubt, and the traumas of my past
I thought I buried.
It’s nightfall, it says welcome back.
as though I’m the visitor.
Humming harmonies grazing off this void. Staying up with me
as I alternate apps
trying to find a distraction.
my restlessness is your muse
rolling from one end to another
for warmth estranged to my bed.
wrinkl in time, I put on a smile,
my reflection is a stranger
staring back at me
ossifying my ins piece by piece
A cover girl, a canvas I repaint every day
to tell the stories I do not believe
Pathetic! It says.
swath in aragog’s web
his children dancing
on my hollow tomb of a chest.
Do you see the pain
slithering behind the charms of my smile.
Numb to your roses
Words crawling up my throat
to voice out the floods within
A pawn, I’m crowned,
Moving along the lines of black and white
I don’t know how I got here,
stuck with you and I can’t ridicule
my way from this boggart
I’m trapped and I can’t get out
It’s so dark and cold in here.
*********
[Courtesy of the author]
Link to the Italian translation
Dennis Kwaku Frimpong Agyemang was born and raised in Ghana. He is a creative who occasionally expresses his thoughts and feelings as a poet, under his pseudonym, Eleazer Obeng. He is “gender fluid” and has written (amongs other subjects) about anxiety, depression and sexuality.