‘WILD DESIRES’ & Collected Works

Daniel Newcomb - “This body of work represents a small portion of over 30 years of my images, exploring the world's forgotten architectural sites. I intend to preserve these structures artistically. We should not forget these nostalgic series of dreams. They are displayed here for our memories; for our children's memories. As Jack Kerouac said "I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder...."

WILD DESIRES   

A boy is out there, in the desecrated world, his face a semblance of mine.

Black, chiselled and glossy.     

He carries himself,

the way I carry myself like porcelain 

delicate as first love. 

He knows a lot about life or so he chose to believe, enough to truly see it as vain.

But despite his profundity, he’s in mighty chains. 

A slave to life and his crude desires. 

His wild desires, more than often, on lonely nights cruelly attempt to seduce 

him out of the temple of sanctity. Some nights their ancient tricks blossom into limelight. 

Other nights, when his soul is underneath his feet, he makes a mockery out of them. 

On successful nights, he becomes an animal.

A beast crossing the web-thin line between morality & obscenity. 

He growls like a famished fox as the heat of unfettered desires tours his veins. 

He looks into the mirror but he’s no longer himself. His voice, no longer a forgery of mine.

His hands, weapons of assault, like rebels, always spurn his command of staying stiff,  they drift forth and back. His hands take him to places he had vowed a million times never to imprint again. He journeys unwillingly again into desecration. 

You can pick guilt like shards of glass on his black face. His hands are cold now, trembling, 

wet with remorse. His eyes are trying to unsee all the evil they just absorbed.

He returns, sullen-faced, to the dusky sitting room, like a bee lured by the sweet scent of nectared flowers. He returns to his brown wooden table to scheme another breakout from the prison of his ungodly desires. 

He’d long scrapped, like the bark of a mahogany, the notion of seizing his breath as an antidote to his woes. For it’s an open secret, his father’s joy courses like the Nile river across his black glossy face & his mother becomes restless like a toddler at the sight of him in pains.   

He’d also talked to his sisters about the darkness ravaging him like plague, seeking a torch for his darkness in their sisterly counsel, but their balm only worked for a few weeks, then like all other ways he’s sought out of this maze, it ended in smoke. 

Undeterred, he’s plotting another coup d’état against his draining desires. He’s been knocking God’s golden door since he was eighteen, now his knuckles are swollen & bleeding doubts. 

But he stays staid, an equestrian statue, before God’s golden merciful door. Hoping one day 

to absorb his liquid mercy like a famished foam.  

LOVE SONG IN A COLD WORLD 

It’s 3:16 AM WAT &

Slumber’s slowly departing the shore

Of my eyes like sunshine at the eve of dusk.

The night is a cemetery of dead

& decaying dreams. 

Darkness loves amplifying 

Like a wicked spell the eerie echoes 

Of losses wailing within the chambers 

Of my head. 

There are crickets outside 

My window serenading the night 

Into a form of delight,

Singing to phase the ghosts 

Stifling the breath of my gaseous 

Hope into oblivion.

It’s been awhile I weaved

A basket of verses I know 

Can hold water, it’s been 

Awhile I opened ajar the door

Of my dusty rusty heart 

To the classical ardour of love

Without suspicion. 

Time drifts and keeps 

Drifting by like tidal wave, 

Like caravans of tradesmen 

But the ghastly names

Of all I had lost to the wicked

Fangs of fate, keeps marauding 

Like gregarious sheeps 

The oblong street of my memories.

I question what love is whenever 

Love like a seasoned cat burglar 

Stealths upon me. I do not, this 

Time around, stare dead 

Interrogatively into love’s hazel 

Eyes when you offered me your homely hand. 

It’s been hours, days & years of war 

Between us, & we’ve decided to take 

A recess from enormity. We’ve decided,

Despite the shortness of our lives, to love 

Each other for the rest of our days.

YOURSELF THE FIRST BATTLE TO CONQUER 

There’s no evil anywhere 

Worth fighting save the ones

In the dungeons of your soul. 

The festering corruptions

To begin with 

Littering like confetti every nook 

& cranny of the society are never yours 

To battle

If the dark desires of your life are not

Yet like wild dogs under leashes. 

Isn’t it a big blemish on the white garment 

Of his supposed freedom, a man whose ugly 

Desires still paddle the ship of his existence?

Do not say a man’s true value lies 

In the magnitude of his impact 

On the stems, roots and branches 

Of his immediate society,

For that’s definitely a piercing 

Arrow aimed at the acute sight 

Of understanding…

For what a man truly is, is hidden, a myth 

Even before the mirrors of his livid room, 

Before the bare body of his beloved

Laying in the cozy heaven of his bed,

Save God, nobody can ever measure 

Out the true value of another being.

Harmattan’s blinding fog can only distort 

The scope of vision of an ordinary man, 

If you have God flowing like blood in your

Veins and arteries, your scope of vision 

Will never fault even at old age. Some say 

In their ignorance, that it’s the eyes 

Before the board of our skulls that’s blessed

With the miracle of true sight, but mystics 

In the garden of my heart whisper to me 

Like cold ancient voices 

In the middle of the night:

Squash the eyes of your skull like eggs, 

Nurture the garden of your soul 

Like a bed of edelweiss 

And whatever lurks within 

The gates of earth 

& hides within the vault of heavens

Shall bare themselves

Before the eyes of your soul.

GOD I BEG YOUR PARDON 

God,

I beg your pardon 

But what will become 

Of this heap of mess, mound of trash

I label as me, if you fail to shield me 

Under the parasol of your grace?

The sun of ignominy is setting 

In the sky of my making, the sky’s 

Dark & fierce with rage… 

God is this omen a compass 

To my destined inevitable end?

Days of my youth are getting dark

Darker than nightfall, & the eyes of my faith 

Are swiftly gathering soot like chimneys.

It’s hard, I swear…. The little water 

Of faith in the bowl of my mind 

Keeps turning into gas, every second, 

Can’t you see the meagre pool of goodness 

In me turning into vapour before your eyes?

I’m lost, no light on this forbidden road,

No peace, nothing like happiness exists

In this wilderness but like a rite 

That mustn’t be forfeited 

The legs of my deeds keep returning, 

Prancing with wild delight upon its thorns. 

Life, tell me what you wish to fashion 

Like a garland out of me & let me be once

& for all. Fate, I have been behind your

Gloomy bars for aeons, dutifully oiling 

The rusty engine of your desires…

What’s freedom like again on the taste buds 

Of tongues?

Please let me have a taste…

This is coming from a very dark 

Place, the hades within, wherever the light is, 

Someone  please send it my way. 

The world is trembling tonight, 

The songs on the lips of the wind 

Are ancient like Rome, where’s the sweet jazz 

Of freedom we were promised to behold 

Mid-way right before we embarked 

On this journey of self-actualization?

Abdulmueed Balogun Adewale is a black poet from Ibadan, Nigeria. A Pushcart prize and BOTN Nominee. He was longlisted for the 2021 Ebarcce Prize, shortlisted for the 2024 Gerald Kraak Prize, finalist 2021 Wingless Dreamers Book of Black Poetry Contest, won the 2021 Annual Kreative Diadem Poetry Contest & the 2024 Dr. Samuel Folorunsho Ibiyemi Poetry Prize. His poems have been published in: Applause Literary Journal, Red Cedar Review and elsewhere. He tweets from: AbdmueedA