To The Awkward Adolescent Nigerian Male

Praise your magnificent dark skin glory

Praise your magnificent fair skin glory

Praise your can’t fit into last year’s shirts glory

Praise your unwanted erections at church service glory

Praise your everything to impress the girl who doesn’t want you glory

Praise your everything to impress your boys glory

Praise your touch yourself if no one will touch you glory

Praise your cold sweat maroon nightmares glory

Praise your click-boom of adrenalin rush glory

Praise your unhappy but fuck that glory

Praise your house chores you hate doing glory

Praise your middle of the night explosions early morning stickiness glory

Praise your standing through the Burna Boy concert and wishing you had not come glory

Praise your soft but not too soft glory

Praise your hard but not too hard glory

Praise your awkward adolescent Nigerian male glory

For you are the most glorious discovery there ever was

The Haze

The haze sometimes shapeshifts into colours

Blue, red and a dozen others

I try to yell at the women hosting tea parties in my living room

Please leave, I do not want you here

But my speech becomes a gargle of needles

And the women, now transformed into harpies, cackle at my weakness

• Haloperidol (30 mg/d)

The African leopard, a master predator, is also usually the most relentless prey in a trap. If caught in a leg-hold, it will chew away at its own trapped limb, often breaking teeth and bones in the process. Pride does not mix well with captivity.

Whereas I cannot make my eyelids move

Whereas there is an erratic jerk in both my thumbs

Whereas an uncontrollable shiver in my left buttock

I do not own my body today

It belongs completely to the haze

There is nothing as terrifying as watching your body do things you do not intend

• Procyclidine (15 mg/d)

It would be so much easier if he died

I know you want me dead

I can smell it on you

Better a dead boy than a mad boy

Die, boy, die

Die, mad boy

A quick prayer whispered to Saint Dymphna for help

And I hear my demons chuckle in the distance

There is no religion here

There is only the blueredandadozenothercolors haze

• Risperidone (16 mg/d)

I try not to, but I often wonder

About the silky skin of my forearm

Smooth as the unbroken surface of a bowl of cold cornmeal porridge

If I took a razor to it

Would the sides of the break pucker like porridge does?

Or would it just explode in shimmering red?

Either way, I desire release.

• Clozapine (450 mg/d)