Roll the Stone Away

Blank Verse by Jonathan Chibuike Ukah

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Though I have not figured it out,
I seem to have come to the beginning
of something I know I didn’t understand,
but I don’t know what it is I have to do;
it’s as though it doesn't matter anymore
when everything's coming back to me
after it vanished from my mind.
I seize the time to destroy the universe
as I know it from the dream I have had;
lurking in the shadows to give me grief,
only to reappear when I turn my back.
Some say it's in the nature of things
to come back to the same place,
after they buried my destiny under a stone
to suppress the resurrection gene.
I decided I must pluck daisies for death,
for those buried within the vault of time,
or within my heart with a heavy stone,
to prevent thieves from stealing them away
and claiming that moths ate their remnants,
like I didn't make up my mind in time to cry
before I remembered what fate couldn't fathom.
Though my power forecasts rising from the dead,
it can't determine who'll roll away the stone.
I wield a knife to slice the grave apart
and dig the tomb between time and eternity,
but if I don’t roll away the heavy stone,
even a miracle may have to wait for a while.
In the shadow of the sadness of my mind,
I bother myself with things I don’t know,
and not with what I can deal with,
or what my destiny cannot influence.
I decided to revisit the beginning of my life,
only to see the stone roll itself away
and an angel seated on its rounded top
disgracing those who wouldn’t roll the stone for me.

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Jonathan Chibuike Ukah lives in London with his family. His poems have been featured and will soon be featured in Strange Horizons, The Fairy Tale Magazine, Atticus Review, The Pierian, Ariel Chart International Press, Boomer Literary Magazine, etc. He is a winner of the Voices of Lincoln Poetry Contest 2022 and the Alexander Pope Poetry Award 2023.