A POEM I WROTE IN 2017 WHICH HAS ELEMENTS OF TIME

Marlboro Smoke

Scan of a page in my personal poetry book. Dara Bolaji, 2019. Pen on paper, 148 x 210 mm.

Sit with me a while

on this cold concrete floor

Let me watch Marlboro smoke

and curly hair

stream across your moonlit face

Let me imprint this moment

on the insides of my eyelids

so that everytime i close my eyes

all i'll see is you

---

I'm starting to notice that within many of my poems there is this running theme of time. Of wanting to stop time, make it stand still, make a moment/a memory last forever. I realise that by painting a picture of a moment, you extract it from the mind, committing it to paper - in some ways allowing it to exist in the real forever (or as long as the paper lasts).

I'd like to create the image which is the subject of this poem, the way I see it in my memory, but also capturing the feeling of the moment. It might look something like this:

Left to right, images from celebedition.com and pinterest.com. Via Google Images