the moment we refract ourselves
from the blinding spectrum of our
past, we dissect a part of us that
remembers just how well the portcullis
of Lekki was reopened in arcadia.
let's poeticise about more serious
things, shall we? imagine a child born
into a time of war, say WW1. & his first
experience becomes one of hunger,
hostility & hate. he becomes a portrait
of jarring identities with the animal
instinct to survive. this too, is what I have
been telling anyone who cared to listen.
in that night of trepidation & noose
slaughter; i can still hear my mother's
voice collide with the ambience of
frolicking bullets from the khaki-men
wielding the Kalashnikov.
my father,
struggled hard to exhume the placenta
of his unborn, for that was the
expressway between the land of the living
& unborn. & when he told us to run with
passion, he warned that if we were asked if
this country belong to us, we were to say:
do not say this is our country.
& the moment our voices were
ensembled to chant the #ending
of things we couldn't swallow, they
made us pluck it from our tongues.
this is just how well our broken past
influences our unknown future.