May we for a moment reflect on the meaning of home and identity

receding memories & abolished cultures/ what other analysis speaks for a lost
identity?/ We stand before our fathers carrying pints of civilization into us/ our bodies
too white that it contrasts the black in theirs/ Each word we speak divides God in us/ &
also divides all the concepts / mother laid inside of us./what manner of thing haunts a
body & still questions it?/ somewhere in my books/ I read of people wandering their
bodies too close to the sun/ every word falling from a mouth/ ends a family name in
absentia/ & this is where modernization and traditionalism combat/ to become like our
neighbours/ we cave off the roof of our skin/ wearing a facade/ everything we desire that
does not speak of home/ is never permanent/ a boy snatches the red from the
rainbow/& calls it freedom/ I mean/ what manner of child ends the blood flowing
in his veins with his own hands/ & again, this is what we get when identity becomes
a falsism/ what does a child do when he does not understand himself?/ end the hate
in his skin/ or still figure an alternative means to live/ what more is acceptance/
if not to hold home in conservations?/ & yet, no one truly understands this feeling/
the heaviness of home in a mouth/ & the love of loving what you do not want/
every day we scream modernization/ into music, into food, into various lifestyles/
& somewhere, our fathers memorize our alienation/ & still conclude us prodigal/
nothing more meets the eye/ if not juxtaposition of sorts/ I mean/ for a moment reflect
on the meaning of home & identity/& reflect on the last thread of humanity thinning out/
What thing can you say of dying?/ the woman you know cakes her face to become light/
& the grievous thing is/ we cannot escape what owns us/ Last night, a boy sought his
name in the moon/ & dead birds came alive again/ home is never foreign unless you
make it foreign/ & again, what more is immunity if not resistance?/ to all strange things
crawling into a body/ last night, I wore the shroud of the night/ & looked into water/ the
years of questioning/ is never enough to stop mother from applying black soap to my
bald scalp/ I look into the mirror after wash/ to see a black boy scrubbed clean
of foreignness/
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Poem © Chukwu, Emmanuel Chibuzo
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay