Death lives inside you

Father is a colony of bees building holes in the
crevices of the city. His feet bear the markings of a beer parlor.
Weekdays, the street knows a man whose mouth feasts on sand with gin
buried in his chest pocket.
To revive a drunkard in my place, you beautify his face with tons of slaps.
But Father’s body rejects metals in his numbness.
Mother is perched in a corner finding the hands of her husband
on her breasts.
How do you calm a woman from her continued state of depression?
The T.V. says: “a man is seen lying by the roadside like a lost sheep”
Pim…pim…pim…an ambulance hauls father’s lifeless body home.

———————

Things you do not see but lives around you

The locks are bolted again while you chew God’s name in multiple spittle
Of endless supplications.
Why do you suffer your veins to a violent prayer when the things you seek
live around you?
Jaachi was eighteen yesterday and Nkiru will be twenty-two tomorrow –
This is how you send the names of your children to God reminding him of
your encumbrances. But myopia masks your sight to face the reality of your
children as an embodiment of revolution.
Ignorance is how you fail to fix your home like a welcomed shipwreck before
sojourning.
It is how you lose your place as a father when you fail to realize your children
are now adults to turn your nightmares into daydreams.

———————

Poetry © Emmanuel Ojeikhodion
Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay (modified)