I remember my mother's banga soup
simmering in the ewere
and those dusty old books
in my father's room
that invited me to come, sit, be still,
open, ingest, and find a philosophy
to cling to like a raft on a troubled sea:
Descartes, Lenin, Dickens,
Bronte, Shakespeare, Byron,
Babaginda, Achebe and Marx.
Never really liked the smell
of iced fish on the kitchen sink
or the cold blood of fish entrails
gathered in smoking polythene bags
melting, congealing, permeating and cold.
Jimmy loved the taste and his tail
wagged hard when mother got back
from the market with boiled groundnuts,
garden eggs, and the smell of embalmed
chickens and the dead eyes of iced fish
staring like children in the season of drought.
Segun used to lift me from the ground
like I was a rag doll
and toss me up and down
like I was a rag doll.
Lee tried to lift me off the ground
like I was a rag doll.
I boxed his ears when I was high enough,
his brain resetted itself
and he dropped me down hard
like I was a rag doll.
Sex! Sex!! Sex!!!
All I can think of is sex and
Peace's pillows squeezed in the farm;
teenage hormones running rampant.
We should populate the earth with warts,
bullet holes, condoms, stds
and pink kiddies without names.
We stained the bed sheets, our skins and
hair follicles slippery, with sweat and semen.
Sinful hunger age with my itchy palms
touching, squeezing, poking, pinching,
licking lips, exchanging spit, telling lies;
darling, I'm working late tonight.
sweet, soft, perfumed lies.
Someone is singing a contralto
in the darkness and there's tears
in the tremulous beauty of his voice
and pain in the tiny vastness of his heart.
The song reaches a crescendo,
a singular innuendo banishing the fumbling
of frogs and crickets alike
and then, his voice breaks apart
tearing his tongue from one note, one octave,
one amazing morpheme.
Just like that the song dies
to a trembling stop and then, loud silence.
Truth held by the throat
In a vise, stringed with purple veins
and stuttering vowels.
Vocalized truth, that is
not the voiceless truths that echo
In a small dark room.
Cut your balls to spite your face.
The headaches will stop but no balls.
No balls to sit on, to touch, to shave,
to brag about, to curse with,
to be manly about and no headaches too.
What I feel inside is not the same
As what my face tells you.
Are we not all hypocrites?
Whitewashing fences, every smile a facade
like when you say you are fine
when I ask how are you, everytime.
The purpling bruise kissing the edge
of your lips isn't a lipstick
or an errant rouge.
It is the path pain mapped
from him to you.
Is pain a drug? Am I an addict? Are you?
NB:
Banga soup: a soup from the urhobo ethnic group of Nigeria. It is made from boiled palm fruit.
Ewere: earthen bowl commonly used to eat banga soup.
©warpedpoetic, 2019.
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