Oluwasegun Somefun: Are we the sick ones in the land of honey? (Poetry)

by Oluwasegun Somefun

When one walks away from his father’s house
Takes away mother’s wrapper
Throws away the warmth of electric flesh
Escapes the knit of family
Away from the help of needing needy friends
Will legs not wobble?
And hands shake?
Will doubts not stand?
If the move to respite does not come by light
It will meet by sound.

When one runs away from what is home
Comes to the one said home
Think not neighbour’s future
Acts on own’s later story sorry
With caused hands,
Backslapping suffering
Advertising the vogue of bling life with painful aura.
Not your neighbour’s keeper
When you checked those that are our own Abel.

A call to home
is heard
in the night
in the echoes of the chirps of fireflies
in the sleep
in the bites of the cruel tsetse fly
in the impatience of the feet
in the music that sings on the city’s road
in the moving pictures of electrons and waves
That moves to cry
That no more this country is living as
pearls of the anthill
but the sick man of Africa

We have elders that have gone mad,
that are gone blind.
Now they have no head
and eyes none.
But they are not deaf,
they are not mute
Only still choosing silence
Not to hear, not to speak
To us of this house
Our domiciliary is no more
what was it meant to be?

There is no more father to protect us
From the sun of this world
From the pelting rains of earth
From the world’s opposite of solace.

Where is mother to carry us?
On her back, away
From the harsh of this city
To soothe our crying minds from the pains of this life.

Our wives no more to give heat,
each night of lovely conspiracy
To now pursue loneliness
without yang’s companionship
No help when it is meet
and needed.

Where is our family and friends?
to pull us help when down,
to pull up when fall
in pits of shame and trouble
To save us from the coins and papers
of imagination’s slavery
and the tight rope of those sited on the high tables of this world.

The free life does not appear in the night
Not by the talks of mere mouth
But by walking the steps of I am
Moving towards the path
Walking to the place is home.
This is where greed has led us
They hear only the voice of strangers
Talk with the house’s enemies
Where our big siblings have no head reasoning
Or seeing eyes.

But maybe, it will come in the morning’s break
Or when our land yes the falls of dirty hands and heads
We will come home
Say optimistic early or pessimistic late
For we of this compound
Have been long in the fires of corruption
Now only the long distance show of ashes
Of what it does not mean to be a country,
one family remains.

Having somewhere to go is home
Having someone to love is family
Having health and both is a blessing

Many of us have nowhere to go
No one to love us.
Are we cursed?
Are we the sick ones in the land of honey?

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.

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