BEING & NOTHINGNESS
They said Green pastures are
What we must chase.
So I ask myself:
What about death?
Should we leave it to stay, with us?
Or, we chase it away?
Perhaps, no need for Green pastures,
Since death makes
all synonymous to nothing.
So how do we chase death?
We can only chase death
By leaving Green pastures.
Something is illusion
Death is – reality.
How to Live in Africa as an African
Don’t wear beards
on your neck or around your wrist,
It is diabolical
Don’t wear a native dress
to office,
you are depicting Africans as primitives
Don’t worship your forefathers gods
because it is black
since whiteness is the measurement we use
for judging righteousness.
And a white god passes judgment after life.
Vindictive punishments awaits your soul
if you do not accept whiteness as holy
and black as evil.
Don’t protest against ill government
It means you do not have works
to do.
Don’t order pounded yam
at a restaurant in your street
You will be labeled as ‘uncivilized’
by your own people.
Don’t speak Youruba,
or any African language,
to your new born babies.
they will not be intellectually inclined.
In Africa, imitation is the only means
for survival.
So, when you get to an interview
Imitation will get you the job.
Dress, walk and talk
like prince Henry.
Don’t speak your mother’s tongue
it means you are uneducated.
Do not sing afrobeat,
if you want to earn money with music.
Mix it with some hip-hop or pop gibberish.
SYNOPSIS OF A FATHER’S PHYSIOGNOMY
i
To imagine, your nuclear family as a language you must pronounce needs a thorough study. Family is the first medium for building a self. Pronunciations are often erroneous once a lacuna loops-into the word. What counts when you want to take your family as a language, is it blood or relation?
ii
Zero counts. How do mathematicians validate what counts as zero? Is it when emptiness fills a place or when all is void (Not Moses description of void. There was water; sands must be downward, too. ). If zeros are recognized on those two bases –emptiness and void- then, mathematics is not an ideal language that warrants truth: it is a sham.
iii
My thoughts are presuppositions. I have seen entities that do not count. Like a father who works to afford transactional sex. Like a father who steals from his wife purse anytime, hunger visits his stomach. Like a father who eats breakfast, lunch & dinner, not minding Israelis already exhausted God’s manners. Like a father who transformed his wife to a punch bag and his house, a boxing avenue and his room a boxing ring. Like a father who turned his wife sight towards darkness forever. Fathers like that must not count as part of those syllabuses you pronounce when you want to compose the word by which you pronounce your family. Every zero father has an innate talent of masking the animals in him with humanity.
In Syria
Salah and I escaped
The blast that ate our mother
And turned our father
To the offering God punished
Eli’s sons for eating
Looking for the safest tattered house to sleep:
I held Salah’s hand, smiling
To him
As if what we just lose is the leg of the goat our father rears
Before death
Everything in Syria will make you cry, so why not smile?
I know Allah hates oxymoron
A bullet entered through Salah’s forehead,
While we were fleeing from gunshots,
I smiled and took it from the back of his skull
& put it in my pocket
(I cannot carry a dead body with me &
I have to show the world I have a lineage)
My smile convinced the BBC journalist
(Just as I know, it is convincing God)
So, he came to me and asked me:
before now, what do you want
to become?
Me: I want to become some mothers’ prayer
every morning they wake up to pray
for their children.