The Children of Plenty Homes

  1. How do you tell the story
    of a boy lost in Lagos?
    Say in love; say gay;
    crushing the city into crystals
    evenly decorated with hate.
    Do you begin with phrases like
    ‘Once upon a time’, ‘In the land of myth’
    or do you run into the end?
    Maybe the story began with you
    screaming at a boy
    for tasting another boy’s heart,
    maybe it was the day
    mathematics was taught in church,
    a man and a woman would be one
    but a man and a man two.
    At the age of squirrels
    a boy in love learns to make a home
    in the eye of a mob;
    that is where legs bleed
    as gun shots deafen another boy;
    he has become an ant
    in the midst of feasting lizards,
    what is he to think of this place?
    Lagos is a death trap for boys
    who hunt in skin of others.
    He says he is Olumide
    but this place calls him fire; dead man;
    meaning he is not welcomed,
    he becomes one with the smoke
    and you run to greet his skin with water,
    only to become a lake of tears
    that your kind may drink from
    and become quiet as the night.
    How do you live again
    with the ashes of a lover in streets?
    But this is home; a city whose
    walls remain higher than a boy’s dream,
    maybe your story is a short history
    of God, waiting on hearts singing
    in darkness.