"African Poetry 1 - My Father's House"

My father's house

Image source

My father never lived in his own house,
As they were words from his old mouth,
My father's fragile body was his house's house,
The legacies that time and corruption cannot bow,

---

Day and night my old man chewed,
On the very words that he cannot speak,
At dusk he sits in solitude by the tree,
To converse with spirits I cannot see.

---

I liked to hear him talk at night,
Under the influence of a day old wine,
For he'd speak on and on till late,
Thinking by the power of the wine
that the earth is not a place

---

The words of my father,
The house in which he sheltered,
It has no windows or carved doors.
It was made to leave and never return.

---

Like the spilt milk,
Like the split wind,
And the spit spat.

---

I have never seen my father's house,
I have only seen it's treacherous paths.
The house that lead to peril
The house my father got lost in.

---

Thank you for reading.