RECOLLECTIONS OF THE DAY A WHITE MAN BURIED A BULLET IN MY FATHER’S BODY // Poem by Daniel Aôndona [the rhapsodist]

Home holds history about white skin men

Who drew scars on the flesh of our ancestors

But we are who we are, known only to us.

I know of tales older than my father’s name

Tales of life and death, now called myths

But my mother’s tongue never tells a lie

Hence, her words are immortal in my thoughts.

Who are those who come to kill our beliefs,

Replacing them with meaningless ideologies?

When our fore kinsmen gave trust to them,

They in return, defiled our soil with evil deeds,

Enslaved our kings and left our queens in pain.

Look, I bore the taste of grim at an early age

Cause mother is a replica of anything that grieves.

When her womb was opened for my birth’s sake,

Not only did she bless me with life, but with grief.

I grew up learning how to hate my skin colour,

Believing everything white was a precious gem

To be worshipped wholeheartedly by anything black

Till the day, I saw my father’s body soaked in blood

After he was on a run to save his motherland,

To restore glory to a place where foreigners defiled

But then, his story was cut short. He met his end.

Ba..ba, ba..ba, I chorused in tears. Baba was dead!

Breathless I saw him. Baba in peace had gone to rest

By a bullet, shot from the pull of a white man’s trigger.

© Daniel Aôndona [the rhapsodist]

Author

Daniel Aôndona [the rhapsodist] is a lover of arts and culture, a young, prolific, and award-winning writer who hails from the Konshisha local government area of Benue State, north central, Nigeria. He is a member of the Hilltop creative arts foundation, the founder and mentor of The Newborn Poets. He is a spoken word artist, short story writer, book reviewer, a poet and enthusiast of literature-in-English who writes from Abuja, Nigeria with his works published or forthcoming on literary magazines like, Synchronized chaos, Spillwords magazine, Arts lounge, Power poetry, Words-Empire, The muse journal, Words Rhymes & Rhythms, World voices, Paper Lanterns and others within and outside Nigeria. Aside being a writer, he spends most of his time studding, playing games like word-search puzzles, graphics designing, drawing and painting, as well as making comic books.

Daniel can be reached on his social media platforms@ Facebook_ Daniel Aôndona_ Instagram_ daniel_aondona_ Twitter (X)_ @aondonadaniel30

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