THE SON OF MY MOTHER

The son of my mother is at it again

He says the Àgbàdà and Asọ-òfì weigh too heavy

& they are not modern

He feels comfortable when he wears the rope

He rejects the food he ate while growing up. 

He says the aroma makes him puke

The son of my mother now has allergy

To the foods that made him so strong

He now eats with a three-headed steel & a knife

I pray he doesn't cut his tongue one day.

The son of my mother never allows his babe

To decorate her hair with cowries and rub it Adiagbon

He prefers another woman's hair on her

She either wears it or add it to hers

The son of my mother abhors our local medicine. 

The medicine our mother bathed him with

As toddler to when he started having wet dreams

"Eew, your so-called medicines smell like shit"

He prefers to be pierced with a needle.

The son of my mother says there is nothing

In his inheritance, left for him by our father

He prefers to go and packs snows and babysit

In the west —

where another son of my mother was killed recently.

© Oladapo