FATHER AND SON
by Akinnmade Abayomi Zeal

HE traipses in with a souring countenance
and glinting eyes
Having survived jeers and taunts of the wealth drunk
mates
He nurses the bruises of his bullied legs
'Life has gone askew',  he bawled at himself.
'The world has wrenched away from its roost and doused.
While I was more child than now, the world finds peace with me
We used to smoke our candies and lollipops
We were fraternal with different twain.
We bathe in dust side by side with love
And hatred finds its place beneath the  soles of our boots .'

He comes away from his eavesdropping
To school the grudged hapless son :

'Peace! Be still! Steel yourself from grim I plea
I have found a remedy to your woes.
At Better Days College!
You will no longer bandy with your betters!
There you will be gorged with love and clemency.'

Numbed and stupefied he looks.

' Why Better Days?'
I have learnt to love here!'

'I had known that you might know no peace there
I had known that you flock there with your betters,
People of higher race and grace
People of luck with less love for your people
People whose colour of their eyes makes them betters
People whose saves are bloated!
I only took a risk!
I knew you will find no love but lost.
I knew your meager twain will wane you.'

'But why Daddy?'
Why should all this be in being?'

'The world has tilted scrupulously I tell you
You cannot know even full peace at Better Days College.
Not anywhere in the world.
Peace cannot romance with men as beast as they are!
Unlikely my Boy! Unsusceptible!
Less the day these classes are crushed
and made obsolete,
Less these colours of our skins are mere flesh
When men eschew their source and swim into one another,
Less that our worths make us not any better than our peers.'
I affirm :
'Peace for men will be hatred!'