Illustration by Tim Robinson.
I stand outsidebecause I cannot go inside.
My mum has run out of love to give me.If I desire so much to be purple
I could as well plant my own flowers.Look at me outshining my country:
I didn’t kill a moth because it startled me.I took it to a city of flowers,
wished upon its wings,set them up against the wind,
from where my answers would soon come.Before a begrudged audience,
I admitted am not a good man. I am selfish.I have my father’s dentition, his regalia of shame.
Neither cheesing nor sadness can save me.I smile, & the people who love me
are disappointed. How is it a dead man,instead of laying still in his sleep, still
chooses to haunt us with his mistake?They look at me, & it is not them who hurt.
It is the vase I filled with my love, hoping itwas everything my hibiscus needed to thrive.
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I did not start a war I knew would be lost.I took my kitten to the vet, read it the 1st Amendment.
I did not send a man to the moon to masturbate.Bet, I dug my father out of his grave to mock him.
I did not evade tax.I drank with a politician.
I poisoned myself to get rid of my father.I am not a good man.
I’d sell my country for crumbsif I ever had to protest for anything.
I am not a good man.I sent a man to the moon in prose,
denied him in poetry. If I sent my fatherflowers right in time for father’s day,
would they grow to obscure his memory of me,or would their fragrance extinguish what is dead,
& set me free? I am a good man.I made a man die for me, on the moon.
Àkpà Árinzèchukwu