Poem : Life is a b**** - Akeem Adetayo Oyalowo

Make of this, what you will, but this is my take on recent happenings:

I am a grey strand in a blackened hair
Darkened skin in a earth deemed fair

I do not belong here

They keep planting seeds and reaping poison
They carry baskets to distribute choices

I do not belong here

I long for life for my thoughts
Aware being alone here is odd
I am the sensitive soul preaching empathy
Blocking saliva amidst panting breaths is how they show sympathy

I do not belong here
I see you are learned
So you love making the simple complex
You should have seen me giving up on you
Surely the scars you bear didn’t deliver a lesson or two

I do not belong here

A thousand things in common
Two items makes us different,
So we become forever stubborn
Unrelenting, unrepentant
Change-resistant, whatever the weather
When minds don’t make use of memories
When memories are sifted, because we love to tend to agonies

I do not belong here

Innocence they say is for the dead
It doesn’t matter how you lay your bed
What matters is how you lie
And use our heads to be ahead

I do not belong here

Years don’t count anymore
Seeing ourselves crawl
And learning to run together
Filling our forms
Realizing we are supposed to battle
Paying for enlightenment
But therein giving encouragement
To try hatred as if it’s a sip from a drink
Unlearning all you have known before now
As if what you’ve paid for is a shrink

I do not belong here

The odd one out
Logic says if you are alone
You shouldn’t say a lot things out loud
Not begging to stay in
But not deserving to be shown the door
Allowed to choose sides, but not what to believe
You can decide to smile and not act like you are bereaved
Even if loss of freedom is greater than life
I am suffering inside but decency obliges me to smile

I do not belong here


Most of us are drum-keepers

Selling only liquid contents
Happy to share, knowing the danger it portends
Faith says heaven beckons
Tongue says we should always be the force to be reckoned

I do not belong here


I am asked to keep my feelings
If love is all you have, you better be leaving
Agora is no longer a gallery of virtues
It is like any place else
We are addicted to battles
Allowing ourselves to be led
Just because he’s proven himself to be crude and vile
A scavenger
Who says we should queue behind avengers
A hate bank
Who says we should keep our thanks

I do not belong here

I am better than your proposition
Would rather be called a brother than an opposition
I am broken, seeing the positions you have taken
I am wondering if I’m the only one
Seeing commonsense forsaken
I am silenced by a noise that is not directed at me
But by contents refined in savagery and mean…


Akeem Adetayo Oyalowo
June 15, 2016