BITTER KOLA
by Olalekan Hussein
Where are those beautiful days?
When children pluck their happiness at night
Listening to folklores under the mango tree
smiling at them like an aesthetic bud on a pristine flower?
Where are those beautiful days?
When bothers groove jauntily in our local village
Pleasuring with fresh fetched palm wine
From the elongated iroko tree
& playing àyó to erase doldrums from their turbulent hearts?
Where are those beautiful days?
When sisters become cutlery of dance
Lacerating our moroseness with ballads and dances?
Those days we have sold in return for affliction
When Moon and sun would smile at us
With their glittering teeth capturing beautiful women’s hearts in their husband’s beds.
Those days have been exchanged with isolation
& nightingale carries our ecstasies
To zephyr, blowing away our joy into ashes and smokes.
Our lives become a bitter kola placed on a baby’s mouth
& become an awful wound in a baby’s heart.
When shall these days visit
Us in our abodes?
Because, this love is deteriorating
And these souls are melting like candles?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Olalekan Hussein is a Nigerian writer, born and raised in Lagos State, Nigeria. He develops much interest in Literature and delves into the writing of poetry, fiction, nonfiction and other genres. He’s an acquisitive reader and a lover of nature, and currently a student of a prestigious Arabic/Islamic institution in Lagos State (Darul Falahi).
If Olalekan is not perusing the holy Quran and other Islamic-related books or scholars’ books, he’s definitely scribbling his pen to catalyze beautiful writings for his readers.
Lovely words