(for Ikenna)

 

He sits, staring at the tv with eyes unblinking like a cat,
this son of mine whom I do not understand and whom I understand
little and who looks, not like me or my love but my
mother, his grandmother, who looks, not like us but
like people who live in the eastern region of a country and
who is guilty of stuffing a child’s impressionable brain
a disquieting dose of violence and mass murder.
In a bid to distract a boy I ask: the topic at school today?
Middle East, he answers as if his mouth were a trigger
and the question a shooter’s crooked finger,
waiting for the animal to venture within killing distance.
Once that damned machine wraps itself round a juvenile’s body
it takes a miracle to break the hold.
I shift into low gear: listened to News at Seven?
Armenia, comes his response. They quarreled and fought
over Rohingya and India-Controlled Kashmir.
Maybe the fault is with a father’s grammar which smells of
old and worn, his voice, bleached of colour and texture.
I realign my mouth, readjust my vocal chords:
prayer point at church today?
Rwanda, he drawls, cool to the point of being inaudible
and stamps to attention his middle left finger:
they called them cockroaches and rats, cut them up with cutlasses and machetes.
Problems, like thorns, can grow on any given tree but
the most difficult to solve are those planted with your hands and
manured and irrigated by workers hired and paid with your money.
I hurried into my firefighter’s outfit, strapped tight my helmet.
Where are you, Granma? Here I come with a bulldozer and excavator.
I must dig you out today. I swear I must dig you out today.
You must undo whatever magic you have done
to pin a boy permanently to the mat.

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Frank Okay on Unsplash