First Gong Vol. 8: Thrust FIRST GONG 8 THRUST | Page 109

WE BOUGHT WHITES AS SLAVES - Oloyede Michael
The sea was on a sojourn to see the moon,
The night broke the luminescent stool that held the Sun,
The moon adorned the incandescence of the sun,
The sea was jealous and erupted into raucous flood,
'You are not my type,' said the moon to the sea;
The sea incurred grief and wiped its face with its waves,
I know the name of brokenness:
It is called Pain.
I recognise the lump of forgetfulness:
It is Yester noon, the rainbow refused to catwalk on the runway of obeisance after
the rain got the Iroko tree derailed.
The skies still in mourning.
My great ancestors told me how they bought white slaves with cowries from sold
lands.
How they slept for four days in wait for their balance after a sip of whiskey, and
woke up festooned, wane and tattered.
The sea still swells from the putrid smell of our drowned and dear black slaves;
They were fathers and were supposed to be fathers before the sea got them
drunken to demise,
The ocean pukes on the earth each time memories met disgust:
Of lost brothers,
Of sallow hands fisting the waves, legs tapping on quails and nose gasping for
salvation..
My ancestors bought whites as slaves and to tend their palm fraught soil...
This story is sliced with pain, paged with shame and told with lips sore.
Oloyede Michael
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