For Mummy EOO
I
His
grandfather. It dawned on him that he wouldn’t want to be like the old man, as
rich as he was. The name ‘Babatunde’ was a means of making him fill his void in
the cosmos, the family in particular. He thought of the void and what had
caused it. He thought of himself. He thought of death. He decided to drop a
name. The name. He could opt for a better one; one without meaning. He picked I. I,
for the love of its insignificance.
For the
fear of Death, he is I.
II
Insignificance.
Death attends to it like it would its converse, the consequential. I does not know. I is he who perfumes the air with the fart that must not reek; he
wishes to live and not die.
III
Wish. I
wishes death would come for him at some ninety-something years; early on a
Sunday morning and in an atmosphere drenched in showers of kinship and the resonance
of hymns.
I,
like most mortals often forgets that it is divine to grant or prohibit, human
to wish. I needs to know Armattoe.
IV
Death’s
an obedient messenger of nature, the divine... I has learnt to scream at it. ‘Enough!’ he says when death strikes
close by. This, I does amidst tongues
and Psalms of rebuke. He seems not to know that death’s no kid such as would be
scared by the sternest of orders. Rather than dart, hot urine cascading its
thighs, it waits for its moment. That moment when I’s clock would cease to tick.
V
…tick…tick…tick…tick…tick…tick…tick…tick…tick…tick…tick…
