Mr. Africa Poetry Lounge!
FAMILY REUNIONS IN A AMERICAN TRADITION
The importance of family bond
has little value these days.
We share the same blood
but share different identities.
We come together sporadically
to say good bye to the dead
and never enough to say hello to the living.
So why do we come together
to walk around fully dazed
with hearts like half & half
having given out one part to industrialization
and the other to hypocritical beliefs.
We have become zombies/strangers
to our own children.
We don't even know their purposes
and very little of our own, if any.
Even our elders have become clueless
being too busy trying to make Bill Clinton their idol.
What legacies, our great, great grand parents
have tried to spread like tree roots
have been replaced with blindness and confusion.
We sit and walk around as if we
have the world in the palm of our hands
selfishly thinking that we are individuals
who must fend for themselves.
Many of us have become slaves to corporate America
and the desire to be like the Joneses
while our own kinfolks get lost in the shuffle.
We brag to others about the materialistic
things we have and will soon achieve.
but never talk about what we can do together.
The Mexicans do it why not us?
Why are we abandoning what our great grandmothers
and grandfathers fought and died for? Why are we
leaving our young shedding tears we created
in our hopeless minds? Why are do our dreams have
no reality? Our future having no ever after
as we walk around with our hearts cut in half
looking for ways to leave behind the roots we came from?
Searching for the strength we so desperately need
from friendly pats on our stooped backs to lead us on to eternity.
Written by Olutunde Olufemi
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