How Time Flies Poem by Alex Adeoye

How Time Flies



My father has his tongue
On what he wears
I grew up to know him on trousers and tin shirts
With a belt of an iron head, silver or gold
Beautiful designs, all on shoes
That proclaimed western gods,
a hilly bully that fake him taller.
How time flies,
He wears ‘buba' now
Covered with ‘agbada'
Made of same fabric or not
Same colour or mixed,
But on pleasure-fit
Pairs of low hill shoes
And adorn it with a cap
while a bead rest pleasurely
around his neck, to match.

I pleaded with him:
Sir, you could inter-wear the former code of dresses
and the latter
He shook his head in disapproval

And I said 'wearing shirts and trousers
Makes smart of you'
I had pressed further,
'No way! ' He said
I asked why?
'They are not ours,
All are remnants of slavery modernized
Things of the past.
They are sold to us, good
We too have a good products to offer for sale'.
He concluded.

POET'S NOTES ABOUT THE POEM
This is about how African people came to recover there dignity and idensity through there dress code
COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Bri Edwards 12 July 2013

i had to look up the word ephemera, AND read the poem again. i found agbada online but i doubt i found the definition of buba that you meant! ! ! (i looked up buba and bubba) i'm not familiar with some of the expressions you used, like a hilly bully that fake him taller [do you mean to write fake or make i wonder], and has his tongue, but i get the picture you are painting of a father who has returned to traditional african clothing and refuses to compromise with his son on his wardrobe choices. thanks for sharing.

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Babatunde Aremu 12 May 2012

This is a good effort. Very apt in transforming experience into literary work.

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