Far Away Poem by Seyi Omotoso

since you've locked your cupboard of love and swallowed the key

since my oily songs, to your ears, sound like thunderbolt, splitting, to your ears, pepperish...

you said of my birthmark,
the beautiful signs mother drew on my cheeks with razor

you said they were bizzare; made me look like a monkey or a chimpanzee... you didn't remember
the animal

but what more can be worse than those?

you said you can't follow me home,
because I bath with black soap and cream with palm
kernel oil
because, I cannot afford your merica soap and lawndan lotion
and your foreign skin would ache and fade
and smell of black soap and palm kernel oil

then, let me go far away to find my own woman

black pearl of my mother's soil
who would not be ashamed to call my mother, Mother

not be ashamed to scratch pleasure out my dirty back at
nights

black pearl of my mother's soil,
who baths with black soap and smells of palm kernel oil.