Read: How i walked away from God

Dear God,

I’m tired of accusing you
But tonight that was you i saw
With the red jacket and the ripped jeans
With your hair braided.
The face cap almost made it possible for you to deceive me
But that cologne and the tattoo around your neck,
The mask couldn’t hide.
So here’s the question:
Why are you following me?
I have placed calls to you severally
left countless messages and voice notes
I even mailed, sent a fax and enveloped a letter stamped and addressed to you.
The last time i visited, my family was sick
I didn’t come to ask for much
We just needed medicine. We only needed bread.
You didn’t say, but i knew you were tired already.
So i let you be. And then my mother died.
You were at the funeral.
I saw you behind the tree where Florence was buried.
Her mother died too after you gave them false hope.
You said you would provide for them.
You responded to their letters just after they died.
I came to your house because my father asked me to
I don’t believe that even a reply from you to any of our messages
would make a difference. Tamia already dropped out of school.
She sells daddy’s flowers at the roadside now
I even caught you looking at her on Saturday.
Why are you still following me?
You hid behind the woman selling pumpkins
at the market the other day.
It was you
You had a forest on your face
And i’m wondering what happened to your clipper.
Your hair looked darker, maybe you dyed them.
I saw you again at the police station
the other day. It was you.
Your uniform looked tardy on those wornout shoes.
Has your father fired the laundry man?
Did the butler come late again? Has his daughter been delivered of her baby?
I think you need to rest.
You wear worry below your neck like a clavicle
Get a clean shave and some food to eat.
I don’t appreciate how you follow me around
keeping tabs on what i do and where i go.
If i had realized it was you
sitting by the corner of that store
posed as that little boy begging for food
I wouldn’t have cared.
You have nothing to give to anybody except pain
They gather around idols screaming your name everyday
And i see how those shoulder pads of yours stand;
like trees stretching to be the first to be touched by rain.
I burnt the wiggle room where i kept the things my father said were yours
My father believes in you. I don’t!
If the curtain tears again during your ‘re-crucifixion’
I’ll be the one to sew it because it’d have been a lie.
And do please leave the body of that man plagued by the stream
You make him dip into the water every now and then
contaminating how we drink.
I have erased the memory of you.
If i see you again i wouldn’t still know you
You died with my mother

#Poet Jeremy Uke