FOR FELA by Ofem Ubi

Day39

#365daypoetryforadvocacyandsocialchangechallenge

Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti;
That was the name your parents
Stapled on your forehead
like clips holding fast to a napkin on the wire,
Your visual identity

It’s sad your breath left before ours came
Leaving our ears to tales of you and your music.
We still listen to your songs;
We loop your voice until it pats our sun lashed backs to sleep,
We regurgitate your lyrics like the sun does itself every morning

And yes we still dance to them,
As feet take turns to introduce themselves
and the bodies they belong to

You are the true hero;
The dauntless crusader,
And your song was a transcript of reality
The very one we live in

Umpteen times father would play your record
On the old turn table
And though we were cradle,
We could still connect to your voice until
you became a home culture
The years have sped past,
Father joins you beyond
and we still keep the ritual,
It keeps his spirit close to us
The fort that holds home in the absence of his presence.





Ofem Ubi is a native of Ugep, Yakurr Local Government, Cross River State. Born on the 25th of May 1996, a four hundred level student from the department of Mass Communication, Cross River University of Technology, Calabar, Cross River State. Ofem is a writer whose passion lies in poetry, but would expand to other cores of writing subsequently. He does justice to his work by infusing deep sense of imagery from different strands of thoughts to add life and nature to his literary pieces. His works usually are extracted from our daily activities which make them more relatable, visible, enjoyable, understandable and appreciated by the audience. He has ran several online poetry series which are heavily supported and furthermore, visually explained with the use of fine art/conceptual images, these are laid evident in his social media handles/profiles, he sees poetry as a tool to inspire and awaken the minds of people especially youths as he hopes to conquer the world one poem at a time.