Fathers
With girl daughters
Fathers
With boy sons
Fathers who strive
Fathers who thrive
Fathers
With without families

Fathers
who do what they have to do
For their girl daughters
For their boy sons
Who need presence
Who stomach absence
Fathers who want to be home enough but are not home enough,
in the evenings

Fathers who
have to make a conscious
decision: succeed or fail
Who bought mufflers so
Their girl daughters and
Boy sons could done jackets
Who freeze
So their families wouldn't get a frostbite

Fathers who stopped everything
To give everything
Fathers who lost to gain
Fathers who cry
Fathers who return
No words spoken
everything said
Fathers who did not return, physically,
but were received
Folded flags,
Where no words were spoken
but everything was said

Fathers
Whose stories have never been told
Yet be told
Fathers who serve
So their girl daughters and
Boy sons could sleep and purr

Fathers who bind broken limbs
Fathers who accomplish one
To be bedevilled by two
Fathers both mom and dad
Who tie ribbons and
Talk to dolls
Who brush out tangles
And buy pads
For their girl daughters
Fathers on five jobs
Who crouch on couches
Fathers who chase demons
Fathers who tell tales
Fathers who switch off lights

Fathers who rise before the sun
Fathers who rise with the sun
Fathers who died
Fathers whom we lost
Fathers new
Fathers old
Fathers everywhere
Fathers whose
Girl daughters changed them
Like Common
Fathers blessed with Riley Curry's
Whose warmth
Whose joy
Whose girl beauties
warm the world


Fathers who have lost fathers
Fathers who never rocked their
Girl daughters and boy sons
A joy they only saw on a scanner
Fathers who had to give up their
Girl daughters and boy sons
Unwillingly
Only to begin to die themselves,
Plant a tree.

(c) Lake Adedamola

I feared this would happen someday
It did today.
I saw you and froze.
No, I didn't see you,
My heart did.
The one you left like a disused ice rink
Hemmed in dejection and despair,
Collapsed it's roof and
Subject to the elements
The one that had only words too sweet
For your hollow heart to salivate on
It didn't die
Not a natural death.
So I feared you might rouse it again
But I cannot question what right you have to that, because
I never stopped loving you.

It can't rain all the time
Where will all the water go?
It will rain sometimes,
And you will get drenched,
Drown maybe; But,
The sun will shine,definitely
'cos you still breathe.
And the water will ebb
Slowly,
Not as you wish,
Swiftly,
For it is in your memory,
Permanently.
But you will smile
'cos the sun will shine
Even for you.

I will rather we never met
Than meet and part.
I will rather am not writing you
Than write and you
Squeeze the ink
Out of my words.

I will write then,
Write words fit for the one I met,
Whose words I am wrought upon.

Long before the world beheld me
Our heartbeats synchronised.
You squeezed my heart, gently
To bring it peace
When the world had war
You looked deeply at it seams
As I  blossom,
Ran your fingers along
Felt your fingers around
Weeded,
And soothe frays.

I will write
To the one worth writing to,
Who remained when others left,
My mother.

I opened my eyes
And I met your eyes
I met your eyes
And I found my heart
I found my heart
And I met myself
In myself
I met you.

(c) Lake Adedamola.

I didn’t forget
I couldn’t get myself to.

I never started
I couldn’t bring myself to.

Sometimes I wish I could
Most times I couldn't help it

To try…? To try….?
I’ll have to change my heart.

It didn’t stop loving you,
How hard I worked at that!

I throw someone else at it,
It would not shift ground.

I’d lurch anyone its way; a choke hold,
Boomerang, It lands back at your corner;

Am beginning to think you took it with you
And left me a replica to tinker.

Your laughter still staggers round my ear
Your touch still makes my skin scale hurdles.

Like the path the sun trails everyday to the west
My heart settles on you in every way.

I didn’t do you any wrong
You wronged me neither.

I didn’t forget your kiss,
How could I, when it was shared.

I didn’t forget
How could I get myself to?