On Mandy's Rebirth

A little wine and we shall all be dead
None shall be spared: bring your last breath
And when we're done, you may retire to bed
For none which we say here has never been said
So remember: Not all things feared are dread
But tonight, the purpose, our purpose for which we gather here
The communion, our union, a year added to her birth
A cause to thank, celebrate; greater things yet to be heard
The blood and mind to this day we hug with her
The labour and sufferance which we all bear
To the gaiety and happiness we all share
Then our bye to embrace our waiting bed.

Ghanaian Talk

In the sun
. . . somewhere in Accra
Awaiting deliverance uncoming from the clouds
What says you?
My government will sweep this Sun
Government does anything, that's true

Silent from Nigeria II

The disorganised life often is complex
Such has been many who live restless
Through a life shy of rules
That sails in tempest like a ship without a crew

Silent from Nigeria

Do not ask me my movement
Have you not heard?
I'm the spirit that traverse
This surface -- for many that spend
Flower and grass to hell's end
Niger blackened; Ghana golden
Ghana darkened; Niger green
By hands apparent -- and unseen
Nigeria the heart; Ghana the soul
The breath that behold us whole
Many valleys and alleys they have come -- UI
Even UG on that mountain high
I'm that soul -- the innocent fire

Images Afar

Once we awoke to the sound
of a ship
Resounding gloom for us from the sea
It had come for our bones;
our blood, our minds
Albino dropped out with blue eyes
Shackled men of earth display
packed by dark men aboard.
The ship sneaked unto the sea
far away to abroad.

A Mine

Everything is tired
That is tired
It's what our bones have become
Eaten with might by termites
Nananom themselves warned
This end.
What we'll become
Togbui, Nii, all added a warning
They echoed our life; we said ours is new
They have seen: this thing that is new
They boomed a warning
Themselves.
Cassava-sticks-wrapped-doomed-to-earth
Ourselves.
That flesh.
Our bone a warning to our flesh

My Land was Dead

In the market, my land lay dead
It bitterly bled to death

We Bleed

One blood
Is what we all bleed
One broom
Is that which we should be
Our bane should not be our sispicion
Our truth pervades our ink, our minds;
Our gong, our proverb.

Africans must pay the African, restitution
To cleanse the African machete
Of crying blood.
For our unity has reticently slept here near
Awaiting a tap to rise.

I was there

So they say and so and so
I was there

So they came to stand
and stand
and stand
I was there

And so they poured it
and cracked
and cracked
like that
I was there

But no abberation
and so it never paused and so
more--like that
I was there

The spirit that perpetuates
darkness and our doom and so
and so we are brats?
I was there

And so they labelled us, me
just an expression
and so
and so
and so
and yet: I was there.

One Morning

As we awoke to the breeze in June
And the wind touched our open sore
Reflection belled our nothingness: we got flour
So we perched here to commune

Our squalid life like an unuttered spell
Cast on a wrecked sore to forever smell
Messaged our status quo
To flies to lick the fluid from the sore that flowed

Various aims yet shaped, unshaped
Left wretched uncared for
On a burning sun like a mad man's sore
Useless, variegated, weather-swayed

This uppity wherein our rulers dwelled
Many at 50 unto our pity
And the hands of frivolities that hijacked our progress
So more woebegone was our sore in this higgledy-piggledy

But one morning hot in November
When we awoke our home unto new salvation
Our souls and lives may ever veer from neglect
When we changed words for us to remember

A Land Lives

Might well as i don't pretend
My land embraced a few bullets
Not dead
And breath that hover here
Only kissed some sedatives wherein they dwelt

So a shock will be a renaissance
As we all bleed for ancestral remembrance
We still are brooms that earth and dust throw annoyance
Strength is no passe' so we forward march our land

Rot

At the bell of freedom
We sprung to flee
Naked
That one we forgot

Soon it caught up with us: our doom
Yet again we flee: but not free
Oh naked
That one was our lot

But now our minds do we groom?
Uncertainty belie our navel hanging
like a peach on a tree
Why naked
That is why we rot

Chords of Man

First read at radio universe, university of Ghana.

The chords struck in staccato
So it came, staggering
On his soul to wretchedness
Hmm.... So he was told

Many other souls
Played disorganized on the piano
Yet Gos shares the gold
Hmm.... So he was told

His life was a guitar
And he smoked it: i saw the tar
Even in this piece, his only peace
Could not have been his own
Hmm.... So he was told

So all our world dwell like a phrase
Held by naked sung and unsung chords in display
And a wrong note is a discord played
So a la-la-la gifts a ray
Hmm.... So he was told

Some Ages

So you awake to the breath of morning
In defiance of the darkness
that withholds many
To twenty

Is the graciousness which
lays on your colour and nature and life
Nothing, but the yearning of years

Then it is time
Reflections should tie your neck
For targets and emotions yet
expressed
That you should crucify all
cowardice
Which dwells freezing in bones and
eyes
So i await
For the air that you inhale
To shut the troubles of age
That lay under your armpit
While you live

The Academic Devil

So we now fight
With the lingering evil of our time

Our freedom; our right
Like an egg is owned now by the devil
incarnate
He threatens no peace
Oh nothing, but to exterminate

I wish not to prevaricate
For truly in this man beholds thousand evils conglomerate
Yes... yes... yes...
Another trouble is imminent

Our guns like a woman's breast
Four years--erect
We shall shoot into his chest
There the devils will lay--splittered.

Truth to a Mother

It came to a stop
A pause.
My thought confused, many, rough
Like the sand

You turn me around
Kre... kre... kre...
Like a berk
Never, my emotions: never correct

And i came to know
That you swept my dark pot
And wiped the ills in my spine
For eighteen and more years a life

Ah My People

So dickheaded be my people
That we praise our suffering
On the heavens
What equals?

And we Africans
Pretend our problems
When we breathe flames
And indelibly trudge with shame

Even with our lot and gem
We eat of the crumbs of Europeans

Those Times And Now

In the dark of their life
Their shadows tickled their quagmire

The decorations of whips
Which like gullies beseeched their backs
Bellowed benignly into our future schemes

Silently preached enlightenment
on our path

Their whistles of hope never paused
For their unity unto itself--was a law

But now we journey to the West
From these parts: our better West
And it jabs our land
Like a stone under the foot of a child

Their Peace

I'll say it
They are lost

I'll say it
These rogues

I'll say it
They are lost

So when life becomes a circus
Where we all move in circles
For fun and bravery--
We lose our very value

They are lost
But i have no clue

Thoughts of a Lost Drinker

And if reverence lies in beards
And forever it should be
That we shall dwell long with our beer
For it is our sanctity

A healer to our bleeding hearts
Our escape from the gas of this world
Then our silent suffering and toil
Shall be nothing, but duff.

For no light is left of us
As man's mind has become dross

Their Peace

I'll say it
They are lost
I'll say it
These roughs

I'll say it
They are lost

When life becomes a circus
Where we all move in circles
For fun and bravery-
We love our very value

Yes they are lost
But i have no clue

Yet

Daunting
A voice danced
Our road is dusty
pam gbam-
Our dam goes down
They weep.

Infants in suits
They beg me: Twisted men
In children panties: bearded women!
Their minds naked
Raging in the evil winds of the desert
They have nothing
Grief dreams
vum vum vum
Like ghosts
Their ideas gaunt
Nothing.
kri kri kri
The devil in their deeds
Not a thing

shii shii shii
They sleep
That i see
Awake them!

What

And don't say me, my people
Are that monkey
You still dream
Swing on trees
In some gloomy jungle

African proverb of the week

The death that will kill a man begins as an appetite.

A Lost Sentiment

I tried
Cried not to come to you
But your sprinkled love on me
Like a blessed curse on the Asante King
That he rages to war
Is greater than that of Amon and Isis

Kre--it broke my heart

I challenge the gods may envy
That which you give to me
And i taste
Never.
Never again have i been insane.

Madness Again

First read at radio universe 105.7, university of Ghana.

Fear maimes me
That my heart weeps
Scared
Afraid for your stormy love

My heart withholds your presence
That feeling
Stop it!
That penetration
The infection
Stop it!
Love like pepper in my eyes
That makes me cry
Pretends to be oving
But pierces needles into my heart
It permits no more

I feel it rushing
Yes-
Yes-
Yes-
Stop!
The weakness your love renders me
Stop.

The child of love
Weakness
Weak-
Bleoo
Weak-
Egbo
That-
That love
Lovers.

Thoughts of an Incarcerated Mind

First read at radio universe 105.7, university of Ghana, Sunday, April 22, 2007.
My liver shook
In the touch of your spirit
And in it
It's your hands i took

At where we depart
Our doubts danced not to leave
That they be like air, not apart
Yet your absence: that i breathe.

Sing It

Presented at radio universe for the first time on Sunday, April 15, 2007.

Let's sing all the Halleluja's
And when we are all done
We shall retire to our beds
And our moon shall be red
In shame

We have been drained
Like sugarcanes
Chaff.
Burnt by the sun

Sons of God
From His presence
To our hut: the palmwine drips from our pots
Is that our essence?

Th Enough

I'll chase death to his hole
For that cold scare he buries in me
Like thousand bees
After me
In my dreams

Death shall deaden, judder, fumble
His feet shall hurt for his evils
Till death can't stand death no longer

But death connives with fear
They plot to take my only dear

The earth cannot gulp my anger
And naked death lies
Waiting on me that i uproot his lies

No more must he don that muffler
He shall not hide his face
And pretend his blood is of a gangster
For where he dwells is nowhere

Yet still, death shall move with tired steps
On his way to his last breath.

My Wings

I'll fly high to the sky
To see the mighty God
I'll carry my gourd
Filled with palmwine
To bless His son, the Christ
I'll tell him my suffering
Perhaps focus, he lost of happenings
I'll say i have become Christ's passion
That man seeks my destruction
I'll tell Him man thanks Him
For their headaches
That they blame Lucifer
For their wars and squalid and champagne

I'll fly to Lucifer
Man says he's a murderer, the destroyer
We shall drink tea
We shall have a feast
I'll beg him to relax
From wickedness for a week
The earth, the, shall feed the pauper and the weak
A truce we shall have

Oh! Man's truant heart
How strange he is.

Not Madness?

First read at radio univers on Sunday, March 18, 2007.


They say love is this
Love is that
Love is there
Petsepetse Petsepetse Petsepetse*
But where?
Where dost love hide
In troubles and lovers plight?
To pain of sore on the leg
In harmattan must love thrive?
Petsepetse Petsepetse Petsepetse
Love wretched with stretch marks
Full with dirty grimaces of betrayal
Which merit self crucifixion
Like that of Judas
Petsepetse Petsepetse Petsepetse
Love mesmerizes lovers to foolish extremes
Even render them mendacious in love
And yet this be love?
Petsepetse Petsepetse Petsepetse
To cry helplessly in slow impatience
To breathe long lost love
The malarkey of a sickness called love
Petsepetse Petsepetse Petsepetse
Funny dreams of treading the sky
The redundant exaggeration of sentiments
For me to fall in love:no
Petsepetse Petsepetse Petsepetse

*this is a Ga( a language spoken in Accra) term which literally means nasty, stinks, or bad.

Ask Me The Poor

In the wilds of my dungeon
My feet sprawled on the cold ground
And my devilish fever
Eats me to my heart
My throat arid like the desert
With pure obsession for water
Saline water
to calm the anger of my hunger
The distaste, discomfort that i live
I curse no God, perhaps no God exist
But my suffering
For fruits that yield not on trees
Or trees that yield not fruits
Is of whose making?

The Awaited Pardon

If i hold you
Would you let me go?
I i err you to your spirit
Would you forgive me: never leave me?
I don't know

Oh we are shrouded in mystery
To swim in the darkness of grieve
Leave you an island of skulls
Would you forgive us?
I don't know

To be pushed and not push
Is a malady, yet masterful rule
Oh my resilient land, my motherland
You are provoked; forgive us
That i know

You died yet lived
And we the sons of the land
Revel your renaissance
Like the reverberations of a thousand trumpets

Still you are plagued by masquerade leaders
Would you forgive them?

The Black Man

The Black man's sickness
Is like the whisperings from the dark fires of hell
It slowly damages his soul
He'll never be his own
Great power lies in the Black man's liver
But it flows mired unlike a river
Such is the ailment of the Black man
Tap your mind and he taps his wine
Pluck a fruit and he takes a stone
Ability is the Black man
To build pyramids and farms
But he dumps his thinking
In his faeces in the morning
I grin not at grubby paradigms
To present my Blackhood as bozo
Black is what i am

Talk Ancestry

Grief, bitterness, heavy tears
Heaved away from me
For shackles of chains drained my feet
To make it slender; thin
My red blood tears
Streamed my face; dried on my cheeks
I called, i screamed
You didn't hear me?

I was slaved; my hands, my feet
Physical. My heart, my mind free
You are chained in your mind, deceived
Your eyes veiled that you cannot see

Reflection

Read at radio universe, university of Ghana, 25th February, 2007.


So i came with my ten fingers
As destiny of tattered penury would have me
Between my mother's legs i saw light
I saw my Africa in deserted silence
I cried
Being born among stupid blacks
Hunger first
Then dry thirst
Poverty which hit me like death in the face
I cried
Being born among stupid blacks
But now i see a new light
My heart-splittered Africa
Was not stupid
My people misled me, not the white man
To think my woes was of the white man
The black man beamed with freedom
Yet he yelled at that white man
That white man.
I cried
Being born among stupid blacks
No more
I leave my tears
With yesteryears
Free from the thoughts of evil fears
Oppression, depression, suppression
But my regression
Blame the black man for the black man
Not the white man for my black land

Beauty

I was just thinking i should add this poem especially with the sort of love been expressed during the week. The nation (i don't know if it was world wide) declared it chocolate day in place of Valentine's day. I think that is far better. But it doesn't bring me on board because i don't know if it's African. I like the chocolate thing, but for the val... whatever, well it may be great too for people. I'm not in the mood anyway. But just thought i should add this for readers. Hope you think about it...

Thousand elements of black splendour
Shall shine into my heart
My love began in the inferno of death
And love plays me like and orchestra
But the harmony leaves me no breath

Love is like a toy soldier
We all fall and shimmer
Such reality is the beginning of your curse
That lingers even to your rebirth

Love dulls your brain
And leaves you sweet aches
But my love is like a nun
Ner beauty is impeccable with misfortunes

A Chat With Death

Read at radio universe, university of Ghana, today 18th February,2007. Feel free and read...

This usually i sadly see
The shackles of fear
That coldly have me drifting

Wrapped in the dirty coat of death
He descends silently like dew
And this truth full well i knew
When it comes with gaunt shivering
I'll be waiting

I had always seen him
In sickness; that grim crippling disease

But don't question his image
Neither that which he holds
His nakedness, hollowness, or rage
For his footprints are heavy, untraceable, and cold

But what do i cry
Life blossoms pressure and pain
So death my brother i embrace
Daily we smile; day and night

The Untitled

The past is alive
Forever holding secrets untapped
It swells in our deepest sorrows
Discomfort to mark our nostalgia

The present is hibernating
Inconsistencies and immoralities unstopped
Like a dead rat that smells in the shadows
Of a church. And a stinking future

Voice of Wretchedness

First read at Radio Univers, university of Ghana.

I cast my lame eyes
On thw dark shadow that follow me
I dream if i may go without it
And slowly i picture my rise
My life is an island
And steadily i'm been eaten by sea
My toil is manifold like the sand
Abundant, worthless and stranded
A distressed soul that i am
I pray i eat my sin
Lynch myself and purge my soul
I'm scared and tired
Of the dirty grimaces of life
What people say i care no more
They say such is life
But why is life such?
The winding unwinding intertwining
Street of life. Short paths to filthy gold
And if it's like this
How things are i don't know
May be you will tell me.

Our Lost Sisters

This poem was first read at Radio Univers, university of Ghana. I have to apologise to any woman who may take offence, even in that i say that she should read fairly. I'm not used to doing this on my works. It is for the sake of a wider audience. I found it necessary as this is peculiar to my 'hood' and almost to my dear country. Enjoy it...


Girl child, sister child
Mother child, auntie child
Sack them from the homes to school
Dig the earth; hide the cooking pots
Let the men cook and wear skirts
The breasted wear trousers and quater shirts
Let us see the women's navel
And their foamy round things
They blatantly display the equator
Between their breast
It parades like a double barrelled gun
Now i hear they dance
Around metals in round acrobatics
Amongst thunderous sounds and blinking lights
Red, blue, white, yellow, black lights.

Gallery

Read at Radio Univers, UG. 21th Jan, o7.

This poem goes to all our African brothers and sisters (or any foreigner) who suffered the act of enormous violence against humanity in Rwanda and elsewhere on the globe. With much passion.


From afar i heard a baby cry
Amidst moving feet of soldiers
No mother, no father.
From afar i saw a one-hand man
Laying with bombs and grenades
No brother, no wife.
From afar i felt the wounds of a woman
Big holes in her thighs, sugary tears
No husband, no children.
From afar a girl lay, blood in her thighs
Disgraced by filthy soldiers of death
No parents, no nation.
We murder, we commit genocide
Any energy? Fight the ills
Fight not my brother, your sister
This is not it, fight
Kill black, kill Africa
Be an enzyme, a catalyst, fight
And destroy all the work
Which Garvey, Luther
Nkrumah and Mandela
Fought and built!
Fight! All of it is nothing
Fight, but chaff
And pictures are better.

Drinks: The Con of Man

First read at Radio Univers, UG. 15th Jan, 07.

As we sat under the tree
The wine filled the sky
And forms dew on our face
To rain a consent of meditation
The world ceases
In deference to our wine
The con in our wine
Cleanses the pong in the air
And if this be pooh-pooh
As drinkards
Alcohol and soup
Are like magnets
And not all drinkards
Are like like dried plantain
Awaiting soap process
Ask the president, the senator;
Ask my MP, my governor
They shall declare my evil
It decorates their rooms
It's the bravery to cowards
Comfort to the secluded
A taste is godly, unseen
A platform to vent your spleen
And a god to be revered

Resonations of the Land

Read at Radio Universe, university of Ghana, Legon.

They rob my sons, my strength
They rob my daughters, my backbone
And still I'm not crippled
The brainwash my land, my people
I create and they steal
And like a fowl i continue to lay
I lay dark clean-shaven men
With metal bones for their farms
Greater minds i breed
And again they steal
And they can't kill me
I just won't die
They suppress my laughter
Because they hide
They hide behind the bullet
And wonder why I'd not died yet
But when i rise clouded by smoke
And walk in the flames of my fury
I shall crash, crunch and lynch them
Yet I'm merciful, not a leopard
I'm not murderous, but an eagle
And no melody mollifies