Lines Marked on Lily’s Heart

There are few people who observe to see
That which is hidden far within
Away from eyes that genuinely care
To conceal the scar that so often stares.

Each time your eyes silently speak
In those nights, in those tumultuous moments
I beckon back albeit coded
Saying: Do not let your placid spirit shrink

19 November, 08. University of Ghana.

Thoughts on a Poets Weak Bed II

A hole dug here, a hole dug there
Sealing up our lies that lie everywhere
We ,ust be crazy for our arbitrary digging
Done long after our fine polishing

Thoughts on a Poets Weak Bed

We poets are like rags
Called in time to wipe
The messy madness of politicians;
Our praise lies on some hill up high

For Afua

Books cannot be loved for their self;
It is the secret gratification therein that help
Free you from the labyrinths
That hovers over you like a ghost

Those countless pages whatever they hold,
Is a journey worth onto the unknown;
Like light propels you into things never seen,
Though you are slow to disown the web strings
Those dried bones, those dark thoughts, those beliefs.

But the joys in new found knowledge breathes
Into your erstwhile dark shallow mindset
That lay vast and barren like a desert
That only makes companion of a drifting wind

So books become your oasis of thinking,
Forever keeping fresh, forever oiling;
Forever bringing life, forever making meaning;
Forever making of you a human of understanding…

In The Light of Our Tomorrow

Shrinking

Shrinking...

shrinking to the core

Man has lost reason

Man has refused the light

What Man has been longing for ages

Man is shrinking

Shrinking his power of thought

To his vast stretch of rich unusable land

He must lose reason

His eyes set nowhere beyond his corridors

Shrinking, Shrinking, Shrinking

Flipping his very self to hide in his ears

Man cannot think the possible

of the impossible

His firmer grip of the imagery of the impossible

is first forged, then the possible

must be forced out of Man

for he has lost reason

His knowing of everything

has become his nothing

So all things held simple

must first be complex

to be broken down to its core again

That is the unsung philosophy

Cyclical madness

Man has lost reason

So we must go to his funeral

It is at the burial grounds Man must think

who next to follow

in the journey of the burying of Minds

Man has lost reason

So keep your beloved lads indoors

He is a thief of minds

He seeks such stuff to bury

So shut your future up--away from Man

Man is you so shut yourself up

lest you kill another Mind of tomorrow

for your tomorrow

Man has lost reason

So he is shrinking, shrinking to the core

In The Newsroom on a Rainy Day

When it rains it pours
when it rains it pours
man flees from the torrents
the city is cheated

The drainage cannot hold
so it vomits the passing water
man is here, man is there,
splish-splashing water everywhere

Oh man! Where is your head?
man is deaf, man is blind
Is your life like these two lines?

So it rains
and man flees to the trees
shade your precious shirt
save it from the rain

Your unwashed tie might smell
flee the rain
flee the rain
and let the tree save man
Your unwashed tie might smell

Man waits for the large drops
to stop.
the rain would teach you, man
the rain would teach you
the seethed rain vows
in a thunderous voice

Yet man flees to the trees
on another rainy day

Here oh The Pranksters

Beware the thumb seekers
Who smile on the photo on the posters
Oh! Novisi says they are impostors
For the enchanting smile
They don to the bank.
They will be back
With their seasonal lie affair,
To reminisce days gone
When they gleefully ate sand;
When they drunk urine with us as our beer.
They will prophesy in times when we suffer;
Enliven our lame lives with sweets—toffees.

So when they come, listen to them my friend
Listen to their holy plea
Oh! They will reappear like locusts,
To feed on your blessed gullibility.
I tell you, they are bloodsucking selfish fleas!
Caretakers who kiss the bottle, but flee at tools.


15 May, 2008.
University of Ghana.

Prospects

There comes a time when
War chanting shall be sang
When eyes, not seen much light
Yet enlightened, shall wrestle.

Sole aim: Get the Caretakers out.

That time the rot shall not be tolerated
A time when the seeds know into the things
Of things not just things
A new wave of brain threat
To oust the old system

18 May and reworked 27 July, 2008.

Leadership Mountain

Some say leaders are born
Others say leaders are made.
It's not a question of where leaders should come from
But that leaders are; that they impact on their age.
My urge is don't let this gathering
Be the usual much atalk about nothing

Raymond Abaifah does the surgery on humans
For their business senses to aid man
He has done it on you all here who listened;
So, don't let this moment of enlightening
Lead us to the train of foolery--
Where if you and I get on board with a fee--
We would have gone on a time-wasting spree.

But no! Michael Ohene-Effah knows our cedi's worth.
Use his tools for strategy,
Not just for business and profit;
But for your person, for your very self to progress

For a leader must possess strategy
To steer himself, his business, his people;
For his country.

Presented at Foundation for Initiative Development's 2 Day Leadership Conference yesterday at GNAT hall.

Midnight Dream

The strange thing about love

Is that we usually are forewarned

Of the excruciating heartbreak

That is soon to come;

And must long be endured.

Vigils are held on those dark times

As tears form the dew of the night.

The frequent suspicions discarded,

On first thought for love’s sake

Only betrayed in hours, then comes doom

In the blink of an eye come too soon,

The seeds that form the roots

Of the unfathomable pungent fruits

Of love’s destruction.

Love’s future’s couched in ambiguous tongue

So perplexing for the sufferer to decipher

As with the interminable sea, bereft of wrongs.

Love’s splendour is alluring; an innocent deceiver.

Of like seedling we find in our love.

We are seedlings, siblings still growing,

Spread on the sun on seven beds—

Being nurtured.

Varsity Breaks

She told me to write

Go was simple in tongue

I struggled to echo my thoughts then—

They refused to come

We have been like water and oil

You on me, me on you thing

With infrequent caresses on our selves

Licking you, licking me

Till you dry me; you are water

Every so often, I Klottey*

And you, the Gulf of Guinea;

We have entered each other.

Slowly at first; each kiss whisks us away

Like the crush of those two waters

Dissipate into air to return.

Our sources run deep, we are one.

We strive not hard for our hearts to be won—

We are one.

Then we halted.

Klottey stifled, its source run out

You refused, petrified by raging thoughts

But I feel same when I first healed you

From bitter times, from haunting thoughts

You remain

*Klottey a small river at Osu, Accra, which shares boundary with th Gulf of Guinea , Ghana's coast.

Omodele

It is cool, the morning fresh
with the smell of grass reaching me up high
on my balcony.
Flashes of sweet days gone
run back to me.
When I held you,
like you are my own, just my own
Your freshness is not absent
from this great feeling;
for your presence is more sublime,
buried somewhere deep
in my consciousness.
This refreshes my mangle thoughts,
thoughts of you being far.
I remember everything:
your smile, your fresh lips, your very image
They keep replaying.

This my state has been continual
And I've often denied this subliminal
feeling--
Denied it for my selfishness;
my own sense of security.
I cherish it still, alone.


Yet in my reflection,
when everything is lacerated
and laid bare like a desert,
the truth lams me.
I'm lost when the double must be quizzed
To say and end it,
or be silent and let the sufferance continue. . .

Future Things

The winds of the past
have come to lick our
dried bones
The trumpets have
already been blown;
the thorns laid in our path
For the excruciating pain to come was foretold:
the burning sun and the overflown seas,
air yet breathless, water and not drink

The Rulers have heard and not heeded
And time would not credit to any being!
Would our sufferance be such unseen?

In the Gulf

Not all things true are born best
So love grows in strife, even it heckled
like a mother bird at days end
comes to its nest
to watch and groom its young with bitter patience
So does love thrive slowly in the long wait
like an empire
Ever growing in temptation--of damning mutiny
to break and fall

Finally rewarding

Portrait

Should i run--or would you i fly
to the mountain
To pluck you the flower edelweiss?
I'm not certain it smells better than you
But you beckon and I'll make the Abraham-Isaac journey
Because you, milady, you rule.

Simple. Do not ask the éclat that made me you
You are fair, my dark Lady.
Your edification is not of the
lecturer's master stroke

Beauty has a Price

Beauty has a price!
The many minds and eyes it steals from;
A boisterous bilk unspoken of
That made fortune of
those that seek her to shine
A bond which can keep you
slave as your end is nigh
The attachments so perilous

For Beauty flees when needed most!

Unfinished Lines for Tomorrow

Quiet. Silent. That is what I
have been,
is
and to become. . .
But it is a cloud under
which you veil your grace. . .
and more. . .

Eli Forces a Poem

There's a wretch'd soul
out in the cold
Homeless and with no place
of abode
A white angel comes but
says hello. . .
So the street kid pleads to
man and anchor's hope on
the being above.
He says: Let us be bad in the dark,
men sad and god glad!

Torches that Burnt with Childly Tears

Every man bears his god load
I have been told our people
don't pass a father's
lingering evil
Onto the innocent son!

Still this earth has seen
under the fiery eyes of the sun
Senseless judgments slapped on my face
For my brother's sake; and my poor race
And i'm a naked child
playing in the sun;
Suppressed to hide its rays
as clouds cover
But a while, the radiance of day
The theft of light which
makes me cold where i lay
A produce of men with
thick dark hearts
Laying thorns on jolly paths;
Places where lads like I tread
In our only gaiety as per
our state should be blest
Yet in this ancient promise
of the lamb we await
For holders of our key on
earth from their slumber
awake
Till heaven shows sigh at
our demise!

Tamale Fragmented Together

Cadbury had deserted,
divorced Tamale
And in its stead is the red,
hot sands:
The frowning terracotta.

A wicked bride that borne dirt, childless
But Tamale is a strange
person.
A husband that cares not
to wipe the dusty face of
the weary woman.
If he reneged on his vows,
let him pay the restitution

Yet, in all this, Tamale's
unborn seeds are bright,
brimming with love for self
and others. The hope to
become better fathers.

These lads are in contest
for the Queen's tongue.
The ultimate prize: A mere
smile for saying words
of the Oppressor
But here, the bicycle owns
the streets and man must
bow to her majesty

28 February, 2008. UDS, Tamale

Fleeing Passions II

She was gone.
A kiss on my cheek from her was cold--
a farebad bid.
Like old Judas' betrayal of Christ's true love
She left all things raw--the renegades sword she used
to cut my heart alive.
A kiss is a dagger
Now the pressure of your presence--
a daylight and darkness, my doom.
Still struggling like an eaglet
on a test day by the beloved mother eagle.
The double--high and not behold the earth below
lest you fall, the double
So i should see, love--the double--and be kicked out, a third.
My very end, but i see you

Fleeing Passions

A moment came, then it was two
When your peace coyly caressed my heart
When your sense interfered our matters--our heart
To save your predicted destruction
When you almost halted--it was fear
The merger of the sins of the known
with the untouched virgin unknown.
The hurt past with a future foreseen as precarious--unsafe.
An element of mixed mesh of blurred paths
which you seek to avoid;
you told me, but forgive me.
The thoughts are unbalanced

Confusion, yet we see

The reason features too much
in our heart like the potholes in the Guinea
Gulf sea

Should we stumble before a try?

But it was a moment, then it was two
I knew it and you felt it too
Too many ghosts chasing you.
Or did you mean a ghost of many pretentious faces?
Tell me again, my dear. Your wounded heart
and mind, your fear: Your ghost needs exorcism,
then banishment like a king does a traitor.
Then you are free, unchained to unleash your sweet love
withheld within
Your tormentor no more a possessor
of that incomparable heart. . .
What shall i. . . I know not

Under Legon Bridge: Open Air Theatre

Under Legon1 Bridge, we shall meet:
A conglomerate of incarnated poetic species
spitting proud lines of Spoken Word witty speeches.
"But come, I hear the bridge is dead"
"No. They say a road run through the Bridge's spine
But the symbol remains for us left
Protecting what left shred we share with palm wine,
then it becomes whole."
"True: We become whole
The structure we shall continue remembering,
its shadows lurk still in our minds kicking"
"You talk abstract, of cognitive substances.
Really, that road must be such a succubus
to leave our Bridge possessed, non-existent.
So we cross the road for koose2
That girl from Nima remembers Kwesi's hooey."
"Well... No offence. That was not nonsense.
I think Kwesi was serious and raw"
"What do you call a hoax?
Some friendly cunning or a soft-faced tenacity"
"Don't know. Our koose may be of such brevity."
It comes hot at last.

1 A city in Accra, Ghana
2 Food made from milled beans and fried.

A Dance for the Dead

They come cladded in black and red:
A symbol of their seriousness
They have come because a son, a daughter; no,
a mother
has to be bid farewell, the last.
Respect for those gone; their final right
Whether they wicked or grim in that erstwhile life
But these people have come to Osu in chaos,
topsy-turvy, of no place to place the dead
The old with them, acrid, knowing their time is sure;
that same would not be done them.
Their solemn pass away should not be a dance
A burial is no place for mortal concert
The cadaverous matter itself a refugee
Where shall it seek rest?
A series of miscalculated undefined steps
only immanent in mortal confusion
Let's have more grief in rest,
then we shall dance a dance for the dead.

27th December Massacre

This is the part missing.
Let the lone voice speak
It has long been silenced by pretence
of Caretakers --unheard-- it's a quiet lone voice
Reason-- chased and fled to cold mountains
Fogged eternally, it bears no longer a tongue
But let me speak!
Not when heartless buried minds slaughter
man flesh for their concubines;
for their fat bellies to be filled yet again
at lunch. Caretakers.
I'm the lone voice when bullets kiss the chest and smells.
Let me speak-- lest i become a lone
voice of the eccentric.

A poem on the December 2007 Kenyan post-election violence.

A Reflection

We are like a tree, unable to rid
the evils of our souls
So we await upon a timely bird
to eat of our body;
from it shall die all our worms.
What proves us better cowards
than birds and things breathless?

Seasons

There's a time when gods descend to drink
When it's all silent for the cosmic breeze
to stride in royalness to the spirit river;
The spiritual bath they came for is forever

There's a time when the earth shall cry
Within
When the sobs will silence the sea's roar
For earth to tread begging a halt to this brawl
The hollowness in her belly can only burst a sigh

There's a time when all music will stop.
When man's inside shall refuse any ray
And grief of an orphan shall men embrace
Then man's panacea, a fluke, then a flop

There's a time when all things would be remedied
When refugee minds would be restored to normalcy
And the shiny bald head mad man would cease to be a panache
When the rights of the wrongs shall no more be swayed.

Harmattan Response

I feel the sun now, it's in your eyes
As you look on me, i'm renewed
as the sun rays run through thick
blue-black clouds after rain day
Blessing to the damned on their cursed day
In your eyes the life of plants, hidden beneath
earth, shall shoot to green;
the very breath of your eyes shown
on my docile life quickens my spirit
All these in thine eyes--you have shown me;
so i dote on you