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