Junkie on the Block

You want to claim the easiest spot

and drink from the clearest stream.

 

You dream of having the loveliness of the lady butterfly

and glow and glow while hanging on the green leaf.

 

So you sail down smoothly into the soft woods

changing yourself often to stay like a friar in the cathedral.

 

Often you walk the paths looking out like a pregnant lizard

from her perch calculating your moves.

 

Hmm, your judgment is tainted by movies so old,

just ride the subway to where there’s kissing in public.

  

Do you know, when the market is over

all sellers pack and head home?

 

When the drumming is ended

the drums lay quiet and the dancers

go to their homes

 

Why do you linger on the streets of my peace

after you’ve dreamt the night away

and held my dreams in flickering constellations?

 

Why do you snap your teeth like a dog waiting for a cookie,

yap and bark like a pup facing terror of smells and sights.

 

I think, I have known hundred smells

but the fresh spring air has swabbed my mental deck.

 

I’ve no calendar to tell you when spring will go,

it’s as simple as that.

 

The drumming is over

and now you want us to dance to which song?

v. Once We Were One

 

Should we have stayed at home and not thought of here?

Each question we ask on the road is answered by the echo

of our voice alone.

 

All these years of talks and laughter, what did we want

and didn’t know we can’t have it?

 

All these years to offer up our specks of life

only to be imbedded in fragile fabrics of a vast mosaic body;

 

how could they defoliate the field we live from

and talk of people caring for each other, I have no answer.

 

Should we have stayed at home and not thought of here?

 

And I paused to look for peace in the long silence

and for a moment I remembered the fields of praise

on which my umbilical cord was buried; and I saw the end

just as a straw, a feather furling slowly down to a light.

 

Should we have stayed at home and not thought of here?

 

For a moment all my tears were used up;

all I could do was use my dry eyes to draw a fabled bird

migrating away from its nest and breeds in America.

 

I can hear all broods like sparrows returning

with the common song:

 

no sweating in the dark anymore, no more dying

in the ecstasy, fumbling, floundering like a slave in fire

or drowning in the lime or choking in the crowded sea

iii. Once We Were One

Away from home

we swam through hydrogen surfs,

bathed in numberless sands
while ghostlike hands groped for us

like dragnets trawling for corpses.

Many a times our cries were followed

by police dogs snarling from a leash
and we ran through benzene rain,

and glided through clouds and armies of ants

yet, there was no place to hide.

My people, I myself am hell

nobody here planned for me to be born to this.

But soon, we’ll gather ourselves scattered

on every floor like broken Doritos waiting for a vacuum hum.

When we come for the ingathering with broken bones

we won’t bring a stampede of poets, we’ll bring an army of voices;

rattling like ribbed Trojans bagged in cans

plunged into recycle bins, and with the dip done

we’ll be born anew with melodious aroma.

 

Monday morning, you’ll see new artistic types
of graphic beauty and illustrious aestheticism.

And the moving storyline will be an epic journey
of Africonauts, Ghananauts sojourning transformative odysseys.

ii. Once We Were One

Once my people

we were one.

 

We felt our skins held together

and never apart. What borders did we not cross?

 But fifty miles away from the Highlife days of that March

we see with blinding sight. Just fifty miles away……….

 

and we march on heels on the Main Street

sing sin and dance like chickens in garbage pails.

 

How sweet is the dream-salt we taste

with our swollen lips. My, my, my……

Can we rage against the dying light,

bend double to gather what we lost in our fields of praise?

 

Nothing we cared for when the moon was rising

in the fields of praise is honored by the foxes.

I’m drunk with fatigue in these clumsy helmets.

I’m plunged in a gutter, choking, drowning

and these white eyes are writhing in my face.

 

You saw them bearing the farm away though

they heard us sang in our chains like wailing whales.

Oh, my, my, my…………….

Once, sweet was the wine of one flesh in the dead fields of praise

and we drank and drank.

Where are these now?

 

i. Once We Were One

For once we were nothing, but my people once
we were one.
 
Somewhere in the forgotten world once
we both climbed each other,
cleaved and cleaved to one another.
 
We both heard the years hurtling past,
whirring like gears in a hulk factory.
 
We saw kin and kith breathing,
we gathered our thoughts like defetsui leaves
For the diviner and if some death was coming this way
it will go beyond together.

Even before we took Kete to Datsutagba there were no doubts
swarming like reconnaissance planes over forests of sleep,
we were one.
 
We only heard words murmured in love.
 
What a grand time we were. What a grand time are now.
What a grand time………………….
What a grand time..
 
Where are they now?