Saturday, August 29, 2015

And I Sang Hosanna to God

She has a sign on her wall
Stop and smell the roses
knowing you owe
a debt of gratitude for the gifts
so plenty, oh many.
I looked round and saw no rose
She was the only rose by her wall

She has a sign on her feet
Drop in quietly without noise
Inside you can juggle six not ten times
Repeat, once again, only six not ten times
I’ve got no time to waste, I dropped in
I smelled the rose and I juggled not six but ten times
After the water she wants me to drink
I sang for the first time Hosanna not six but ten times


Nightmares

Every night my bedsheets are a snare
I swing, fling and punch my life away

Every night my pillow is a lake
I drown in my own tears without hope

The people I look up to are a harsh sunlight
and their smiles torture and slaughter my dreams

My pain goes deeper into my soul.
it kills my love
the Monster is asleep

I wonder why the sun sinks low
the sky above me burns every little joy I dream

I wait until morning
before my eyes close

in my tears I drown
in my dreams I die

screams woke me
oh, those are mine
I'm sorry
didn't mean to wake you
no, I'm fine
just a nightmare

just a nightmare
until you came in my dreams

The Monster eats pretty princesses when they close their eyes.


Monday, August 17, 2015

She and Me


The greatest news for a long time
Was when I heard she “IS DEAD!”

She was the graveyard of my youth
The leprosy you can’t endure

Right now, I am dozing between belief and disbelief
I remember how she made pain work over time with me

Night and day, my head was lost in the fog
My tears fall like rain before I could cry

She has a heart forged of iron
And her love was full of acid, sulfuric and nitric

I never knew this from the onset
Till she made me eat the bread of sorrow

Tonight, I pray God to grant me a belated solace
And I don’t care to skip work today.




Once, I was there



Clouds are poems Nature writes in the sky
They sing, for us to hear their songs
And what fear they bring us leaves us
When we sit still and what is stirring
In the ticket becomes quiet and like babies
We sleep away from what is afraid in us.

Then many days after laboring hours
When mute in a universe that roars around us
We may hear at last again the uneasy songs in the poems
And when we sing those poverty-stricken songs again
The clouds move as if their awkward task is done.

Sometimes, the whirlwinds sparkle like rollers and screeches
But the seamstress of the Universe leaves the scissors
To cut through shapes designed even though it wounds
When the designer draws the long thread to knot the corners
Like tomatoes nude on the ranks faces torments as it burns in oil
Its teeth only grits uncomfortable tense; but what can it do?

Soon, the designer will return like the evening swallow with smiles
To pour the sobbing tomatoes onto a plate and stretching a smile
Rejoices in the shadow of a cozy comfortable homey shade
Not remembering the discomfort of the destitute moments
When the unsuitable restless whirlwinds blew painfully all hopes
And disgust argues in the stomach and in the pocket was pennilessness.

Once, I was there, an unacceptable embarrassing needy, unsuitable
For the ashtray where I tried to stand up in the poem but rising
My dreams were like a bird without wings in a world
Where pain and disturbingly troublesome glances greeted every hope

Who wants that when we know 
The Titanic was sunk by only an iceberg? 

Friday, July 31, 2015

Yours Forever

Strip me, petal by petal and slowly;
Touch me…and fondly mold me in your open arms.....
Let me feel your breath and the heartbeat in the dance
Let imagines paint me with the trail of your tongue....
And I will forever dance for you and with you alone

See how slowly my body sways, and begs for you
See how my hips whisper to your fiery leaps,
To lead you to my temptation's gate...
Do you hear me? Do you feel me?
Can you gather my tears?

You are the one I have been waiting for
To savor in my well of elegance
To melt me into your waiting arms
Let’s fuse body and spirit when you run the tip
Of your tongue along my spine
Oh this will ride my pulse higher and higher
Leaving me wet and wanting to devour you.

Envelope my sweet surrender
And awake to my addiction to your devilish embrace
Sip my liquid gift of abandonment for you to know, I burn....
I burn for you and for you alone and please,
Take my soft sparkling surrender with you
I’m craving....I’m craving always for the singe that
Trembles my silky will and sparks my hidden desires
That we live forever on this playground with sighs...sighs.

Ooh! Why did I do this? I’m yours forever.




Do You Remember Me?

Hello Dear, do you remember me
We danced together at Tip Toe Gardens before
That was many years ago, many, many years ago
And I couldn’t let you go because of many things
Your love was so divine and your embrace so warm
That I wanted you to be mine though you belonged elsewhere
Do you remember when you made me surrender that night
Today, I’m helplessly helpless, your memory is all I cherish
So when next we meet again I'm going to hold you tight
And squeeze you with all my might because
I am head over heels in love with you
Remember, if you love me like I love only you
No knife will ever cut our love in two
Hello Dear, do you remember me
We danced together at Tip Toe Gardens before
That was many years ago, many, many years ago



Sunday, July 26, 2015

To Whom It May Concern

To whom it may concern:
The words stood long by his side
Like a watchdog at the entrance of memory
This is how he will be remembered.
When they say the last farewell.

He stood looking as if he was solidified
He remembered his dreams for his children
On the verge of difficulties where he saw death
Where he lived without life and faced terror
And danced through profound darkness.

Yet, before the sun set coldly that noon
One walked to his window and looked at him
You are not my father, my father is God in the sky
How odd, he thought, to be blessed with a cuff
But of course, he was blessed to know it now.

To whom it may concern:
The words stood long by his side
And he remembered the journey, the tight pants
The sea-lions barking, and he smiled at her
Who saw a doctor of misery in the father.

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Give us this day our daily bread

Our Father, who art up there
You have given some folks life
And an easy breeze to blossom.

But some are struggling to escape slaving.
Why not fill their nerves with laughter,
Just for a while, as they’re still here?

You feed some with hope every bright day
And they taste their soul's desire in freedom,
And they come to flashing waters with smiles.

For some, on each dark night, at every hour, oh God,
They ebb and eke with life clinging to a stubborn will,
And they die beating their ways towards the rising sun.

Stranded between despair and the grave,
Many live with fronds of silence and hushed music,
waiting for miracles and crying for a revelation.

Oh God, I have faith in you though you left me lonely
in the world of struggles, but I hope to meet you
on Judgment Day to discuss the weary hungered child.


Sunday, May 17, 2015

You can’t have what you want

We all want what we don't have, and such is life.
We all want to go to heaven but can’t afford to die.
Often our favored doors are under lock and keys.
The beautiful apple on the hill is too high to pluck,
What song shall we sing when we can’t have it all?

No one is happy at where he or she is,
There's greener grass in the neighbor’s yard.
Some want to be happy, but can’t afford the pain
We all want a bigger house and a faster car,
We want to hear the truth, but tell lies each time.

We want the world, but is there room enough in the world?
We all wish love doesn't hurt, since it’s meant to be forever.
What do you do, when your best friend is your worst enemy?
Or when saying goodbye is such a painful word, since often
Unwanted pregnancies stick harder than leeches?

I want to be the face you see when you close your eyes
I want to be the tad you need every night when it’s cold
I want to mean your world, to want you burn like a charm
But you make me like a tree in the shadow, like a river frozen.
How can we live when I want you to need me like the air,
But everything I do is a seamless rock, and not what you want.





Friday, May 15, 2015

Meeting Him Riding in the Clouds

(for Agbonugla Kofi Awoonor)

His memory stares at me, dreamy and melancholic
On his head is a tiara adorning a charming face. 
He turns gently his head towards the gathering
A single tear fell from his tender daring eyes 
It carries the anguished burden of a world.
I bowed and saluted him and our eyes spoke.

With a nod he protested the muddle his father’s house
Why trained dogs bark to veil any cries of the people 
Why there are segregated benches in the lecture halls
Why they tortured and broke the legs of the innocent.
And he held up the sign: The Writing is on the Wall
Saying as he prayed: Soon this too shall pass

Before he left, he planted on me nature’s sweetest hug 
From the banks of the clouds the moon gazed at us
I welcomed the farewell, but I shuddered, I stuttered,
And the closer he gets, the further I fall sadly into the mist
Around my terror-stricken ears he whispered his last words
Then he went past into the twilight unseen beyond

* AGBONUGLA: Is an Ewe word for an elder statesman
   KOFI AWOONOR: One of Africa's leading poets, a novelist,
   a statesman who was murdered by the terrorist attack in the
   Kenyan Mall incident on September 21, 2013, Nairobi, Kenya

Monday, May 11, 2015

A Song for MarlinaFu

Let her snake wait under
Her weed.

Who doesn’t know the poison of words on her tongue?
It comes slowly, darting quickly and sharply to strike
Dangerously at innocence.

Quietly it waits, sleeplessly in the dark,
Like sumac buds with gum in the head.

Like horses pounding hoofs on raw sods.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned twice.

Does apple fall far from the tree?
Or did someone not tell the children
When you go to buy a gilt, look at the sow?

No one reconciled the allegory.
Now, we have leeches in our throats.

And we flutter drily hawking our
Regrets at the market place.
And today, we are the saxifrage flower splitting rocks.




Sunday, May 10, 2015

Hard Road

Sometimes, it is necessary 
for everything to flower from within;
and discover the gold and silver is the hurricane.

Sometimes, it’s self-blessing
to bitterly relearn a thing of its loveliness, 
that after nights of whirring rain, the earth is green again

Sometimes, it is necessary
to put a hand on the grimy brow and sigh
when you remember what made you once sad and cold.

Regrets

When I was young, maybe fifteen or so
I heard the Diviner say to us, the children:
Give away every gold and diamond
Including your love for fun and red lipsticks;
Keep yourself fancy free to gain knowledge
But I was young and only fifteen or so
Too young to care and too young to remember.

Too young to care and too young to remember.
I was very young, fifteen or so and who cares
I heard the diviner say this to us often, so near me
But we heard him through one ear and out the other.
We skipped the farm and enjoyed life till we paid lovely;
We paid with sighs and sold life to endless lament.
I am ten-and-twenty, too old to learn new tricks.

Truth only comes to the goat in hawsers and when there’s
Chaos in the crowd, when the sleeve is taller than the head.
A painting goes waste when futility chokes the image; but
I was too young to care and now nature has given up on me.
Even the roses are distant and aloof as if awake to my fate.
I, who sought beauty and found it at where it never belonged,
Now, every foliage crackles with a soothing morbidity beneath me.

Friday, May 8, 2015

How do I love you?

(For You, on Mother’s Day)

Since the morning of that day we met
I’ve seen the moon refusing to set
Nature itself has declined to go to bed
I’ve seen the rainbow play long on the sunlight,
As if there is something going on in the universe.
They all saw our love as supreme in the veldt.

Ever since we met, I’ve told myself,
You will
forever find me waiting for you,
Painting pictures of us on every single moment of time
I’ll always be joyful with you and no one can understand,
Why I love you so much since the morning we met.

Each day, I see minutes take so long to drift away
They just want to catch a glimpse of us in love
And dream of a season like ours when they’ll know love
Let them wait, when in the evening I fly you in velvets
The
y’ll stare at the ceiling of the sky and smile at us.

I’ve promised myself that wherever I'll be
I’ll let the sun of an unequaled love shine on you
We’ll carry that forgotten fire of love across the universe
To kindle yawning spirits with the language of love
Which you taught me since the morning we met.






Missing Twice

They looked at their faces
And yelled: “Fresh off the boat!”

Broken English, dirty African clothes
And with identity mocked, they faded into emptiness.

Here they come again with the Hashtag

Everywhere people are shedding tears
Their cities are burning, and families are mourning
But they could not be comforted.

Each day mothers and fathers worry
About their children leaving home and never returning.
Men and women, black as me, are the fallen victims,

Those they trust rather snare them to death
Whom do you trust when the protector is the perpetrator?
And the law stands by while the pain intensifies.

Remember Emmett Till, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice,
Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, and Mike Brown.
How many miles more to walk to Selma?

And they looked into the tall sky till they dropped:
Lord, how long will righteousness come?

How long will their hopes die in the rain? 

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

The Jewel

This morning you and I are being toasted
In every alley of the village because you are mine. 
The day I met you was a wish come true for the women. 


Grandma says: your smile brings out the best in the village,
The women also say you are the greatest gift ever.
It’s the way you smile and laugh and show your love.

Ever since you came, the sky shows a new shade of blue. 
It is brighter, like the gods are revealing their feelings;
And we melt every day when we look into your eyes. 

With you we will make it through every thick and thin;
As long as you are with me like the pea is to the pod, 
Our heart will grow together to weather every storm.  

One thing do I ask of you: can you never say never;
Can you always be loving and kind, so gentle, and so sweet, 
And with you by my side, life will be simply complete.

Whispers

There are whispers in the silence
Following your steps and they are obscured
From your ears with nothing to be told by lips.

In silence, they float on the streets
Looking straight in your rimmed eyes.
They’ll soon wash you away from their shores.

Do you remember when the people sang
About the drought and the famine only to hear
Their own echoes pitched in confused tones?

Yesterday, circles of sound filled the alleys
And nothing is heard except the feather that hit the floor.
Peoples’ tears are embedded inside their screaming heads.

Did you hear the final pin drop?
It’s no more a lost echo carried in night sweats

Their forgotten whispers will tell tales of their chilled souls. 

The people kept looking at each other
And they let their eyes whisper the secrets.
The hands around your throat are your own.

Sunday, May 3, 2015

Lost

Each day we hear silent groans,
Lived ruthless dreams, and were lost
In every ray of the rising sun,
What it is we may not know.

Every day is a sad day, just negative, 
Winds are dreadfully whistling,
The sun is heartlessly gleaming.
They reveal secrets and lies.

What a place to live these days.
With innocence gone and love lost.
Sin is taught on the street night and day
And hearts are covered in frost and stones.

We call for wars and go for wars.
No life matters in our backyard
No one is taking blame to save a life, 
Just pushing for fame in the game

Advanced as we are to the world,
We're still untamed and insane
Too much pride, too much ego
Too many mistakes, too many turpitudes.

We hurt others, in the desert-fields
Betray brothers, who trusted our values
And lies harshly feed what we preach
And our hearts know no honey.

Children abandoned, and maimed everyday
Lonely and stranded they walk on the streets
They need a guide, but who cares to look
And we deny it, and reject it with holiness.

Throughout the years, in all alleys
Innocent bloods are shed and more spilled.
We take from the poor, to enrich the rich
And behind lies we hide without shames.

We're loving no more, but who cares.
We're all wasting the life like flies.
We no longer enjoy the sights of neighbors.
Where do we go for peace when the world is dead?


How do I carry you with me?

On and on, going on and on,
I live apart from you

Thousand miles of the ocean is between us;
who knows when we’ll meet again?

Day by day the wait grows faint into the distance,
Day by day shifting clouds block the face of hope.

Though the traveler yearns for a feast on the return.
Thinking of you and the years that go by makes one old

Lost and abandoned, I will say no more,
but pluck up strength and drink my tears.


Growing Weary

I live up north and you in the far south,
Night to night of you I dream.

From morn to dawn I look for you in the sun
Unlike the sun you are not in view.

Though we both bath in the golden sunlight
Anytime the sun rises, yet we live apart.

When will my grief no more grow?
I wish your heart will be like mine
.

The road I travel is steep and long;
I hope I don’t in vain pine for you.


Friday, May 1, 2015

Phone Calls from Home

I still receive phone calls and emails mostly from
cracked-up friends caught up in huge dreams, with no hope,
just booze and crazy American madness.
Most of their calls are flashes—“Call me back.”

They want some recognition of where they are
and it’s true, I was there, worse off than most of them.
but I wonder if they realize when their callS arrive?
When I’m dead in the library, when I am frozen in asleep.

They talk of a long driveway leading
to a four car garage, rose garden, blue skies, fruit trees,
beautiful women, a new car each month, red carpet freeways
and dream of fairy-tales in America the beautiful.

I’m 69 years old now and can’t go on retirement;
Oh! How much this flesh had to suffer, yet cannot die;
Hmm! How much this heart had to bear, yet cannot break;
raises questions that these painful tears cannot tell.

I still receive their phone calls and emails.
One came this morning when I was shuddering

At the surgeon’s knife, searching for quivering life
but death chooses its own time; not till all evils are borne.

The Determined

Whether you start at dawn or in the evening
It’s your own set of sails and not the gales
that tell the voyager how to paddle the boat.

It’s always the prize that rips apart the brave
and when you find out why old words die out on the tongue,
you’ll learn to let new melodies break forth from your heart.

Like the twisters of the sea are the whirlwinds of fate
As we journey through life’s alleys; it’s the aspirations
That decide the goal and not the calm or the tears

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

The Presence

Your presence dissolved everything I was
and made me the object of love’s affections.
I remember looking in your eyes one day
and wondered how I can make it out to you?
I wasn't expecting to fall in love so easily.

All the same I gave myself to you completely
and there aren't regrets to make me weep.
Soon we were a pair to be admired in the alleys.
We had the kind of love told only in fairy tales.
I accepted you, and you embraced me.

The meeting itself was simple, but endearing.
When first I saw you behind the mud-house,
you looked so elegant and I was very shy 
I lost my tongue and you took my breath away.
Meeting you was my dream come true.

I’ve never known a love so true, as undeniable
as the one I felt for you deep inside me.
Each night I saw you in a new light, you glow so brightly,
so tenderly, very endearing, and when you welcome me 
into your arms, I feel complete, full of admiration.

Now that you are in Accra, will someone take my place?
I know we won’t have the time to spend together,
But, please forever keep me close to your heart.
Don't let the village curse me with laughter on the streets.
I’ll be here, can you remain the love I knew?


Monday, April 20, 2015

For Lives lost in South Africa

Amenorvi, your death didn’t give me pain;
How can it shake me when my feelings are numb?
African men and women, what has become of us?
Yesterday, we fought together for the peace of our land,
Today, we sold our unity, killing one another on streets
Loaded with blood-soaked faceless human bodies.

Is it for this that we stood in long lines on Robben Island
And shouted Amandla when at Pollsmoor Prison,
There were no mountains to shoulder our sorrow
And no rivers to dissolve our tears?
Is it for this that Rolihlahla Mandela died?
Africa, our Sun has fallen into the ocean.

Take the gun, take the machetes, walk the streets,
Search the alleys for every footprint coming to town,
Drive each soul away from the lovely morning,
And fence the moon, divide the sun and take the stars
Apportion them according to your household!
Are we no longer kith and kin of the African world?

I pity it, I pity it when I look across the street
Many like us are lying there in the dust,
Blood spread on the streets of J’burg;
Machete wounds cut the head in two;
And many souls are caught in an oppressive night,
Away from home, and this pen refuses to write.
It tells me, we cannot write a song. It pities it.
 
Norvinyewo, the silence of the starry night
Shouldn’t burden you to go lost in memory.
In the remaining light of the day we won’t forget 
Those we lost along the way, and they know
Those left at home will listen to every dog’s bark,
To not keep quiet when there are no answers to WHY.
They will cry, they will weep, till every soul reaches home.

Sunday, April 19, 2015

Is the Price Right?

Marry in gray, and you’ll go lost far from home,
Marry in black, and you’ll wish yourself back home,
Marry in brown, and you’ll live out of town forever
Marry in red, and you’ll wish yourself dead
Marry in pearl, and you’ll live in a whirl every day.

Marry in green, and you’ll be ashamed to be seen,
Marry in yellow, and you’ll be ashamed you did,
Marry in blue, and you’ll know he won’t always be true,
Marry in pink, and your spirits will sink and stink,
Marry in white, and you’ll know you have chosen alright.

Marry on Sunday and you’ll feel sorry forever
Marry on Monday and you’ll mar thy days
Marry on Tuesdays and you’ll twist your life
Marry on Wednesday and you’ll wed the ignorant
Marry on Thursday and you’ll turn blue
Marry on Friday and you’ll fry your heart
But, marry on Saturday and you’ll be soaked in something.

Is the price right?

Do the math.

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Unreturning

I’ve been acquainted with the night before,
But I walked out of its rain to the furthest end
I know why I did not call back or say goodbye
The music I heard with you was not my music,
The bread I broke with you was not my kind of bread;
Now that I’m no more the luminary clock on the wall
All that was once so beautiful is dead in the mind.

It is Agbozume-laga who said, he needs no interrupted cries
What dropped his eye this dawn he is unwilling to explain,
But anyone who comes to the twilight knows leaves whisper.
Once your hands touched this table, this plate and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass a dozen times
But these things do not remember you, the once beloved,
Your joy crushed out the day and our dead fear to return home.

Before his helpless sight, Agbozume-laga had dreams
You plunged at him, guttered him, choked him and drowned him
You placed his dreams behind the wagon and hang his writhed face
It’s not the landing on strange beach under a broken sky
But besides the salty herb, it was the lengthening biting sun
A heart that’s cold and wild, and doesn’t remember anything.
Please, be careful where you step; the grave is so wide.

Saturday, April 11, 2015

Wishes

Wish we could be the harmony in that great song
Wish we could be that great song
Whose sweetness echoes beyond circles in the orchestra.
 
I wish your heart could throb with those lost by solitude
When the universe itself has no heart for them. 

I wish
And this soul went Home with the wish.

Friday, April 10, 2015

She's Out

Don’t ask me who or why
All I know is that she's out of my heart,
She drifted with the whirlwind long ago
And I don't know whether to laugh or to cry.

Despite my sad and faded face,
Though there are shadows on my brow
Truth be told, not often a robin comes to build its nest
Upon the leafless bough.

I once welcomed her royally into my arms,
That was years ago, but awful was her faithfulness
And it cuts like a knife, especially
When you want to keep your love deep inside you.

Now she's out and she knows
My love can’t wait on indecision.