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.

Left too soon

Like a comet blazing across the evening sky, he was gone 
before we could raise our heads up.

Like a rainbow fading into the twilight;
he was gone before we could blink an eye.

Like a star shiny and sparkly, we lost him
before his splendid light shone brightly on the horizon.

We saw him like the sunlight
on a cloudy afternoon, but he was gone before his sun set.

What is life if not like a castle built upon a sandy beach;
or like a perfect flower, that’s just beyond our reach?

Are we born to be here today
only to be gone before nightfall?

Or like sunset we die with the rising moon
so as to be born into a Glory before morn?

Gone too soon before we could girdle our loins
and for our goats to grow beards.

Friday, April 3, 2015

What Is Dying?


What is dying?
I am standing on the seashore alone
Like a ship about to sail this morn.
But the morning breeze is far from me.
How do I sail? Am I not a dead man?
At the seashore I see many ships sailing freely.
Mine is an object and I stand watching her
Till at last the sun fades from the horizon.
What is dying and am I not as well dead?

I looked up across and someone at my side said,
“Your boat is gone!” and I wondered “But gone where?”
“Surely, it’s gone from my sight,” I thought to myself.
What is dying if this is not death?

Today I’m a mast, a hull and a spar to all ships,
I bear the load of living freights to their destinations.
But soon, I’ll be diminished in size and I’ll be
Lost to sight, totally lost to all faces, to all voices
If there were love, someone would say, “Where is he?”
And other voices would take up a glad shout,
And they would find me alone in the hay-store.
Without a love, I’ve been dead many years ago.

And God said: who can bring these dead bones to life?