Poetry

A TRIOLOGUE OF DESTINY

Elegy for my late friend, Richard Opoku Boateng

In a place for no skin and bone…

Soul Lost Young: I beseech you, humbly, Singular Lord,

Past my mortality- a sudden fall

When the sun was yet alive, and the moon full

Sans a farewell, in response to celestial call-

To spell out my fate, and why a fresh cocoyam leaf

Should drop amidst withered ones.

Ancestor: ‘Tis not prudent, product of my seed,

To question the whys of Otwedeanpon’s deeds.

Soul Lost Young: He nurtured me in my nest and fed me worms,

“Fly!”, or so I heard

He winged me but cut them short

On my maiden flight on life’s voyage

Ancestor: Caution! Lest you incur His fury

To revoke the irrevocable is least your duty

Rant no more, and save me the duty

Of a futile plea.

Soul Lost Young: Then, like a child in a desperate yearn

For breast milk, I will throw a fit…

I ought to know, I ought to know, I ought to…

Twedeanpon: You ought to…?

Soul Lost Young: …Go…

Twedeanpon: Cast your eyes upon this crystal orbit,

What do they behold?

Soul Lost Young: A father grieving

A mother wailing

Beating her breasts

In sorrow for their lost baby…there!

(Pass an infant in celestial garb)

Twedeanpon: My wrath be incurred upon my own head, then?

Ancestor: Forbid that in your own power, Singular Lord!

Soul Lost Young: Questioning my kismet, and the quantum of earth

Employed in moulding me…

Who am I?

Poetry

SWEET COCONUT WATER… A simple love song

PART I

When two youngsters find sweet water

In an ‘akokooshie’, they share it

Pull off its rough hair to rid it

Of its fibre;

An icky cocoon

So thick and well woven,

As from threads in a Kente loom

Sheltering the real nut, and saccharine contents therein,

Quantified when shaken.

Swift strikes crack

But the hard shell is broken

With a patient rock…

Rough fibres uncover

A hard shell. A hard shell uncovers

The sweet coconut water.

PART II

When I find my Ga girl

With thick lips and firm breasts

And a soft heart to caress

My unquenchable thirst for her, we shall share

Love as pure as the inner linings

Of a coconut

Melting motives and means

Of devious descent as hot,

Scorching sun would their glacier.

Feel my arms in and around which my veins crawl

How strong they are

Let them grab your heart and carry your water- pot…

Difficulties would uncover

Obstacles. And obstacles would uncover

Adoley, my sweet coconut water.

Poetry

ODE TO HUSSEIN OBAMA

Fine diplomacy and hopeful symbolism

Masking the heat that scorches his bottom

And the prospects of cruel obloquy,

Characterize deeds of an articulate liberator

The heat invokes his helper

O Wisdom! O Vigour!

In one mortal, fallible and frail as ourselves

Have the world entrenched

Opulent Optimism

For the purging of penury

Quixotic schemes to usurp the flagellation

Of civilisation by many menacing evils

To traipse the street of falsehood

In pursuit of the elixir is futile.

Do we not secrete elixir, and spit it out?

Saddled with a burden best suited for spirit beasts!

So factions, some as small as crevices

For concealing lizard eggs could have a piece of him,

His flesh was chopped

And split for all

Leaving a defenseless skeletal framework

Of disgruntlement and pessimism.

The weight would then press him

To invoke his knight on a white charger

O Immortality! O Death!

Poetry

BLACK HOLE OF A BLACK HARLOT

Ejaculations of livid husbands,

Nasty, but whiter than white

a propos an adulterous wife,

Magnetized exploiters who sought to, and did deseed his scrotum

To rid him of his balls.

They said of one:

“Nkrumah has balls, deseed his scrotum”

Glittering stones around a thick, fine- lined neck,

Coloured like and created from dust-

An array of golden dentures

And full, dripping, breasts with milk and honey

Crowned her voluptuous build.

Concealed behind the bushes that formed

At the vital angles of her body,

Were her valuables, some human.

Seduced! They whetted and sharpened the pinnacle

Of her sensual desire

So much that it pierced the flesh

With even the lightest brush

Of a stimulating finger.

Multiplicity of perverts sinned with her

Against her own body… her own earth.

Save her husband,

Her bushes and breasts served the fulcrum of pleasure

For all men.

Firm and full breasts fell pale,

Sucked dry of their milk.

Dug in and out

Up and down

In an unfair exchange for pyrites

And left with a messy black hole

In the black harlot.