AFRICA IS FOREVER
Shaped like a riffle
Laden with treasure like soil
Used in ancient battle
In this rich black soil
A riddle that baffles
Far from being one
Tomorrow our rights may be given to beetles
Our brother is the captain of our throne
A replay of yesterday’s slavery
Is today current
Placated by cheap religiosity
Even in the present
Africa or never
Africa is forever!
NIGHT
Silent night
Sleepless night
All is not well
All is not right
Like yawning in our shirts
Ellipses in our soul
Ellipses in our right
The dripping deepens
Above our head
Glids down dip
Awaking our kindred spirits
Digging trench in our stench
Ancient-earth un-patch
Thus unite our nuclear courage
In our faces
Discernment in phases
Defiant: we deploy and employ
The courage of our ancestors
The courage of a better tomorrow
Like in the days of yore
To curb our present demanour
We club and mob
Our naked tiles of earth
To uphold our woes
In this repeated pattern
Over the years
In our mimic planetarium
We laugh over our woes
Our slumber strain
Wake induced but not produced
By "cough few" but curfew
From archives of insomnia
And the mouth of our "Landlords"
Vomiting voluminous saliva
Gliding over our stuffs
Voluminous saliva
Voluminous palaver
From the hands of our "Landlords"
Gliding over our stuffs
Like sacramental baptism
Making us neither wholly nor holy
But twice destitute
In our strained slumber
We lumber and plumber
Our shacks in humility
And surf for our stuffs
From the harsh hands
Adding no salt but insult
To our lean supper
We toil and plow
In roll we toil in tow
Till our tender soul is pensive
Like the knight of night
Oh! Silent night
Oh! Sleepless night
In despair, we perspire
As watchmen wooing our woes
Our neighbours are nocturnal
The wild-eye owls, hooting
And the blind bats
His nocturnal cousins
In their ironic visual vicissitude
Demands an explanation for desecrating the night
As the clock ticks
So they crow very thick
As they croak
They crack down our cloaks
They croaker at our cries
But we slack not in our lack
When we lie
We heave at the esoteric language
Spoken by Buffo-Buffo
The incoherent town crier
While the nocturnal rejoice
In the magnanimity of night
We lie and sigh at our insomnia
In the Night
When there is no light
We see through the yawning thatch
Above our head
The glittering moon and stars
In there slight light
While we grope in darkness
We peep into the oblivion
To be greeted by the elements
The epileptic flashes of the lightening
And the accomplice temperamental ovation
Of the thunder clap
We resign to fate and design of nature
Over our plight at night
O’ silent night!
O’ sleepless night!
We rephrase our lullabies thus!
Go away!
Go away!!
Come again another day
Little children want to sleep.
POWER THEORY
…Power to the people
…Power by the people
(Theory - 1) “Right of drip”
Quoted as prevailing frame work of power
…Power in the people
…Power by the people
(Theory - 2) status of Ghana-must-go
Available in checkmating
Political pluralism in the polity
…Power from the people
…Power against the people
(Theory – 3) “Acts of preponderance force”
Causing the “rule by man”
Holy adoption and numeric abracadabra!
…Power to the people
…Power on the people
…Power in the people
…Power on the people
…Power from the people
…Power against the people
(Theory - 4) “metamorphosis”
An empire under vampires’ umbrella.
GHOST OF JUNE
This malignant blight
Reaching its crescendo
Like cloisters of vicious-cycled dirt
That cogs the tranquility
Which we once cruised
Hectors with arbitrary
Senile political antics
Manipulating fun and pun
As dart for war
Coaxing their human robots
Souls belaboured
Refugees littered!
Carcass ‘filed!’
Their shrills
Was heart shattering
For the last time
By this stiletto
Cardus Beneditus
Of fraternity
With ideological vacuum
Continued ‘bumpic’ negotiation
In an oligarchic experimentation
On the tragic plights
Were trailed into doldrums
By the Ghost of June.
BLACK SUNDAY
The evening sun bask
In a reddish mask
While the clouds gorgeously fume
In ominous black fumes
Like an evening dress
On a Sunday
A holy anger erupts
From an “act of man”
By the language
Of expired lethal
Spoken from the ghettos
And bunkers of the camouflaged arsenal
Pedestrians in “Lagosmic” escapism
Trudged to be sown
Like a woman in travail
Pangs of pain
Grips the mightiest
Authorities in a state of comatose
Armed with empty shouts
Like the roaring of a Lion
Demonstration of interregnum
“Come on” the mammoth crowd
Was beckoned by “the spirits that be”
Trailing its victims into
The canal of stillness.
IMAGES
The rope from your navel
Runs like a trunk-A telephone line
To my navel
Even when the midwife
Puts the humans asunder
A rife in the amniotic-ocean
Where I bask
Only then do my cries
Authenticate your labour
And bring you favour
And bath your face
With the cosmic-bathos
You wipe your tears
By shaking my hands
You lift my head
When you heard my cries
You hug my flesh
You curdle my tears
And burry my fears
In the sac of your bosom
And left your images in my heart
I suck life from you
The dam from your chest
When at best
I lie at rest
And quench my thirst
I look at your face
I saw the reflection
Of motherhood in your face
Which soars my soul
And left your salt
Like sauce for my soul
The salt that seasons my life
Writing indelible mysteries
In my soul
I wonder why
I deserve this
From you Mother!
