I Lay My Voice

So I have come today again

To this same forest of countable trees

Dispersed across the burdens of the land

Under which people sit searching wisdom

In the opening pages of books.

I have come again to lay my voice

At the foot of your passion.

So many children crossed my dreams

And cris-crossed my path without catching my pupil

But today, on the second occasion, here I am

Sitting in the forest of countable trees

To lay my voice, again, at your passion’s feet.

11:00 Am. 22/10/2011. Accra College of Education, Madina.

Salaams

A million salaams

A million million salaams

There are so many things to tell that can’t be told

In these murderous minutes

Only salaams. A million million salaams

The rocky hills of chained plateaus,

The mamba mimicking roads that gyrate

Through the mountains and hills and valleys

All say salaams. A million million salaams

They create monuments in memory of thanksgiving

Which priest goes into his divining room

And forgets his divining beads in his wife’s bedroom

Or his assistant in the herbal forests?

There are sea shore sands to count-

Those that guided our fleeting feet-

That can’t be counted in these

Murderous minutes

Only salaams. A million million salaams

And what force lies in the unspoken words of

silence? What power? It is like

A light tap that uproots baobabs in

The midst of dense tickets

 A million salaams. A million million salaams.

So the mountains say-

To the silences embroidered upon the monuments

Installed with voices of memorial

Silences

There are so so many dreams to dream

That can’t and must not be dreamt in these

Murderous minutes

Thewe hills that so tall upon several silences

Seductively beckons, but must be left

With so many salaams

A million million Salaams!

15/10/2011 (Mampong , School of the Deaf-DemoDeaf & SHTS)

The Eagle-Vulture

The rain beats the eagle

The children saw it and screamed, thinking it a vulture

Rain disfigured monarch of the sky-kingdoms

And toddlers gyrate with joy

They run around in search of

Mother’s headgear to cover its bald skin

They gathered leftover dinners placed in ceramic plates

For a feast for their future

They visited father’s sacred corner of our hut, looking for

Wellington boots for their Carcass King

It was at the verge of feast tables setting

That yester voices roared

With anger

And thunder

Against time’s newest camouflage

The primordial tongues cautioned:

As it was in the beginning

It’s now and never must be

World without end. Amen!

For unholy, unholy, unholy,

Are the lord gods of ghosts

Heaven and earth are overfilled

With their masking

So

when again

rain beats the eagle

children should never dream

it’s a vulture:

a born again crocodile hole

is never drained off scales.

11/10/2011 11:00pm Legon

My Voice

The night before the dawn

Hyenas crossed my path on my way

To the seer-mountain;

I held my horsetail, miming a chant

Hyenas crossed my path

And nearly strangled my voice

And burnt my horsetail

They stole my guiding tool

They strangulated my glottis

But before I returned from the seer-mountain

My voice births new vocalic vibrations

And the primal voice-smith awaits me

With a newer horsetail

A more storm-ful horse tail

I am the single voice roaring in your cluster-dreams

The orphaned raindrop licking the dust of your sole

Time before birth I was a sound in the clouds.

My voice is the scattered shower

That overthrows gigantic ant-hills.

08/10/11 ACCE-Madina.

Wedlock of Space and Time

The marriage of time and space

Makes Sekle a saint in this new farm

It is the forbidden that he does

Sunrise      Sunset      Sunrise

    Sunset         Sunrise      Sunset

       Sunrise         Sunset            Sunrise

It is the forbidden that he does

Certain Mafi Kumase market days ago

He was caught scattering seedlings from his loins

Onto the fertile women on our gathering floor

And when he was arrested     his hands covering the thing

He asked the eldest statesman     how dada give him birth

He sings the unsung thunder songs

Sunrise      Sunset      Sunrise

    Sunset         Sunrise      Sunset

       Sunrise         Sunset            Sunrise

He sings the unsung thunder songs

Last night, at moonlight harvest jamboree

He went stealing the earth on the tomb of our last stool

And the women from late water gathering saw him

And he promised them all, a slash of cutlass on their beads

But some voices caught theirs and he fled away

He held and told a Gye Nyame tale today

Sunset      Sunrise      Sunset

    Sunrise         Sunset      Sunrise

       Sunset         Sunrise            Sunset

He held and told a Gye Nyame tale today

After several wedlock of times and spaces

He scooped     scattered       his brains   in the cathedrals

And in all the pieces of broken calabashes in some souls

Auctioning his voice on every market space on the pores of earth

He wears white linen under a black three-piece

Holding a microphone, riding in a Beast, spreading The Word

Sekle a saint in this new farm? I laugh a capital laugh!                  

23/09/11  Legon (8:13pm)