Tuesday 6 December 2011

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)