IN SOLIDARITY

 a tear for brother Mahamed al-Ajami


the voice cannot be silent
the tongue cannot keep quiet
the song cannot cease to prick consciences
while citizens suffocate

but even if they castrate our voices
our anus will shout
even if they seal our anus
our hair-pores will trumpet
and even if they un-skin us
our blood veins shall be un-mute

i share a tear with you
but stand upon the thorns
so we could break the back of lions' rules!


 03/12/2012

A WORD, A STEP, A WAR, A PEACE

IN HONOUR OF A MAN-OF-PEACE



December
December
December
Your 7th day is a perfect day
Let peace reign.

a word can send a sword away
a naughty step can draw the sword

each step, each word
may birth a war or a piece
that can serve a piece of cake
at the jamboree of a common national dream
but
the rival of this
we must cast away.

"My brothers and my sisters
Ghana is the only country we have"

Peace is not a piece
of bodies pulled together
like harvested yam at Tamale central market,
covered with green leaves for eternal
burial into stomachs
It is burying the ugly tongue
that may draw a sword
                   or a song

AND when it is all over
we shall forge a greater family,
hold hands, share pito, drink sobolo
eat tuo zaafi, eat akple and fetri-detsi
sing patriotic songs and dance
to the eternal drumtunes
that
WE ALL HAVE WON TOGETHER AGAIN!
PEACE!
29/11/2012 Legon

CACTUS JOURNEY

through our cactus journeys

you kept the smile, the hope, the dream

and you grew, flamboyant

defying scorching suns and evil eyes

and  now  you   stand

against the venom

of accusing voices and curses

and now you cruise into green-fields

with the smile, the hope, the dream.

but oh

there is still the glory beyond these hopes

a joy condensed at our nearing destination

so

still hold the dream

look beyond the clouds

beyond the tears of today's soul.

14/11/2012 

OUR BLOOD COLOUR VICTORY FLAGS

The makeshift rockets and missiles
Shake the souls of our dreams
As children of the world
1000 bodies divided into salad
Served at dinning at Gaza

Give our eyes goose-pimples.


But what does the foetus 
Have to do with a war
It knows nothing about?
Why must the child be 
The victim of a reckless
brotherhood claiming lion-ness
over others' animal-ness?



and now our tears flood
the sea,
birthing hurricane Sandy 

then there will be hurricane Gaza

our heads
shall decorate the victory flag-posts
our blood shall colour the victory flags

our unborn future
shall ghost haunt the victory parties

and what a fractured world
shall remain
in memory of GAZA?

20/11/2012 Language Centre, Legon

WE ALL DIED

There is this silence
Heavier than the gunshot
A voice, keeping me away 
From telling you how much I...

This great unrealistic desire
Puts us all at a journey's end
At this primal days of our sojourn.
It is a thorn
Cutting deep, making us bleed
Yet protecting and decorating
Our dreams and TEARS and fears;
This razor
Bringing the true colour of our blood
But painfully, to the admiration of...
This porcupine skin
Taking or not taking:
each with its smile
each with its tears
each with its fears

There must be conversations
and the silence cripples us all

Then

The call came
the line died down
we all DIED, unconventionally!

20/11/2012, Language Centre, Legon.

OTABIL AND THE JESUS OF ICGC

The free education debate has become a theological debate. Many people who might not have heard of Pastor Otabil’s teachings on education are now aware of everything. The Pastor has come out to do the unusual: organizing a press conference apart from the press release by the church.

Does the International Central Gospel Church (ICGC) have a different Jesus that they follow or not? This is a harmless question. I don’t want to be drafted into the debate too. However I know as a Christian that Jesus teaches that we shall be persecuted, insulted and even killed for his sake but our rewards are in heaven. What about this? Is Jesus not powerful enough to defend his own?

Then there is the issue of judgment. Pastor Otabil calls his accusers and what they say “evil”. The Bible says we should not judge so that we will also be judges. What about this? 

There was a story of a Jesus of Dzorwulu who came preaching that we should not bath. There was also a Pastor in the North of Ghana who predicted the end of the world, and the list continues. Who shall we believe now?

SILENT TEARS

Come Brother Come

Yesterday, our brother-leader was shot

in the pipe-hose at his birthplace;

and the sun set on our land at dawn

Come Brother Come

See the debris of our bulldozed dreams

Rotting in the oil fields and goldmines;

And watched. Our arms glued at our backs

The ancient whip modernised 

And flung at our silent souls

As Tripoli falls into alien hands 

It's waters flowing into stranger dams

Her insects screaming in foreign sounds

As we watched. Our arms TIED to our backs.

14/11/2012 Legon

AFRICA

we are the children of
the loins of warriors
we survived the panthers' threats

Africa, the home of the BRAVE!

LAST NIGHT II

The skull of the lazy
is not worth the hair of the brave
so I come

I come to you with the voice
that sets the sea ablaze
that floods the desert
that melts the mountains
in the breaking of the virginity of words

last night i saw the foot-marks of the panther
i crawled on my heart.
but my tongue stood like
the giant of the moon tales

it is the chick
that keeps scratching the ground 
that discovers the skull of its grandmother

so when you see again
Those prophets
massaging the brain of our consciences
taking the storms from our voices
chanting the dirges of our birth
splashing the egg of shadows
over our minds
Look at them in the eye
and punch the nail of truth
into their hearts.

we walk through darkness
to arrive at light
but under the sound of fire
we feel cold, shivering
Forever shivering in our emaciated souls
Asking, forever asking
When shall our freedom be born
When shall our freedom be born
When shall our freedom be born?

But here comes a season
when we shall no more hide hernia
from the water-closet.

my land.: ANCESTRAL VOICES: 10GHS for students.

my land.: ANCESTRAL VOICES: 10GHS for students.

ANCESTRAL VOICES: 10GHS for students.

A Plea For Justice

Returning from a riverside

With a bucket of water

I saw droplets of tears

Cumulating by and by

Forming a small stream

Snaking to the riverside.

Returning from the riverside

I heard wailings of people

Children and old

Men, women, boys and girls

 Cursingly crying as the tears were

Snaking to the riverside.

Returning from the riverside

Injustice and greed matrimonized

Hunger, poverty and disease familiarised

Under the auspices of scavenging aristocrats

While tears of the victimised were

Snaking to the riverside.

Returning from the riverside

I heard complains complaining

Yet none listened to them

A little girl knelt before me pleading

For my intersection as her tears were

Snaking to the riverside.

Returning from the riverside

I gather plights and sorrows

To the altar of justice

And he sent me to men

Seeking mercy for other men whose tears are

Snaking to the riverside.

                                11/12/2008 Legon

THE GOD MOANS

The dogs seek preys!

These dogs want to hunt

But there’s no prey

The hunter, dog trainer

Now must suffer the venom

Of these dogs.

So now he moans, he moans

The dogs swoop on his treasured

Body parts. Now scattered in trillion bags.

The hunter seeks soul help

But oh! Who, who will deliver

The god from the might of it’s

Handiwork? Who? Who?

21:40, 7/10/2012, Legon.

Aniglida

I, Aniglida, am the dangerous serpent.

When we, the snakes of our forests

Take thirty-seven log strokes

From the hands of our enemies,

I walked safely home

While the rest of my generation

Ache and quake and cake in a cage

Of eternal death.

I am the most courageous soul;

All others may suffer comas

At the sight of one half of my woes

But since a hunter doesn’t say

All the mysteries of his art

I kept my secrets upon oath.

It is not cowardice

That mutes the cat

At the sight of events

That makes dogs bark with shameless thunders.

Let the gourd that thinks itself the greatest

Pay a visit to the riverside at dawn.

 30/5/2012 Lome, Togo.

Harvested Ash

In the deep womb of time

Are built silos of chime

When the tiger searches maize

In sprinting hunger haze

And dashes to the silos in a splash

Finds in them only ash

So let the limping lions lie

Let the dying dogs die

Let the melting magma melt

And let them not look up for help!

30/08/2012 Mafi- Kumase

Watch out for this great novel from a great writer and lecturer.

MONKEYS FED HIM

It was monkeys that fed him

When his teenage mother threw him

To die, unwanted child

Product of a licking condom,

It was he who held the linguist staff

Of our clan’s chief, speaking in idioms

Twisting alphabetical arrangements

To the delight of human ears;

And all applauded his wisdom

It he whose soft stomach

Promoted human children into

Halls of stethoscopic academia,

Linguists of our Chief Justice

And we held him high

Composing of him, eulogies.

Today, his image hangs

Hanging under an umbrella

On giant billboards in this same place

Where once we sang his name in appellations

Today, we point our left hands

Into his face, spat under his feet

And bathed him in our phlegm

Asking who his parents could possibly be

And who could in the first and second and third place

Have given him his thumb to share in that Chamber of that House?

It was monkeys that fed him

Now that we know!

12/01/2012 Mafi Kumase

my land.: MY HEART BEATS

my land.: MY HEART BEATS: My heart beats in verses in versions of realities and doubts: will the growing mountains go gay will the melting magma moan will the wa...

MY HEART BEATS

My heart beats in verses
in versions of realities and doubts:

will the growing mountains go gay
will the melting magma moan
will the waning winners win
will the searching searchers see?

my heart beats in inverse verses

when shall man be truly man
to man the unmanned moments of a race
in constant quest of self-righteousness
and selfishness
and self... self... self...?

my heart beats in versions

of the things that exist that don't exist 
but we know they exist.
there are things larger than the clouds
things piercing like knives
but humanity pretends
ALL IS WELL

in which wellness
will all be well
when we know all isn't well
in this deep well of a world?

20/9/2012 Legon

GAWBOFEST 2012

All the journeys start with a dream
And GAW’s dream still rise up high over the rainbows
Flying, still flying high above the ancient pyramids of Egypt,
Over the Fattah Jallon mountains,
Over the Kalahari,
Crafting newer dreams and raising the hope of our souls

Drink now
The wine of your greatness
In the fullness
Of blissfulness

Drink from the pride of your land
As your children come paying homage
To GAWBOFEST.

HURRICANE BAMAKO

Bamako is a Hurricane

Bamako now a Hurricane…

The muzzles shouted our common progressive death

In Deep Deep Sahel Bamako

To reveal to resurrect from our earth

The sorrow

Artificially inseminated into our wombs

The bullets, the coups added again

The corpses in my heart hidden from vultures.

First the Sahara spring gave me million expired souls

Then the remnant hands glued together

The wasted bullets to plunder a dream in Sundiata-land

The concerto of betrayals, shall be the poet’s song

The gift of Generals who gave license to renegade Tuaregs

And now they hold the throat of ancestral Timbuktu

And dehydrate ancient Gao

Captain Amadou Sanogo, go tell

That we carry the bullets in our souls across the rivers

Amadou Toumani Toure, go tell

That we weep blood with him, as it forms rivers

Through the contours of spaces in our common land.

Bamako is a Hurricane

Bamako now a Hurricane…

 3/4/2012 Legon.

STILL BEING EATEN

And the vultures saluted me

As I enter again into this

Ancestral Oguaaman.

The vultures say the old stone-house

Of ancestral anguish, ran out of

Blood

In songs, I tried to escape this truth

Louder than gunshots yet silence as sea-breeze

In songs I tried to articulate the abstraction

Of this 21^st century truth

In songs I tried to laugh at the despair

Of this white birds in need

The vultures say the old stone-house

Of ancestral anguish, ran out of

Blood

In the loudness of mu silence

I wondered if this is the fire

Burning the heart of our siblings

From another climate-mother

To command the recent flow of our

Blood

From our earth across the horizon where

Earth kissed the Clouds!

11/02/2012 Takoradi

OUR ANNUAL MESS

Smells of the echoes of your tongue

Blocked oxygen’s penetration of my larynx

These days of abracadabra:

My land is a magic house

And all my siblings are changers of materials

Into other materials:

My and has twenty-two million magicians

At whose esoteric glance

Cocaine baptizes into kokonte and baking powder:

Even at the reverberating footsteps of the eyes

Of the law-men and women

And a huge stone wall of silence

Is fortified around the scientific change

The footsteps of your eyes, my land

Is sounding in receding crescendo

Even as you trek towards me

At whose feet can we lay our burdens?

Not at the Cross overfilled with garbage.

At whose feet shall we expiate your name, my land?

3/1/12 Mafi Kumase.