THE BEST OF YOU to Deena

All I have
garnered from pain
are garlands of voices
stored on a dusty hard drive

but I know that lonesome craves
are not for company mere
nor speech, garrulous apparitions

I have your laugh tucked away
in gilded bytes on the mind

Here you come, nimble-footed Ananse
to play to plot to ploy
to fan to flame to burn
to cinders of passion

take my hand, lofty lass,
guide the moments with your mime,
fetch us both boisterous buoys
to float our fun asea

Can I see farther
beyond where fathers hang our dreams?
Can I sail further
beyond deceit's dreadful reach?

If I could I would
bathe that soul
and can love's lucre
in brine
and hug to my heaving chest
the best of you...
till we fuse
and melt
and merge
our hungry wandering hearts !

Kwaku Adjei-Fobi
October 27, 2015
Language Centre, U.G.
Legon

ANTEBELLUM

I have little to show
besides this cowardly arched spirit

very little
until your wanton gormless charge
strips my soul of languor
and bids me fight, spirit alight

I rise,
descendant of a fabled people
minding my own mundane business
till you ignite redundant ires
till you expose my spectral fires

have those hollowed sockets suck me in !
let fairer spirits draw me near!
for the guns silent fallen
and the deathly masks merely masquerade death

the guns have silent fallen
the dunes have shapes changed
we hang onto fractured boughs
and cling steadfast to wounded hopes

Kwaku Adjei-Fobi
October 27, 2016
Language Centre, U.G.
Legon

TEACHER

You
are sole survivor --
the dream
which thrived
where others fell,
the beacon
which flourished
in the dark of my thoughts,
the guide to a million ships
which sought anchorage
in the harbours
of knowledge.

June 8, 2015
Adenta - Accra

KWAKU & KWASI (to Sikayena-Fobi)

 

And how does one, one less than ten
forget a father's display of love and pain?
Cross and candles carried to the heavens
in a supplicating tone
and murmurings measured to save the night
and, hopefully, the boy stiffened and shaken
by epilepsy, and the other by the grim discovery
behind the wet curtain

How does he look at the other and not wish
a billion wishes of fraternal love and care?
How does he look into books and faces,
seeking hope, finding little, very little

Bells break lessons into fragments
and turn care from pages to need,
need to find the younger weaker, safer
from nodding on stones
or dropping into water,
from breaking his smile 
from drowning his laughter
from taking on another crimson coat of love
from a brother grasping flailing weeds of life 

How does one's loud cries
and continual groans rip open his nights
and burn out his days filled to the brim
with prayers -- prayers overwhelming his infant mind
mind drenched in shutters of pain
that open and close -- he dreads days
and fears nights -- he dreads nights
and craves death!
death of pain, death of love
or death of both -- crying in his sleep!

Thuds of falls break reveries of stupor
they bite through cocked ears
they jump-start the heart

How could one forget that handsomeness
betrayed by palsy, that brilliance
tortured by attacks -- declared redundant --
wasting away!

One had to muster courage, garner power
to haul weight greater than his --
he was not heavy,
he was my brother!

 May 26, 2015
Language Centre, Legon

MEDLEY

Here I go again...
missing you --

          two-thirds of all smiles...are fake
          or contain only a minute fraction
          of Love's active ingredients

forcing on smiles myself,
a tortuous one darkens my face

          the costumes are falling off --
          the raw pulse of pain peers
          through Laughter's cloak

My heart rebels
against the dictates of my soul

          the fuselage vrs the engine,
          the ensemble misses the note --
          the glazes wears off

...here I come again...
missing you!

          my smile is an amalgam
          of pain and pleasure --

damn the brand!
this is mine...has always been!


May 23, 2012,
Adenta - Commandos
Accra.

WORD (II)

To speak the word, live the said,
flowing with the flux of the mind

                             in the midst of the mould
                     the unsettling dust of the word
infests my kind with speaking on parchment,
                               fills my circle with might --
                                  a diction-toting bunch.

the sun arrives at our command
to dispel the miasma of despair...
warmth to the cold, breeze to the hot
-- ours, a verbal mettle...

                                      things get done with words*
                                      we keep our awe cloaked in them!

To say is to dare,
to cast the die bare...

a brazen alternative to life --
contents of the undying pangs
in life's wake...

                       Life -- God's own poetry,

                       the metered  lives carved 

                       by the Master wand!

                       visual, aural, mightily stressed,

                       all I still really possess!

May 22, 2012
Adenta - Commandos
Accra.



*ref. to ''How to do things with words''  by J. Austen

SPECTACLE

Climbing contours come to a halt
the suddenness only matched by the clumsiness,
a dreadful burst of pitiful passion
refracted joy segmented from dregs

Love is on her knees
crying a cliched prayer
around the savage skirts of somewhere

an accordion of chirps claps through
and cloaks the pitiful...

a crevice of skill
through which peeps on the unsung years are made
lingers through the fevered years

but the sun sunk out of contention,
drained of fluorescence and fervour --
we mourn the birth of night.

dreams walk backwards,
passion whines, prostrate,
liquor licks lips lately...

and this fragile orb limps on one limb
                     and the only sight more spectacular
is the laughing scavengers
biding their time.


May 17, 2012
Adenta-Commandos
Accra.