Category: Photo/Poem

Gyae o, Ahoofe Ntua Ka

 
 Gyae o, Ahoofe Ntua Ka
 
 Physical beauty is nothing,
 Death will come in your sleep.
 Enjoy life.
 
 My jolly has gone abroad,
 Nocturnal lady.
 Love doesn’t die completely
 There are varieties:
 Money,
 Handcuffs,
 Groundnuts.
 It’s really pained me,
 My darling, be patient.

* Gyae o, Ahoofe Ntua Ka Physical beauty is nothing

This is the second in a series of found poems constructed from the titles of Ghanaian Highlife songs from the 1960’s.

Behold the Ceaseless Process

 
 Behold
 the ceaseless process 
 of going nowhere.
 
 Gravity brings everything down.
 
 Within implicit spaciousness
 the levity of
 spontaneous actions 
 defy the awful weight of living.
 
 Yet,
 so it seems,
 the world’s teeming
 with conjectures and words
 that might, in fact,
 at no point,
 can we be free from them.
 
 Nonsense - 
 
 there’s no accounting 
 for flux and unpredictability.

Uneasy Laugh


 With the uneasy laugh of horror
 The World Clown Association decided
 to put on a skit:
 two balloons under their bosoms
 and carbon dioxide sparklers.
 The balloons didn’t fill up equally,
 and there were butt prints in the dough.
 
 Hidden incendiary girls,
 mobilized vulnerability,
 eat bitterness.
 
 Boom, Boom! 
 
 Custom is the king of all;
 they would wish to get paid to devour 
 the corpses of their fathers.
 
 That way they’ll be happy.
 
 Animated ornaments
 at the Kitty Cantina;
 The Heavyweight Sisters,
 Dark Monkeys,
 and The Mutual Benefit Society,
 obstructing government administration,
 negotiating worthless instruments;
 
 their words were a desecration of silence,
 the transformation of radical ideas 
 into culture, a diehard rejection 
 of the idea that we ourselves might be 
 one such cataclysm.
 
 Human exceptionalism, the
 madness gene,
 gradually blinkered,
 like a star role from no-man’s land.
 
 The dinosaurs came, 
 got too big and fat, 
 so they all died 
 and turned into oil.

Dissolute Monster

 
 Dissolute Monster
 on display,
 bells begin to buzz
 
 with masochistic eagerness
 warns you of
      debased currency,
      flamboyant connoisseur of ironic despair
      manufactured felt emotions
      readymade in America,
 
 furious folly of these times.
 
 This mammoth antiseptic bath cleanses
 a distaste for the reverential attitudes 
 towards the special nature of the artist
 
 A purity of expression
 of frustration and anger
 with games, masks, and buffoonery.

Misumo Bo Tamo

 
 
 Artificial Lady
 I love you like sugarcane,
 Come and keep me warm.
 
 It’s all because of the love I have for you,
 We are dancing.
 I’ve been living peacefully,
 I have done my best to no avail
 I have suffered a disappointment.
 .
 Don’t forget the past
 Beautiful woman.
 Don’t worry me,
 Love sickness,
 Tell me the truth.
 I am not afraid.
 
 Remember me.
 
*Misumo Bo Tamo She - I Love You Like Sugarcane

This is the first in a series of found poems constructed from the titles of Ghanaian Highlife songs from the 1960’s.