Smolt - A Poem

Let me drop my eyes

Aligned, to the edge at the touch of your skin

Where your thick thighs

Descend to where my passions begin

Hinged to the rapturous wait

Along the contours of your exterior meat

Acoustically humming to the tingling

Of sensors awakened below my man-ness

As my eyes near your pleasure’s end

I feel your nails etch gently into my skin

My palms bury your firm posterior

My lips perch in your crotch

Inching in on your labium

My tongue cursorily flick its orifice

Continually: gates of joy flow: a drizzle-drozzle

Wet, we lose our-selves in unguided accuracy

23 July 2013. Ridge

Taking From Me — A Poem

I’m still in the wind, and getting

Sold by

All the lost Souls

At every blink I cannot reach her

She dies. She goes.

She removes her weak shoulder and

Wipes the trail

Of continuity of bold unseen days

I now have much Hate stored away

In a calabash I cannot show.

For God.

For Mother.

For those who hurt her.

Even, for those who force me to

Move on…

Hate

For those who use my own

Strength as chairs to sit on – the

And there remain those

Choking my throat

with Forgetfulness.

Those luring me with Reason and

Life’s givings.

You cannot understand my pain and

Fury;

If you cannot soothe me with the

Comprehension of silence—

I will go to the mountain for peace

If your palm cannot warm out the

Cold sorrows perching on my finger tips;

If your breast cannot wipe my tears—

I will seek the rivers.

And sing dirges to

All the Lost Souls

Dansoman. July 2011.

In the Light of Our Tomorrow

This poem was first published on Akwantuo, an online literary magazine, in June 2010.

Shrinking

Shrinking…

shrinking to the core

Man has lost reason

Man has refused the light

What Man has been longing for ages

Man is shrinking

Shrinking his power of thought

To his vast stretch of rich unusable land

He must lose reason

His eyes set nowhere beyond his corridors

Shrinking, Shrinking, Shrinking

Flipping his very self to hide in his ears

Man cannot think the possible

of the impossible

His firmer grip of the imagery of the impossible

is first forged, then the possible

must be forced out of Man

for he has lost reason

His knowing of everything

has become his nothing

So all things held simple

must first be complex

to be broken down to its core again

That is the unsung philosophy

Cyclical madness

Man has lost reason

So we must go to his funeral

It is at the burial grounds Man must think

who next to follow

in the journey of the burying of Minds

Man has lost reason

So keep your beloved lads indoors

He is a thief of minds

He seeks such stuff to bury

So shut your future up–away from Man

Man is you so shut yourself up

lest you kill another Mind of tomorrow

for your tomorrow

Man has lost reason

So he is shrinking, shrinking to the core

- Nana Yaw Sarpong

The Morphology of Your Dance: Poetry

It is poetry month in the United States. In Ghana, we do not have such. In an earlier post last month, I had mentioned something about how the World Poetry Day has been celebrated in Ghana for more than a day. In fact, for a week.

Kinna Likimani of Kinnareads is observing it on a bigger scale with 21 days of poetry. Do check her out

Today, I share an old poem of mine. Happy Poetry Month, Americana

The Morphology of Your Dance

Your pride is as light as your heart

Your heart as weak yet

As purposeful as the Spider’s web

Yours remain where it sits on a knife’s edge

We know the intricacies of your proud dance.

We taught the original: so

Your time and pride is predictable

You Wretched dancing to the dead

Come back with your cobweb heart,

Anaanu ntang!

Let’s see the morphology of your dance.

On the stretch of the Spider’s web

Messing your way to the dead

Your skin did

The adaptation to your cold winds

But you covered your beginnings

Telling us you were original

Playing a tune of subterfuge

Till we are

Subverted in your reverse

Psychology.

We — for the Earth’s movement —

A moment,

Believed

And while drunk with your weak tears

You danced your way into our hearts.

But come!

Let’s see the morphology of your dance

We knew your tricks were

From your weakness

Your imposed fear

That we shall come for your blood

So you came for our lands

Opening up her belly, bloodying your way to your glory

It was you covering your weakness

As you danced your way to the dead.

But when we believed you, we lost, and

You won

Yet we know your pride and time is predictable.

So come let’s see the morphology of your dance

7 December 2011

Assault Her Dreams

And she started turning the world around
in her stomach
You cannot ask what it was she did
but you only wonder
How beautiful
she made all that was grievously sad
You cannot ask what you do not ask
but murder is murder
Yet she harbours all the world's pain
when you sleep in dry harmattan
You cannot fathom so do not ask, suffer amnesia instead, torture her
And after nine months, if the world survives, forget, assault her dreams
Assault dreams of her because you are a shameless world that through nightmares you sleep
Assault her dreams

When We Lose Reason - A Poem

I do not remember exactly where I was when I wrote this poem, but I presume I must have been frustrated, yet clean in thought enough to write. A lot has been said about the poem, especially when OGOV, an online literary magazine, published it and later Badillisha Poetry recorded me on it. A friend, had requested severally that I publish the poem here.

As the year ends, (mine ended in August, as mentally I go with the Ga calender of afi ooo afi in August) for most of my readers out there, I republish the poem "When We Lose Reason". CHEERS to all Humans!


God does everything, everywhere.
She is at that palm-wine joint
Ensuring the victory of the Stars;
Killing cockroaches at the Pentagon;

Slashing off the legs of a child in Afghanistan;
Receiving praises from a politician
Who only eats beef imported

From Argentina, while the people
Queue for water.

God does everything, everywhere.
Floods stream when her bladder
Can no longer contain the screams from the earth;
Blessing the hungry with
A cedi at the edge of a gutter

At Nima—
And after gaining no pleasure
From the monotonous lives of humans,

She sets a new comic in motion:
Wives catching cheating husbands,
The blind falling in gutters,
Fools winning lotteries.

At the peak of her pleasure's end,

God laughs thunders, hurricanes, earthquakes;
And shifts the tectonic plates
While quoting Laing:
'And what was joy anyway,
But a movement of brain energy.'

Something Beautiful

I want to write something beautiful
Not a poem
For I fear the gruesome reality
Might shock me
Shattering the smithereens 

Of what so human is left

Of my community's love

I want to write something beautiful

Not a poem

For I might record something grim

Wiping the smiles off the walls

Of strangers faces that greet me

Each morning

On Amantra Street

I want to write something beautiful

Not a poem

For I must capture lost dreams

Why passers-by pass by

Erasing our once communal love

But what I heard this morning was beautiful again:

Of You telling me "we don't know you yet we love you"

19 December 2012.

Osu.

An Ode for Nana Addo

I wrote this poem on Thursday, 13 December, a few days after the declaration of the election results. What is missing in the poem is the last futuristic stanza, which a friend promised to complete. While that remains to be done, I publish this poem for all Ghanaians. Enjoy.


For a decade
Your politicking years was robbed
Dragged through the rubble
Forced to sleep at 6PM like a chicken
Your hot head filled with nightmares
Of dummy soldiers walking in your cortex
You lost your sense of smell
To the stench of khaki uniforms field with grease
And all that was left was ashes
For you to rub your fingers in.

For another decade
You fought from within
Among your own you showed
How your difficult life was raided
Why it was your turn
Because you were a vanguard
You shined in Ghana's dark ages
When your people stared into the barrel of AK47s
But you missed their thumb
And another star died.

For yet another decade
The cloud was clear and you had crossed rivers
Y3nim wo dada yet you were "Milled"
Stretched to the limit
Then you gave up only to return
Upon being stampeded by your own Cash
But you were tired of paying for all
And the last lap was to be free until nature interfered
Replacing death with unknown new life
It was then you were done.

Corporate Ghana Woman - A Poem

A poem for you all: Corporate Ghana Woman

This tight skirt

That brings out  
the full ambit

Of Your Elmina Sea Defence
And a body-revealing blouse
or a long-sleeved shirt
That shows Your bloom

Your bottom power,

Dunaa ni mashi

Evenly distributed

Like ECG, showing where the power lies

Wedged—
Below Your curved
waist like Madagascar
in Communion with Africa's
Mainland siblings

You know where the Power lies

You know that Power lies.

22 October 2012. Ridge