[boakyeb]

A Coming To

Ghana's 57th

A celebration is in order A coming to As you begin to decide with pointed precision what is best for you As you discover with pristine clarity who you are As you honor your experiences for being chiefly yours As you swoon afflicted by none Not by the judge called praise nor the scorn of those with might A celebration is in order, your coming to Majestically adorn yourself in the golds of a triumphant history, the jades of a traumatic past Place on your storied head your crown of thorns I have seen this before, this victory dance A celebration is in order, a great joyous feast With a course of resilience and goodwill and foresight to see you through Come boldly and come free Come, come dance that your victory dance For a celebration is in order for gloriously coming to.

[boakyeb]

Women who have loved and lost and loved again (the breakup ode)

To the beautiful woman whose walk resembles the faithful elegance with which the moon chases the sun at dusk You who sees in companionship depth unbound, fearless in love You who gift your prized possessions like the sinning woman her alabaster jar of perfume at Jesus's feet  You will love again. Today, the moon, the brilliant moon, has set again Disappeared You are frustrated, it pains again The faint of heart tell you that love no longer exists "Where did the moon go for it has set?, they question again Love promised a lifetime, they opine again You consider again, why the swooning eyes that used to tend to you no longer watch Betrayal tetters - the spiritual boils of unsurpassed and unrequited understanding, your compromising, your forgiveness You are going to be alone again The thought is tiring and unforgiving Today. In some time, Love past the horizon, you will love again, And again And again. Love will excite you again The thought of intimate embrace will be warm again, you will make love again Come again, wait again Effervescent and tender, love will swallow you whole again, make you swell Again Because like the moon fondly chases the sun each dusk, the heavens make all things new again You will love again, you will love again.

Published 5/1/13

[boakyeb]

Happiness Overload: For a High Generation

Everything is slowing slowly Everything Your throat burns a little It itches so you scratch the front of your neck where the skin feels raw You can still hear the conversation which hangs in the room But you can't grasp any of it Thoughts, like the sour, lingers Everything is funny Your reactions are becoming retarded*, your words muddled The oxymoron of a smooth smolder Your eyes now clouded are tainted crimson You are swooning over everything and nothing All the pain and happiness is coalescing Time is melting The five hours spent doing nothing and everything feels heavy Like when you tried to open your metal lids and it was as forever feels You scratch and burn Slowing slowly Welcome to high. You're 14 when you start You take some time in the shower to graze the pricks which sprawl on your tender skin Wiping clean any affirmations of your womanhood You look like a Lolita now You're addicted to the prepubescent innocence you lost some time ago The ecstasy of a manicured purity for the pleasure you arrive to oscillating between bliss and mere damp flesh You want the wetness between your legs to never dry To inject life where the priest once fingered you to teach you sin So where in-between is immorality is where you're happy You're not here and you're not there Welcome to high. Each morning is a grind The literal crush and pulverizing to your pay From the mundane to the meaning Legal tender is the axiom and the affliction You know that life is a match to your paper But at a point your father will die on Christmas* And you still can't pay for mere human forgiveness You have traveled every where but never to your soul You have sold out every show but no one can afford the ones to your insecurity So you too know That we still sleep under the same dark sky Under a brilliant bright moon And rain pours on us all Money is not the only blessing but most blessings come through abundance So you grind You're high to the catch 22, you grind Welcome to high.  During the zombie-like torments of the former, former night, You felt sharply the enveloping pain from the emptiness of losing someone dear So you prayed, dear God, dear God, and stayed down, knees bent and eyes shut, and prayed and prayed Till you felt cloudy, tired, and drowned in belief That you slept. The former night, you were fighting demons  The ghosts of your grandmother who chastised you, the aunt who stripped you naked and pounded her frustrations in you till they grazed your flesh We humans are demons We sometimes shepherd wandering unclean spirits So pray without ceasing   Job, your trials compound and the tribulations surmount This night the battle of Armageddon will be fought in your head, this is depression So pray till you feel numb Till you're high of the Savior He has already paid the price Your gateway drug is your prayer Pray till you lie prostrate on the floor and your words run red like the Nile in tongues Pray, pray, pray Welcome to high. Poems for 72 Days, Poem 17

Published 1/27/13

[boakyeb]

Unending Goodbyes

Grandma, I am still looking From above, I see greenlush somewhere Soon beneath me, the sea Atop, the blue-black midnight sky Below is blue pain, water the depth of this immeasurable distance Someone asks, "sweetheart, what do you want to eat?" My stomach turns, flight food I am churning memories I have ingested but time, time swallows I can't necessarily recollect and condense, like cumulus clouds, our togetherness Scattered perceptions of watching you sell tomatoes to someone. A thief. Church. A running crab. A mango tree; the sweet taboo of too ripe brown mangoes Lizards. Listening to uncle listen to Marley and Dube. Sharing one bed. I long for the comfort of being cramped in one room with everyone I know Empty space is loneliness, I despise a room of my own If I had ever known sleep, it was only my rest underneath the slow breathes you take in bed Turbulence is a euphemism for what dissonance this change of place will cause Aeroplane. In love with someone because they have stayed I'm in love with this man only because he has stayed We are sitting in a nameless restaurant We order odorless food We don't really talk Occasionally, small chatter edifies us Then, it's frank, slow breathes in bed We are both the kind of tired sleep doesn't relieve We are just searching for the allure of not being in a room alone He is the embodiment of what that 15 minute call across the ocean does not assure The stillness of time. When finally reality fades and under the reminiscence of your breathing That frank, slow breath I dream aeroplanes I am still in flight, I am still looking Cotton-like precipitation like the clouds I flew in form under my eyes I see why everytime I write pain, it is etched blue, it is the sea I crossed It's as if I don't know what time has changed And the miles have smoothly folded into the wings of a plane I am still 9  And I am still waiving at you from the tarmac in Kotoka The bitter beauty of this endless goodbye. Poems for 72 Days, Poem 16.

Published 1/11/13

[boakyeb]

Where the Hell is Pure

They say dark bodies hold a lot of negative energy So from the beginning, from creation, you are the curse of Cain You have betrayed your god The first child on earth, you are the immaculate conception of the fruit of sin in which you were conceived You are angry, you are a beast You are not human You are Eve, you are an ape You are the first act of sin You are the only sin, you are rebellion You are darkness repressing the likeness of man to divinity The universe between near-touching hands in The Creation of Adam You are unpardonable. “Why are you so angry?” the Lord asked Cain. What is anger but knowing from birth that you will never see heaven? The sun will beat on your skin, your blood will toil the earth for time eternity Your spirit will rest on the ocean floor Even when god drowns the earth and envisions his work anew, your name is Curse For you have seen the nakedness of the lord The immorality of wisdom, of revelation The impurity of consciousness You are Ham's sons You are Canaan, you are Cush Your sin is the silver of grace you see in the lining of that which god made of you Your transgression is your irreverence of authority You will be slave to the chosen ones You are always the example through whom he will teach his sons a lesson You are cursed. You are the riches of the earth You are Ethiopia, You are Egypt You are not Eden but at least you are not compelled to worship You will scar your face and stretch your lip and cut the pleasure of your women So you are free but you are angry You are the only sin, you are rebellion But, Cain, nothing is empty, love, Dark matter too has mass You may not be in the likeness of the creator but you are the potter's mud You are choice. Poems for 72 Days, Poem 15

Published 1/4/13

[boakyeb]

Sometimes, a woman is King

I once proposed a man's womb and you have given it to me A birthing of a new understanding of love and place And power And power On power you say that asking me who I am with besides you is asking for too much power Seeking to be with me all the time is too much power To ask for all my engagements is too much power Too much concern We do no definitions, no boundaries No promises of forever, no curfews on truth To do trust deeply and not superficially So no phones seized, no requests to follow, our relationship does not trend You want to be together fluidly It's imperfect and difficult, we know But we believe that it's stronger where running. Our experiences have not yet caught up with our innocence My flower ideals do not align with the life we know I ask for change seeking to note failure, Cashing out fear, imitating cinema We script who we want to be still living in dogma Cautionary tales I seek to avoid constrain me We have been both dressed in pain And I often slip into insecurities - those passed to me, those I've lived, those we have created And there, my thoughts congeal on the things I am told I ought to know... Like your past, your father, those women, your aspiration, a future I seek a revolution unknowingly resettling on old places and old structures Truthfully, I seek to do it differently You say we can do it differently Build our kingdom anew Be royalties where there has never been one. And so I have asked to be a Queen, your queen And you have questioned Often to my pleas, clinging to the familiar You have proposed to a woman that she be King Not in those words but in thought and action If our time together is our ceremony, you say you are crowning me god Of my identity, of my experience, of my past, of this present And as the King, you say I can leave whenever I choose  You say my dynasty is where ever I take it It is not tied to any being, not even you You remind me that it is stronger where running I am steadily building my kingdom anew. Poems for 72 Days, Poem 14

Published 12/16/12

[boakyeb]

Untitled

I am here tomorrow, gone today

I am equal, yet still not free

I left in search of more though much is here

I am in a garden of spirits

In need of the art your work makes, as is my fate

Last I remember my soul was being hauled into a grand hall

A dilemma not to be shared,

I revealed without much thought

Months later, as though you knew, I would fall

So much is here but I have left in search of more

My heart yearns for that one missed call

  Mother I write only what I recall

When he beat you, slapped you, cursed your ways, your taste, and the food you make, you got on your knees and crawled

He would sleep with other women, use your money, drink his tail ends off, and you surprisingly kept true to yours

I watched, they watched, and as he got more possessive, with time you fought

Eventually after many near attempts of killing me physically, then the attempts to kill me emotionally, mentally, and you physically, you two fell back in love and gave it your all

Mother you say the love got stronger after the pain,

Do you remember though when he hit me when I did things not in his pace?

Do you remember the food left cold?

Do you attempt to recall the smell of his disdain?

The women he would not hesitate to give your bed place

Mother, the times you slept by me crying after I was unconscious because he deals with things in a haste

I am not at all innocent, nor are you, but this is your man, a character to talk and never act in his impediment of good and just ways

I need to know that you recall, that I watched and they watched

Before my love can be its all

  Yes, yes mother, I do forgive and forget

I do not hate that you loved him then and do now

I do despise though that my definition of love is what I saw

I do not hate that he hit me and honestly made me feel like shit; a waste for conceiving me

Worst has happened than his attempts to make me fall

I despise not knowing how to love although I have found whom to love

When he says his opinion, I say mine to make him at fault

When he kisses me, makes love to me, bathes me, I lay as if in a hearse

When he gives, I give, he takes, I take, we compete –it’s a damn race

Mother you stole my womanhood,

He gave me his manhood,

I cannot live in a soul that is not mine

I am in this garden of spirits hoping you give me what I lost

  Hear me mother

An attempt to heal on my own has left me a great cost

He told me not to tell that our relationship was falling apart but here I am in the middle of this call

I do not want to unintentionally scar my daughter with hypocrisy and half-truths like you two did

I have so much here but have left to atone what you caused

I want him here tomorrow and not away as he is today

Mother, I am equal but I would rather be free…

Poems for 72 Days, Day 13

Published 11/25/12

[boakyeb]

For the King

For a friend I lost  I once read that, "Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there." I wanted to meet you there. But you will realize  Albeit too soon upon my final farewell That whether you chose wrongly or never deliberately chose The tumult of never knowing if you will stay When you will leave, if you will remain, Made our union treacherous against my wish for persistence My heart clenching to the novelties of thought made striking in our night's laughter Though morning left with a cold emptiness, nothing to behold.  I never knew that soon after I told you that you are such a poet, Pleading that you should stay here with me, You would leave. I hope that one day you will read this and wonder as I do Why we never made it that far To the field. Always repeating lessons God wanted us to learn once Why we never made it beyond worship. Poems for 72 Days, Poem 10 

Published 11/23/12

[boakyeb]

Poem for 72 Days, Day 6

I wonder what you are thinking as your hands brush mine as we hold the rail As you nod your head in slumber Your eyes tainted crimson Where will you be in 10 years Where would life have taken you... As you hurriedly yet imperturbably eat your lunch Unlock your phone to the screen of the picture of you kissing your girlfriend Holding frozen yogurt you hope won't melt before you get to her place As you furiously finish your homework Playing your clarinet and asking for change Your shades defiantly covering your eyes in tunnels we ride Pushing a two seat stroller with three other kids vying for your attention While you try to talk to your man Reading Things Fall Apart or Sex, Drugs, and Economics   I wonder what your compromises and contradictions have been so far in life As I reflect on mine.

Published 10/27/12

[boakyeb]

Poems for 72 Days, Day 5

Who is afraid of post blackness? Dark faces absorbing light Reflecting entity and forever Who is afraid of post blackness? Post race? Post sex?` Post equity? Which is not the same as Who is afraid of post racism? Post colonialism? Post sexism? Post inequality? Who is afraid?

Published 10/25/12

[boakyeb]

Walk Where You Belong

A story about why smart black girls end up with dumb thugs, drugs, guns, and murder. 

Today, he visits you in a thin whisper, the voice of chilled faith, matter of factly, sourness in his speech. You can almost taste him in the closeness in which he speaks, the lingering smell of clean cotton in your half-open mouth where he rests your head. He wears a black mask.

You know, many gentlemen wear watches; you like watches. A man who wears a watch is obedient, he knows the tick of this world, the rage of time. But Que is a wanderer, he knows not urgency. You often held his 9mm glock. They would not stop you and frisk you. Or not yet. You have the skin of coffee but you are not a man. Love is a mask for the things we hold in secret for one another.

The other day, you also saw him. That time, in a white mask. He looked like a dancer. He is not permanence.

You turn on your cold bunk, you wonder what he is reading now. Maybe his favorite book, The Art of War. Has he been eaten whole by his ulcer in penitentiary?, you ask to no one. 

No one understands why you, an educated, beautiful, black woman, fell for a drug dealer? As if he did not touch you softly in your underbelly before he began peddling. As if he too does not smile at any warmth his anemic hands are often wanting. Has love not fed and starved many people?

We all know that drug dealers have a way with stories. Que has this one story, Here by my side, that you even submitted as your own in your creative writing class your second semester in college. You want to share it. You should share it.

Here by my side by Que Brittany

My patient painter is a chameleon. She has charmed the world with her voice, she writes poetry. She is a performance poet. She has colored all our suffering brilliant blue. In the dark silence of her kaleidoscope tempo is our love. She lays her contradictions and plates her fears so that the world can eat; we eat meaning.

Like the seasons change, sometimes my patient painter loves that the money can fly us away from the disconcertedness of the city life. We travel to somewhere hot where she can have me to herself, we like our togetherness alone. Other times, she throws the gifts at me, in anger, that they can not buy her love. She straddles between "this will kill me" and "fuck it, everything is wrong anyway".

But even in confusion, my patient painter does not surrender. She is furiously stroking her brush. She made it to a predominantly white institution on someone else's money. Once, she drew a question on where this money came from; what if it was coming from a soul that compromises her beliefs? My love, brush illegal money you receive as reparations, for slave labor is the only currency America owns. Where you can not make sense of things, chalk it to what is due to you and those who have little or nothing. You chameleon, in the momentarily beauty of transcendence, create new hues, manifest new understandings.

My patient painter is a warrior in the only battle that matters. You sit on light and embody evil in good, and in darkness, you see the complete absorption of light.

My patient painter, you change everything that changes you. My chameleon, you know the truth is never one thing, never in one being. No one is only good and no one is only evil. We all have sinned and fallen short. Love is patient.

[boakyeb]

Money Trees: How To Scam the African Scammer

When Ajei was young, every story he read went as follows: once upon a time, a long long time ago, there lived a trickster by the name of Kwaku Ananse. Ananse had eight long skinny legs, an awful small head, and a protruding abdomen. Ananse, as they say, fooled some of the people some of the time but not all of the people all of the time. Even where he fooled all of man, he was outsmarted by his own nature. But nevertheless, although Kwaku Ananse would face the repercussions of his malfeasance, there was always another Ananse story to be told. Ajei is like Ananse. Here is his story.

In 2005, Ajei had received his greencard in a white nondescript envelope. After ten years of living in Atlanta and using an unknown kinsman’s state ID to work at Hartsfield Jackson International Airport, he could finally fly to the place from where those eager Ghanaians whose checkered Ghana must go bags he unloaded, came. They too came to pick the money tree. But Ajei had long picked and just longed to go home. With a mere paper card, he was no longer a prisoner to the state. He would wear his red Pepe jeans and matching red shirt on the flight, his mp3 player interchanging between Obrafuo and Jay Z. Upon his arrival, his cousins would call him Boss.

Ajei had made good money in America. He was paid $14 an hour as a cargo agent. Taking care of only himself, his life in America lacked eloquence, and for good reason. The greater portion of what he made was saved after he paid his expenses back home. And there was that odd job he did with Nana which I will not detail. Well, except that Nana was deported about six years ago when he was caught on camera stealing letters containing people’s financial information.

In fact, having disgraced his family, Nana had to live with Ajei’s wife, Abena, at their home in Tema when he was flown or rather, thrown, back to Ghana. The story is that Ajei married Abena at the tender age of 22. Within weeks of their marriage, Ajei left Ghana with his aunt’s invitation letter in hand. No one expected him to return home at the expiration of his stay and he did not. He sent money to build his wife a home in Tema. He took good care of his wife. She was beautiful, brown, brilliant, and thin.

Now here is where the story gets interesting. Ajei was a fairly nice man who insists, even now, that he still loves Abena. After he started making some money, he told her to quit her job as a nursery school teacher. He did not want her to work and would rather provide her with everything she needed. But Ajei was the kind of man who would buy you everything you want but would never give you the money to buy it yourself. He also refused to tell his wife how much he made or how he made his money. When she would ask him, “how much do we have in our account, honey?”, Ajei would joke, “I have 140 cedis”. She would pry, “140 thousand cedis, baby?” and he would laugh and say, “but Abena, it is my money. I alone worked for it”.

Meanwhile, having lived in Ajei’s house for the past four years, Nana had fallen madly in love with Abena. Both he and her were frustrated that they had to depend on Ajei for sustenance. Although Nana had benefited considerably from their theft scheme, more so than Ajei, everything he had was confiscated by the State and he depended on Ajei to start his life anew. The two men agreed that this was the very least Ajei owed to Nana since Nana said nothing of Ajei’s involvement during the bust. Ajei had promised Nana a place to stay when he was deported and went so far as to promise his friend money to start a business. But Ajei’s seed money was slow to come. While Ajei gave Nana enough to eat and bought him clothes and other accessories, he found it nearly impossible to give him hard cash. He had instead began shipping machines to Ghana for the construction company Nana wanted to open.

Ajei had reasoned, he who brings termite-infested wood to the house should not be surprised when many fowls visit him. 

Soon enough, however, Abena and Nana joined forces. Abena had fallen in love with Nana’s decision to make her the mastermind of his affairs. They schemed. When Adjei returned to Ghana, Abena stole Ajei’s checkbook and gave the information on it to Nana. They waited until Ajei left for the U.S. of A and on that same day, Nana ran the routine with the help of a friend, much like he and Ajei did back in Atlanta. Immediately upon Ajei’s return to the States, eager to begin filing for his wife to join him in the States, he discovered that his savings was wiped clean. His checking account had a mere $75, the equivalent of 140 Ghana cedis. He knew that this was Abena’s touch, the brilliance of this woman.

I have personally advised Ajei not to worry because at least, he is in the land of opportunity.  He has to sow anew and he will soon reap. Although he did it to many other people, I am hindsight, not judgement. I too am picking anew.

[boakyeb]

A Friend For The End of the World

Melody picked up her dark blue and white polka dot panty in the pile of clothes heaped in the rush of the tender razing of the night before. This was her third time seeing Brandon after he had first lured her to his apartment with the promise of just watching t.v. and ordering Chinese food. She bent over and put one leg in her panty, her thigh brushing his leg. She began shaking her head, remembering the first night she made the two hour trip from the Bronx to Brooklyn to see him. She was hearing with clarity the angst in his voice as he ordered baked ziti for him and rice and jerk chicken he said was the best on the menu, for her. She could not remember if he asked her to pay for part of the bill or told her not to order something too expensive. She pushed and shifted her underwear, adjusting it to lay perfectly on what Brandon had lovenamed "the hump". He looked up from the couch and smiled at her. That was it, she recalled, he had asked her to give him some cash to tip the delivery man.

The comfortable warmth of the spring night Melody met Brandon, she wore a curve hugging black dress she borrowed from her friend. Walking to the train station from the project housing where her friend lived, boys stared, whispering within her hearing insanities about her body. Melody walked fast, dragging along her friend who laughed and lamented about "how lucky she is; her beautiful body".

As she walked out of the club in between sleep and morning dusk, someone thought so too. In the sobering exit routine at the end of the night, luckily 4am at clubs in New York City, someone behind her said something within her hearing that she began to laugh irrepressibly. She turned to him and said something light in response, joking that he was funny. That was his cue, he decided to make a move. He looked straight into her eyes, almost forcing the entirety of his 6'2 slender frame into her, and introduced himself: "Brandon, a single black man with his own place, money, no kids, and no baby mama drama". Melody was slightly irritated at this boast, not the least impressed by his brazen proclamation. He was above status quo for a Black man in America but that was according to indicators and stereotypes she had convinced herself she did not by into. She had just returned home from college and was without a job.

She inquired, "so what do you do?".

"I'm a teacher", Brandon chimed, "I am changing lives".

Melody's friend was irritated and ready to go home. By then, the club's bouncer was sternly reminding the growing crowd at the front of the club to make their way home, or at least away from the vicinity. The bouncer walked over to where Brandon and Melody stood. Brandon, charmingly gazing at Melody and directing her to walk with him, explained to the bouncer that he was getting this beautiful lady's number. The bouncer, now behind them, stared down behind Melody. Brandon turned. The bouncer was trailing off, "go ahead brother", and the two laughed. Brandon gave him a dap.

The underwear she was wearing tonight was also one her father had given her, just like the one from the third time she came over. She wondered what he, her father, would think if he could see her in Brooklyn, under the roof of an African-American man who to say the least, would occasionally rant that he does not understand why Africans think that they are better than African-Americans. She thought about judgement day and the sky-wide screen displaying her life. Scenes of sin; the first time she fornicated and the first time she smoked. 

Melody knew that Brandon's true pardon was his inherited narrative. He was everything she had studied in her public policy and Black studies courses. He grew up with a single mother in a Brooklyn housing project. He was born in 1984. He once joked that he used to eat the paint in his apartment and thinks that he might have ADD. He never filtered. He desperately wanted her to listen but he never really processed what she said. Once, while watching a special of Roots, Brandon reflected that he wanted a white woman just so that he can do to them what they did to us. "Rape her and shit", he explained.

The first night she came to Brooklyn, Melody had stood with Brandon for almost two hours at the Franklin Avenue train station, shaking. He was embracing her, and she confided that she had been raped by at least four different men before the age of ten.

Once, they walked past a group of rowdy young boys at the entrance of the train station. He told her goodluck, kissed her, and walked away. He did not sense her fear then either.

But when she could no longer understand herself, tears in her eyes in anguish that her revolutionary ideals would never take root, in need of a sobering experience, Brandon planted kisses on her entire body, holding her up against the tumult of her past. He told her she was so beautiful; that she would be okay. "If anyone can make it, it would be you", he comforted. The smell of the blunt the two had just smoked lingered on her lips when he loved her elsewhere.  

He said he did not mean rape, he was just angry. Melody cried as he thrust deeper. The bedrock of their relationship was a painful composition of their lives and experiences and this inherited history.

At precisely dawn, Melody sat on the bed, restless. She did not understand why he always left his bedroom door open. Which ever monsters Melody was hiding from, Brandon would always invite them in.