Akwantuo

May they who have answers
to my prayers open their ears.
As l sit under this baobab tree
in the middle of the village square;
with arms and limbs worn off by hunger and want;
yet do not have a grain to swallow.

My empty intestines continue to crack
with the harmattan winds of hunger through
my mouth with nowhere to turn to;

At the backs of my mind,
I see myself well dressed up and laid
in state with millions of mourners waiting to be fed
at my wake;

I want to ask my clansmen,
Should we be living and dying
in this manner?

-Francis Kokutse

When in the presence

of friends, or other cats—

especially during the cold months—

when I bring in stray ones,

my cat wags its tail, raises

the fur along its nape,

paces the room and

settles on its haunches

on the family couch

and purrs with eyes

screaming into mine, or

when it refuses to sit

but wants to show its position

in the house, it draws

its claws and climbs

onto my shoulders

its tail held high

a sign of victory, I know.

-Nana Fredua-Agyeman

*Written during a Writers Project of Ghana poetry workshop, held at the University of Ghana in May, 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

Dedicated to Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah

In the land of Nkroful, a Nazareth
in faraway Nzema, you, Nana Amaga, were born

As a lonely limping quintessential lamb
you fought fiercely not for your few needs
but against their deadly deeds
and incredulous creeds, carefully and
shrewdly shrouded in shallow showmanship
of great guiles and glamour guns

The grand gods of Shaka the zealous Zulu and Zeus
saw sprouting spirit of spotless selflessness
and imbued in your budding bones
our relentless requests for liberation

They dipped you into a cauldron of ichor
and it covered every shadow you shed
rushing through every vessel
They tied your plasmatic placental pipe to theirs
and their poetic tongues with yours
making you their earthly linguist

You washed your hands in the pot of rainwater
wedged between the folds of the Nyamedua
and so dined with them their ambrosial food

From there your manhood was affirmed…
confirmed by the
ageless sage who supervised your
Rite of Passage…

Hence you took the forms of both the Magi and Moses
seeing Canaan in Egypt before he was set sail
and the Messiah before the epiphany

Having tasted the giant fruits of divine wisdom
you vowed never to lose it
nor be confused by a few men with obtuse mind
whose blue bleary eyes were blinded by abuse
and misuse

From Kumbi Saleh
to Kangaba…Timbuktu
Cape Coast…Accra
You lived through the spirits of time
and harvested its wisdom within its interior plane
You were the reincarnation of Ra Nahesi
…Mansa Musa
…Sundiata…into one entity

Your brain was carved as complicated
and inconceivably complex as the spider’s web
With supreme intellect to the point of folly
you embraced bodily…boldly…both
ancestral missions and astral visions lodged
within the blackholes of Einstein’s space-time theory

Being the gods’ sacred soothsayer
you looked through the divine orb
and spoke of weaving our blood baskets
intricately into the heart of the land
at the time of our birth on that Wednesday evening
but they only saw it fit to spit in your wit
scared of losing their loins and groins to the lion’s longings

After our timeless wanderings in the wilderness
After they’ve pierced your heart with poisoned spears
and fed your copious consciousness
consistently to a series of conflagrations
purposely established after your departure
manufactured by those cheap cheating chaps,
we, star-bearing sons, have salaamed
before your bones
with souls hotter than a bole of coal
dutifully waiting for the prophecy
seeking counselling in the sands of time
with ailing whispers of failure
as life flew through our clenched fists

Into a god have we turned you
Into knowledge have we transformed you
and posthumously have we honoured your name
blasphemously branded on all lips…
Burning offenders of the season
as heretics of treason

Should we always see goodness after death?
Should decayed coffins bear the staff of sainthood?

When you sought mental emancipation
through the burning of blood and bone
and the expositions of the Prophecies
they only saw insanity in your queer quest
and together with unknown souls
sold your soul to an unknown night owl

When like God in Newtonian vision
you let the light be
they only saw darkness
Their needs were of silk, milk and manna
their weeds:
Che Guevara and his honour to Havana
Their Gye Nyame spirits
were lost in the potholes of their minds
and from the Katanga valleys of Kinshasa
to the Soweto mines of Jo’burg
they killed our prophets
and traded their ivories to tool makers
of faraway lands…

- Nana Fredua-Agyeman

When we they call;
Heathen, people of the world and devils
come to sit in judgment of men who
have read  all there is
to be read in their Holy Books;

Yet have refused to love
their neighbours;
covert their kinsmen’s wives;
misappropriate the Sunday Silver collections
in the name of the Holy Spirit;

Then, do we not see
our paths blurred when
those who we look up to
for help to reach Canaan
have lost their bearings.

- Francis Kokutse