LOVE AFFAIR

It started eons ago.

A love affair.

A simple seduction starting with a cross.

Our mother fell for it just like the many other maidens in our father’s harem.

Ah! The father we profess to hate but love spending time with.

Why are we refusing to see?

The affair still goes on.

‘I am free of him’

Mother keeps saying.

What kind of closure happens behind closed doors then?

With the very man you claim to be free of?

I am half-breed

Not that I like it

But mother’s mistakes must be paid for.

The riches he took for himself as bride price

He claims to be paying back as alimony.

As if we would be blind to the courtship dance that still goes on.

Mother! Please move on already!

Mother Ghana, when will you stand on your own feet?

MEN DON'T TEAR

Men don’t cry

Where I come from men don’t cry

Men can hit and break but men don’t cry

God didn’t give them the ducts

Men can hurt and bleed but they don’t cry

So I concluded that they can’t cry.

Women are weak.

Where I come from women are weak

Why else will it awe everybody when she is strong?

Where I come from tears are the woman’s answer to everything.

Yes, women are weak,

Over here, where I come from.

One day we travelled.

A movie at a time

We saw what was natural and what was unreal.

Now we are torn

Between the culture that groomed us and the one we wish to adopt.

For even though we wish our men stoic and strong, we wish they would with passion display their hurt like they do their anger.

And as we love protecting and guarding our women like eggs, we wish they wouldn’t break when they fall.

We are the worst culprits of them all, we who cannot decide who we ought to be or want to be.

FAITHFUL

I have wondered countless times about what exactly I can say about You that will be new and unique.

The psalmist has called You his shepherd.

The patriarch, Jireh, his provider.

Many names in different times have You been called.

What is it about You?

I have sat where others have claimed they got their inspirations and nada.

I have tried to feel more than I think.

It just made me sound lame to my own ears.

Maybe it’s not the where that is important but the who.

You oh Lord are my inspiration.

You may be my inspiration but upon all I have read about You,

Heard about You and seen about You,

Nothing humbles me more than Your faithfulness.

All those other names, You are and more, but when I am asked who this God of mine is?

Nothing comes to mind other than Your faithfulness, in love and in all You are.

All those years ago You showed me Your faithfulness and true to form You haven’t changed.

I know You probably prefer to be called I AM

But allow me to call You Faithful.

WHAT SAYS TIME?

Whatever were we discussing when papa said; time will tell?

Who? That old man by the doors of past, present and future?

I set out to get the old man to tell me what he knew.

He sat unmoving with his eyes glazed over. Not a muscle did he move.

He was boring and he wouldn’t even speak to me.

When I woke, the door to the past had been closed never to be opened.

Through the cubbyhole I could see the fading light behind the door.

The fading light of my memories.

What happened? When did it happen? Who closed the door?

He wouldn’t talk.

Well, when have you ever talked?

I will figure this out on my own.

 

The broken hearted and the grieved have said time heals all wounds.

Hogwash! He is the excuse we give to move on, to forget.

Now I understand.

When papa said time will tell, what he meant was; he didn’t know.

It is only when I trivialize the pain of my past that I get to smile at my present and laugh with hope over my future.

But wait oh.

The past took along with my pain, my happy moments.

He’s left me a clean slate to create new moments.

A cycle that never ends until I’m six feet down.

It would be tiring had I not been a glutton for life

But as I ponder this, I conclude that

Weary bones are a comfortable price to pay for all time has to teach.

CITYLIGHTS

Constantly we have been criticized,

This generation, of how out of touch we are with nature.

We are not out of touch with life.

We do not understand each other,

This generation and the ones before.

The gap between us is thicker than the walls of Jericho.

Their history lessons are over our heads

Our fashion lessons are met with the blinders over their eyes.

The difference between the cry of the kite and that of the magpie we cannot tell

The difference between the cry of the ambulance and that of the motorcade

Give that to us and we are your man

Life taught you through nature

Allow life to teach us through the city lights

The magnificence of the cheetah will draw snores from me

Unless it were my purse

It doesn’t hurt that Obama’s wife has a fashion sense.

We are not lazy

We just prefer our ‘irreplaceable’ to your ‘dabi dabi ebeye yie’.

How about you learn our ‘grand theft auto’ and our ‘new York nights’

And we will gladly learn about your clan animals.

Till then, don’t belittle our life just because yours is different.

The city lights will teach us, just like the magpies taught you.