Epiphany: A Poem from My Manuscript "Black Pathology"

You came from nowhere

at the night of a thousand gods

when in frustration of deserted Muses

I sat under my bed's dust

and wrung my inkless pen

around a naive housefly's hands

and invited him to play

I was eager to write

on a plain white paper

to fill my heavens

with countless palm trees

In eagerness of lost lambs

and talking drums

I pulled up the drawbridge

and opened the doorway

to my heart's hideaway

and there beyond a gossamer of fossil veil

shrouded in a mystery

of an eight-legged eight-eyed spider

was your vanished face

carved from the lonely river

speaking to me

to the depths of my heart's spirit

to the lengths of my mind's soul

drawing from the unctuous well...

There you stood

with bright eyes burning blue--

the lost lamb in lonely wanderings

wearing the scratches of countless foxes

yet you stood still

with your withering soul

cast in a shell of shamelessness

your drooping eyes piercing the wells of my mind

scooping to the last atom

the contents of my lost soul

searching and finding it

that which I sold to a devil two long ago nights

because you were not there to save me

Beyond the space between

you stood...

...standing still

...stooping low

...shaking wild

perching on the space within

covering the space beneath my empty mind

hollow as an undeveloped coconut

yet filled with your thoughts

like a brooding bird

or a hibernating snake

coiled over and over a million fold

and in its ramblings and entanglements

spat your black marble face to the surface

of the choked flotsam of my mind's wreckage

My empty mind, eager to fill...

The space beneath

The space within

The space between

shut the double door

(that ancient door)

to my ancestral home

and clasped you between the sheets of my petals

opening and widening...

widening and closing...

as a hungry butterfly with atrophied proboscis

Roaming within the walls

you were trapped

but still the gossamer covers your face

that vacant face of fear and death

sucking me into you

and in oneness of time and space

The space beneath..

The space within...

The space between...

dissolved into nothingness

and you lived in me

and I in you

and there you were no more

for I was there

and there I was no more

for you were there...

and like forever we hovered on the air above...

copyright 2006 by Nana Fredua-Agyeman

Drunken Dreams

I dream of you

in my drunken desert dreams

I dream of you

in my wireless wawa awakenings

I dream drunken dreams

at the point of my awakening

I dream meeting you

at the point of my phoenix transformation

Ancient of Days

the Beautiful One

conceived not by the seed of man

nor in the womb of the venerable woman

it is you I drunkenly dream of in my dreams

lead me by hand

take me to your altar of knowledge

fit my feet on The Path

yet leave me a human

but cut me into pieces

suck out the wormwood and the poisonwood and the log-wood

and all the wooden nerves and the mechanical processors

re-arrange me to my primaeval innocence

I dream drunkenly of you

in my sea-dry dreamy dreams

leading me into the Sun

to see the face of me and my creator

to transfigure me into innocence

and from the ashes

I would awake refreshed, emboldened

steep in the ways of The Path

and lead them to you...

Copyright 2009 by Nana Fredua-Agyeman

Notes: Wrote this title in my notebook without Atukwei Okai's Oblogo Concerto in mind but later I realised that it has unconsciously influenced the title.

This piece was written after reading Ayi Kwei Armah's Review of his book The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (which I have not yet read) in the August/September 2009 issue of the New African.

The Drunk Chromosomes of a Drunk...(From the Manuscript, BLACK PATHOLOGY)

On the fertile foopath

to the weedy farm

he fell...

(Sun and Moon at a twilight reunion)

...and died not

...and the conceived son

from the drunk communion

was not a toad-cow...

The mirror

reflects the contents of the mind...

The soul

harbours the deeds of the body...

The crab

surely begets a crab

You sow what you reaped

the farming season before...

Then he saw no heavens

...but a vast emptiness

He felt his feet suspend in space

the Lotus-Eater cum Palm-Wine Gulper

He sang songs of lamentations

beneath the palm-wine seller's shed

He tossed

turned

...tossed

Balanced himself

Fell

Broke his neck

His son has a bottle in his back pocket

a stoic man to succeed his father

...and he has his father's Drunk Chromosomes

He is his father

moulted into prime youthfulness

to continue plying his trade

and be the gods' embodiment of advice

copyright 2005 by Nana Fredua-Agyeman

Click HERE to read comments of this post on facebook

Ode to a Broken Statue--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 unlike Achilles, 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 mind obtuse

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…in 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 with poisoned spears pierced your humble heart

And fed your copious consciousness

Consistently to a series of kaleidoscopic conflagrations

Purposely established after your departure

Manufactured by those cheap cheating chaps,

We, stuck sons in sand-stars

Have surrounded and salaamed

In reverence before your bones

With a soul as hot as 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 fingers

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

Even bold ones…

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

Marcus Garvey,

Du Bois,

Malcolm X,

Martin Luther King,

George Padmore,

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 saw only darkness

Their needs were of silk, milk and manna

Their weeds—

Che Guevara and his honour to Havana

Their Gye Nyame spirit

Was 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…

2006

This piece was written in 2006 but I post it here to celebrate the Republic Day.

The Talking Drum--To Kofi Ghanaba, the Divine Drummer

The drumbeater beats his drum

pam pam pata pam pam

calling upon the bold ones

pam pam pata pam pam

with encrypted messages

pam pam pata pam pam

thundering through the land

pam pam pata pam pam

pam..

pam...

pata...

pam...

pam...

the Kilimanjaro-conquering quantum soul of Nkrumah

pam pam pata pam pam

the Akwapem-meandering mountainous mind of Madiba

pam pam pata pam pam

the Tanganyika-twirling titanic tunes of the drummer

pam pam pata pam pam

not all gatherings of clouds

lead to rains

not all deaths

are honoured by termites

adept fingers alone

do not make good music

pam pam pata...

his flesh is consumed by fire

his soul consumes the fire

pam...

the drummer stops

the beat stops

the dance is over...

PS: The indentations are not working properly. This is not the original structure of this poem.

Copyright 2009 by Nana Fredua-Agyeman

From New York to Chorkor — An Optimal Time Path

I speak of nothing—especially
not of you who, tearing his
singed ear-ringed ears, sold
his heart to his hunter
who, within a cocoon
of assumed innocence,
would have been wiped dry,
but like leaves which listen not
to the dews’ news
you lost your hold
and he moulted
into a bulldozing caterpillar

I speak of what must be
of our being
…or perhaps
should have been
if not for deadly deeds our hands have done
and searing scenes our eyes have seen

In its seamless search for meaning or sign
my unkind mind did find a wine
a seller had left in the cellar to unsell
or perhaps to resell to well our cells
but which, upon further fermentation,
fortified our fractured friendship with reason
making our minds a fertile field to fruit
root and recruit mutilators for the harvests of souls

I paint a pretty picture with passion
on the path of Picasso
and they patiently collude with the elements
to suck, crack and crush the colours
off the canvass,

Kwame Nkrumah
Jomo Kenyatta
Patrice Lumumba
Steve Biko
Ken Saro-Wiwa
Nelson Mandela
Midnight light-censored life-imprisoned impressionists
Long-term time-tested surrealists

Prophets are not made
if you don’t believe it ask your God
or your great great great grandmother

To escape his wickedness
they walked through
mad halls and mud walls
Sani Abacha
Mobutu Sesseko
Idi Amin
Foday Sanko
Charles Taylor
Jonas Savimbe
The cart is before the horse now
and the pushers are before the cart
with their fore-feet firmly fixed in concrete
…pushing and ushering the passengers
shamelessly
into the enchanting chambers of charms and chains
into the enchanting chambers of chains and pains

The train is railing waywardly
toward the emergency ward
of the fern-fortified,
ramshackle clinic…

To feed these greed
To sate these insatiable palates
they took the land many a yore
from New York
…to Chorkor
without regard to the lore

03.08.2007