First Blush

First time sparked only a light
Just a pretty passing thought
Then I looked at you again
And saw the sparkle in your eyes

Don’t know what I want from you
But I love your many ways
I love the times I spend with you
And the way you say my name.

A Promise on Love

I’ll stow your smile in a chocolate cake
Catch your breath in a red rose bud
I’ll hold your hair in a liquorice lake
And love you with blue blood

I’ll keep your heart in a glass fruit bowl
And cloak your soul in a crystal ball
I’ll melt your mind in a phial of gold
And love you, flaws and all

I’ll coat your touch in sugar strips
Set your feet in a jewellery case
I’ll warm your kiss against my lips
Love you in time and space

Finis

It rose and then it glowed
Was hot and enragé
Turned cold and blazed again
It grew and flew away

It struck a light and shone
Was swept up in a swirl
Tailspinning in a trice
It mellowed and refined

It set and gave a sigh
Was far from growing old
The time had come to go
It crept away to die.

The Seal

i’m looking for the little words
i never had use for.
the pretty pearls
that carry dreams
and cares to God
in prayer.

i’m thinking of the simple ways
i had and lost in time.
the erring touch,
the meeting minds,
the thrill of
stolen glance.

i’m dreaming of a happy place
where smile and leaping heart
dance hand-in-hand
from morn till night,
while fear and hurt
grow thin.

a magical moment will dawn,
reveal my open secret –
the truth of how special
you are,
and seal
what’s meant to be.

Standing Pretty in the Streets

Her incredibly increasing curves strut and swing my way. I demurely deflect my glimpse, for she’s clearly caught on to the fact that I’m madly amazed at her fluid flexure. Gliding gleefully towards me, she showers one last ridiculously showy sashay, and comes to a rehearsed stop at my window. She asks, “Will you buy?”

She wears her skin leathery and sable from strutting her stuff and selling her fruit (mutual advertising, no?) in the searing African sun.

The gluey situation only lasts a trice, and then the traffic passes on. With devilish doubt, I ask my Self whether I would genuinely judge her pretty, or any prettier, if she weren’t drudging and moiling daily on the streets.

Jaywalking to Sea at La, in the City of Accra

A combusting, constipating quarter in the city of Accra is couched on the cold and rocky coastline, by the Giant Gulf of Guinea. It pans out up-shore, across a major street and over red-earth flatlands. It offers boundless sweeps of hibernating beaches, except for enchantingly cultivated choice strands where elegant, self-indulgence-inducing hotels have gulped up the usable space.

Between its squashed southern estates and the two great hostelries, the fierce shingle streaks wild and primitive for maybe a double kilometre. The drive on the slightly bending dual carriage is spectacular unlimited, especially on low-traffic, moonlit nights. But the awestruck gazer is running risks of knocking down a dozen jaded jaywalkers at any time.

I’m bland and barren in imagining (no, I can imagine easily, really) what they treacherously traverse the streets for, appearing from nowhere and gambolling heedlessly towards the austere, inclement banks of the titanic Atlantic. They do not give pause, and stand to admire. So what in heaven’s holy moniker are they doing there?

Living on the Motorway

Reverse the fourth dimension to 1998. A masterly motif of a caravan of industries is spinning at great speed on the same spot: Tema, Industrial town, first cousin of Accra. Drastically dissimilar to any other Ghanaian commonwealth for its considerately-named streets; numbered homes; well-laid, clean and snazzy streets; small, engaging buildings; first-rate factories and swift-coming traffic.

The twenty-something-kilometre motorway, unfurled long ago, seemed a lonely, eternal cross. It was surrounded by vast, virtuous flatlands teeming with spry swamps, wholesome woods and motley hues of tall savannah grass.

In 2008, the virgin is gone out of the land between Accra and Tema. The formerly detached first cousins are now hideously holding hands on either side of motorway. A monstrous megapolis has stealthily sprawled its sinewy tentacles from Accra to Tema. The woods are ruefully replaced by sorry sprinklings of shrubs on tiny tracts of un-reclaimed swampland.

Unsightly blotches of massive houses, tiny houses and whole recumbent estates have sprouted on the diced land. Totally ugly buildings they are, not for the architects’ philistine flair (for the schematics are quite scenic) but what is a trophy tattoo of a black widow spider doing on the face of a beauty queen? Her looks are now limp, as is the dainty art.

Juapong, Pillow Country

Most people hanker after a downy, puffy pillow at night. Pillows have been lovingly related to gladsome comforts and showers of cloudless dreams since the maiden morning of life (bar evolution).

Juapong is a tiny town tucked away in the Volta Region (but sleepwalking in the Eastern Region) of Ghana. She unfurls her common clothes on either side of the Adome-Kpeve-Kpando road. Not a whole comely lot is in sight on the drive, even at a casual pace.

Juapong nourishes herself on a textile company. The by-product of the cloth-making is the loads of colourful, odd strips of fabric. It would have been lowly litter with well-employed, sensitive city folk and a hounding headache for hapless city authorities. But, here, in Juapong, the single street is as clean as a whistle.

Down the length of the town, both sides of the road are delightfully decked with simple wood stalls stacked multi-storey with portly pillows; an open-air pageant of stuffed, plump and soft pillows in all imaginable colours. I think beyond the plain question of competition among neighbours, and wistfully wonder how snug pillow pleasure could have been so underrated by such a closet hedonist as I.

Sweet Innocence of Youth

Two untended mango trees prevail rugged in my parents’ house as the seasons scuttle north, and then sail slowly south. They joyfully poke their impetuous trunks in the wide eye of the sky; daring the affronted elements to unleash overwhelming forces to test their timber tenacity.

Sticky-billed birds flock furtively to the young fruit on the trees, before they’re ripe to eat, and drill yawning gorges in their slowly-softening skin. The raw and ravished buddings dangle rough and woozy from the weather-beaten branches. The evil elements dispatched the birds.

These terrible times have cleanly licked the last syrupy drops out of the sweetness of callow youth, and succeeded it with a cutting, ruthless ripeness. So, babies-not-long-gone are daily striking a cruel blow at the trusting, slumbering world. The sweet innocence of age, ken and lore is repeat-raped savagely by the unfledged, silly stripling.

Ogling! Sweet Peccadillo!

It must be the sickening feeling of the fingers of a person’s eyes running slowly over your stiffening body, unclasping hidden clips and straps, and blissfully pinching on your privy. Pretty people pretend to hate the craving regard of another. You are blazoned not half bad with a comely face and an electric body; you should suffer no affront even if a grisly, gangrenous ogre ogled you.

If a woman (any woman) kindly found some delicious chip of any part of me, I would be glorious glad to offer her fulsome eyefuls of more visual fricassee :-) We are all withering works of art; so why should we not make it an uppity weathering? :-) You really should turn off your overheating ohmmeter, and strike a radiant light every magical moment an enchanted pair of eyes hounds your Royal Highness :-)

Shunsuke Nakamura

He gracefully glides his lean frame into the flight path of the ball, and waits calmly as it comes to sleep in his vacuum chest. He springs nimbly to one side, and the ball reverse-soars slowly to the turf. Then, he threads a delicate pass through an undergrowth of legs to his confounded teammate.

The myth about Asian players is that they are bloody boring. They blight the beautiful game with a sterile, scientific style of speed, space and rectilinear ranging. They’re as blind as bats to the skilled art of fraudulent feints, sweetly curled lobs and lofts, stupefying stepovers and the haunting, humiliating chip.

Nakamura has reached the summit of the two hundred and eighty four Munros of Scottish football. He had one dream season deliciously filled with flawless free kicks, unbelievable ghost passes and gorgeous goals in thick-coming fancies.

Aiden McGeady is surrounded by three defenders. He swiftly backheels to Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink who is cruelly scythed to the ground. Nakamura floats on the scene. He casually casts the ball onto the pitch, and saunters three steps backwards. He takes no pernickety aim. With neither showy twist nor frilly turn, he shunts forward and lightly strikes the ball. It’s slow, it turns some speed, it flies, floats and dips into the net agape. Goalkeeper amazed! :-)

The Modern Woman

My irresistible presence
Confounds you to mistakes
My immortal essence
Plagues your passions so

I burn into your soul
Hot like liquid fire
I’m etched onto your mind
It’s my physical pull on you

I am the modern woman

Watch!

I am a free spirit
I walk with a song in my body
I talk in sweet melodious tones
I leave your mind and heart in a split

I am a free spirit
You cannot hold me
I’m too clever for that
You have nothing that I want
Except your true respect

I am the modern woman
I’m cool and confident
I’m smart, intelligent

I have my own big dreams
You want to rule me, you better walk on
Give me some respect, and we can be friends

I am the modern woman.

The Magnet

The kaolin knees arrive steadfastly together. One delicate foot nestles neatly, and slightly raised, in the back of the soft, unwrinkled ankle. The well-bred, forward incline of the erect torso traces an exquisite, carnal zed with the oblique outlines of the taut thighs and the legato legs. Deadly delirium imminent :-)

It has been over-explored in a thousand spicy modes: the candid-camera crossing and unguarded uncrossing, in a miniskirt or kiddie dress, in a public place. That split second sweetly abases everything into the primal man-woman relationship. Wherever the gilt legs stir, the enchanted eyes engage, magnetised, every time :-)

Someday

I’ll wake up in a sunlit room
With breeze and curtain playing in my face
I’ll turn to see her sleeping smile
And how she wakes up so secure
I’ll hide a little note in her bag
And polish her shoes to a glint
Shampoo her hair or iron her dress
I’ll not mind doing these for her

I’ll call her in the afternoon
And tell her that a deal went through
And thank her for her great support
To celebrate, I’m picking her for lunch
Her friends will call and say she’s lucky
And mine will ask for success tips
I’ll ask her about her day so far
And tell her that I’m there for her

At night we’ll read a book together
And talk about themes and plots
I’ll tease a bit and praise a lot
She’ll smile and tell me her newest dreams
We’ll dance and play a song to us
And though the ground moves, we stand happily firm
We’ll laugh and part for a little time
To think alone and do other things

I’ll come to the room, she’s waiting for me
She winks at me and calls me her man
I’ll smile and feel the greatest joy of all
I’ll go to her and be her man
We’ll lie awake in the dark for a while
She’ll whisper and say she wants to talk
Good or bad, we’ll deal with it
And go to sleep on another beautiful day.

The Cars Run on Air in the City of Accra

A rapid waltz out of the languid urban safari into this five-minute haven. Beaming attendants wish wonderful weather on your way, and, sometimes, ask if you’d like your windscreen laved. Pointing to the digital counter with a good grace, they give the trigger a gentle squeeze, and the limp, hanging hose suddenly springs up into a stiff throbbing force.

Not a few drivers in the City of Accra carry the cathedral conviction that half of the tedious tugging and cha-cha chugging only ejaculates thin air into your petrol tank; that frenzied coming is all in vain :-))

You cough up your children’s future college fees for the rarefied air you dearly didn’t design to invest in, and unknowingly urge your still-hungry hybridised car forward into the gasoline-guzzling traffic again.

They Stock Women at the Accra Mall

Shoprite is a great place to meet a girl in the City of Accra :-). It is gaining on an adroit art to drift among the ample aisles, vacationing on the exotic food smells, and lingering for the grasping encounter with the lone, mesmeric mademoiselle. The double-dyed tale of how they glitter through the food-and-consumables displays will be spun on another glorious day.

At 8 p.m., my best friend and I crashed into the mall to buy a single, little body sweetener, when we laid our hungry eyes on her. She was beautifully brown and frightfully fresh-looking for that time of a working day. In the brilliant lights, it might as well have been 8 a.m. We forgot the dainty deodorant, and ghosted around after her, watching her lovely, slightly sidewise-inclined body hovercraft over the floor tiles. The blemish of the bend set an outre accent in her eloquent hips, as she blithely bewitched us to careless curiosity. We wandered so close that I could smell her every exciting essence of creature womanhood.

In a happy snafu, she dropped her handbag, and a gripping story spilled out on the floor :-). A slim, black leather diary with fine, gold-leaf pages, three slender cell phones and a vermilion necktie. As she bent over to retrieve the betraying objects, the wonderfully warm and open sight was excitement enough to cap a voyeur’s night of delight, but out tumbled more girl stuff :-) – a nude pink lipstick, a black pair of glasses, a shiny, silver cigarette lighter and a huge gold pen.

Her entire life story was spewing out on the public floor. We, the twin-watchers, rabbitted here and there, gathering up ice-breaking bric-a-brac to hand back to her: a Dictaphone, pills for the heart and a fragrance bottle (Escada Magnetism for men) :-).

So, what was she? We had scrumptiously stalked her for ten minutes, and were certain that she was not a sleazy shoplifter. She may have been some middle-level executive or a secretary (cell phones, Dictaphone, heart pills for her boss) or she may have been sleeping with her boss, an old man (heart pills, lighter, gold pen, necktie. Or did she have a cardiac condition at her young age? If she was having a tryst with a geriatric, why was the fragrance Escada Magnetism and not Old Spice?

I should have loved to stay a little longer to let my second sight ravish and enjoy her some more, but she coyly snatched the bottle out of my outstretched hand, turning crimson in the face, and turning on her lovely heels, away from me. Then, I reckoned that it was time to go home.

Melissa

Belle Melissa
Tripper of hearts
Dream snatcher
Lovely eyes like green lanterns
Sable skin so soft and sleek
She smiles milk on cherry lips
Her hair flows sweet in bergamot
She has her heart in the right place
Serving sweet moods in the cold
The milk of human kindliness
She loves lilting with the lark
Skinny dips in the midnight lake
Dancing late or curling with a book
Wild Melissa
Beautiful
A galaxy of diverse dreams.

Mother Tongue - Poetry

Nothing appeals more to me
than seeing little kids
speak, in their mother tongue.
Nothing comes near the thrill
I feel, when twist and turn, trill
and churn, come out with polish
and cultural relish.
The way a thing is said,
may make it prettier yet,
than the thing itself.
To be there, when they tell
of the wonders of the world,
in enthralling fairy tales, saying
things never said, playing
with words as with clay,
feeling no consciousness of self,
makes you stop
and feel the shame
of those who swap
for fake acclaim.

Gorgeous Akosombo

The searing heat slips into a sweet and crisp coolness, as you approach her from the City of Accra, and a brisk breeze sweeps along with the car. The road is well-kept and lushly lined with tall trees with fresh, green leaves.

She is curled up at the foot of running hills, and sleeps silently on the banks of the Volta River; the lake unfolds itself upriver. Her plains and hills are spotted with many well-fed woods of humongous trees, saplings, shrubs and bushes watered by little spill-over pools from the occupying river. Never too hot or too glaringly bright, it looks like a 3-D postcard picture; crystal clear with muted colour tones.

Multi-storeys are very rare. Flat box-houses crawl in ornate order over the hobbling landscape and equatorial plains, allowing splurges of comfortable space everywhere.

Her many fine hotels and spick guesthouses welcome holidaymakers who want an easy-peasy drive through the clusters of copses, a tranquil cruise on the many boats, or some rapid, reckless and raw-nerve water sport. The best by far is the Volta Hotel; luxurious for the rooms, cuisine and service; built like a ship, a submarine and a citadel (have you seen it?).

She’s quiescent and picturesque, laidback and breathtakingly beautiful, but she is not Accra. After three days and two nights you want to descend into the furnace, clangour and stuffiness that is the City of Accra. Gorgeous Akosombo!

Untitled - Poetry

he offers her his bar stool,
and that makes me smile.
at last, a gentleman!
and then, i catch him,
gazing between her legs.