The Pips Come Next

I was panning out for the circus from the driving window as one does in another town, and I saw a woman shuffling her heavy feet on the squalid sidewalk. I discovered that what I mistook for tics in her face was a habitual case of bellicose chewing. Her hands come up, and I see she’s gnawing at an orange. I’m thinking that something is struggling for egress, because she puckers her lips into the spout that goes before a squirt. She folds her lips long again, ruminating for her life! Some liquids spews out, and I know the pips come next. As my peripheral vision whizzes on, she ejects the seeds one by one! Right on the street!

Distance

Will distance kill the flame
That flickered from pole to pole
And came to wax at home
Where it found a brighter light?

Can time delete the thought
That warmed to tender touch
And grew from great respect
To where it reached the skies?

Did hearts as deep as ours
Diffuse in world or realm
And flutter everyday
To create new shades of love?

Would being at your side, my Love
Would it make you fonder still
Or would my good guess still be good
That you’ll be always mine, anyway?

The Artist

A free flick of cunning hand
Cuts out the fullness of her heart
Each colour shows a crazy strand
Her every leap in the dark is art

The theme and texture flow forever
Her soulwater is a satyr’s spring
Her view of life is soft and clever
Each child of her hand is a graceful thing

She lives her art in gown and gait
A bold and elegant way of mind
The gallery glows in her beauteous bait
The artist is a wondrous kind.

[From the collection 'Mindfall']

The Lease of Life

Whatever happens
We're all here on a lease
And we'll all be evicted
In a year or two or seventy

Salsa Scandalous

Salsa is wonderful to watch! Guapea, Pa’l Medio, Sombrero, Gancho; one hundred salacious steps, sudden flicks, fluid twirls, swirling skirts, camaminos, dame son sopresa, soporific suenas, salsa is frolicsome! An unconscious hand (do you believe that?) strays smoothly over the sweat-scape of another’s body all the time.

Some call it a wicked workout – physical and mental. Surely, the only one you go to all dressed up. Permanent partners (a bit like marriage, really) dancing breath-close to you. Smelling your hair, slipping their ubiquitous arm round the small of your back (just the way I like to do).

If my girl suddenly turned to Salsa, the choices would be bright-red crystal. One, I go along. Two, she walks away from it. Three, I walk away from everything! And, still, Salsa really is sweet with maddening manoeuvres, crazy kinetics!

Missing Lil Girl in the Rain

The rain lashes the street
And fills up my shoes
Happiness crashes through my heart
And longing loads my soul

Head of Shame

At what fine point in God’s priceless time should a woman gallantly recognise that she’s hauling a hideous hairstyle on her head? Should she sit tight for public ridicule to come bruising her, or for a squirrel’s attempt to make a home on top of her head? Or should she notice before she heels out of the bungling stylist’s studio?

Office-Holders, Office-Seekers, You are Frigid!

Mephistophelian men and women, sweeping across the nation, making moonshine promises, and claiming worthless achievement. While you go back home in extravagant motorcades, led by suicidal dispatch riders, please spare an unusual thought (I know the thought or compassion must be mighty painful for you), but spare an unusual thought, all the same, for I who sat in the stiff traffic, and went nowhere at all for three long-ass hours. You are all much of a muchness, anyway. We’d like to see you all do a moonie on stage, instead – it means more than what you say. Shame! Shame! Shame!

Saturday

Saturday is excellent
at undressing the stiffness in you.
It releases your easy-going bent,
and reveals the sultry woman too!

Acceptance

Your mom called me today
When you couldn't pick your phone
She thought I would know if you were fine
She left a full moon in my face

No Eating in the Bathroom

The dashing artist was perplexed aplenty. Were his uber-skilled hands so beslimed, nay, begrimed? He shot back in his chair, and threw the woolgathering waiter a corner-eye dart. Was the tongs-wielder trying to scald him?

Our friend had asked us to dinner in a Chinese restaurant – her birthday (at thirty, she’s as lovely as a lily). Her happy, little crowd was lawyers, bankers and in-the-process-of-becoming-self-made people. She’d brought the artist along for the outré appeal.

When the steaming, tiny, white towels made their wont appearance, the manicure-haired artist was alarmingly out of it as to what to do with them, until he saw us take them in our own un-artistic hands. Kiz and I thought it so cute, after calming down from the stitches!

The Mermaid

I saw a mermaid at the beach
Sprinkling show crystals on the sand
As the beach boys all and each
Watched their manliness a-grand!

The Hype

Thirty minutes after the act
I know it for a frigging fact
That all I thought I lacked
Is nothing once it’s cracked

The ‘Bottom’ Line

You cannot tell if you’re in love until you’ve farted in each other's face, and laughed yourselves senseless! I heard this on some raunchy Russian drama on BBC radio. At the time, it felt like I was eavesdropping in shock on an unfolding scarlet scandal. But, now, I love it!

The bravado of breaking righteous wind in the hallowed presence of one you care crackers about, is even more wonderful because it tests their delicate senses, and their romantic vibes for you!

The almost imperceptible parting of the derriere crack, and the slight flutter and fall of the clothes at the point of impact; the thunderclap or power drill that brings the eerie, uneasy knowledge of what comes next; the tale of what last went in the mouth catches you on-the-fly, making you pinch your nares.

The choice: should you feel affronted? Violated! Or should you let loose laughing, and log on to the feel-good factor?

Dino Control

Under her mundane, abbess dress, Accra holds many puzzling marvels. One such is the way some of her people think. Today, at a hotel, my friends and I only craved to have the TV switched from the news to the England-Croatia game. By management rules, they had to summon the hotel electrician to do it. If it takes an electrician to change a channel on cable, it should require a molecular physicist on top of his atomic game to unscrew a light bulb, no?

The VSNL Kind of Love

I told my girl, this evening, that what we had was the VSNL kind of love. She’s the wild, audacious and fetchingly frivolous one between us. So I was ten miles totally at sea to find that she was not too oily and buttered-up by my soft soap on our joint jollification. Perhaps the ‘V’ sounded out of place. I could have pretended, for starters, that it referred to a far more delicate delight of mankind, no, womankind. But it doesn’t! Simply taking any one letter on its own demeans the raw, seductive charm of the quartet. I’ve always dreamt of the VSNL kind of love, and, now, I’m living it!

Cumstasis

You Can’t Touch This! When the Walkman was ‘in’, and every fly gal and guy had to be caught dead strapping one and singing or rapping along (though they themselves were spared of their own torment), a girl seeking recognition was overheard saying over and over again – CUMSTASIS, and, then, she’d hum the beat after that. The droning finked to every listener that she was a fake, ill-acquainted with the truth, and that she was playing Hammer’s ‘You Can’t Touch This’. Cumstasis, huh?

The Ugliest Animal

All the animals gathered deep in the forest to make a drum for entertainment. They readily found the tree trunk and bark they needed, and everything was going swimmingly. When the drum was finished, its earth hues, curvy strokes and dulcet timbre took their bestial breaths away. But, alas, it was elephantine and could not be lugged back home without difficulty. Rabbit, whose trap was always as fast as its feet, announced, “The ugliest animal is going to have to carry it.” There was silence for a moment, as each animal mentally measured its own physical appeal. Then, another animal was heard on the whistling forest air accosting Rabbit “I know you’ve never liked me. You’ll always have me do the dirtiest work!” It was Monkey. No name had been given, but it thought the cap fit, so Monkey put it on.

Close Contact

The club was packed and smoky, and stowed senseless with gadabouts reeking rank of dried or burnt grass. It was that much worse with the whiff of bitters or cheaper ethanol.

I was dancing with a girl I know and consider decent enough. It was both disturbing and thrilling to watch her gyrating with open body like she was lone-dancing in her room.

Just when I was forgetting about the nasal assault of the louts, the girl opposite belched her bile up right in my face, and bathed me in the stifling warmth of lager, stout and some mid-way digested chow.

A 17-Bedroom House!

In many folded parts, deep in the cramped closet of the rich-poor City of Accra, you’ll espy a hangar-and-a-half of a house sticking out, like a middle finger, on a dirt-tracked back road with yawning trenches crudely cut into its face by the mocking elements. You’ll see gaping gutters and little wild bush patches festering here and there. You’re also likely to see a termite-gobbled half-board of wood teasing '17-Bedroom House for Sale'!

Now, it didn’t say 17 rooms but 17 bedrooms. Does that reveal anything? Of course! The owner had in mind (assuming their mind was present) a house to live in, and not a public facility. But we know that most families that can count seventeen members are themselves a family of servants in other people’s homes. So, who did you erect this smoke mountain for – a football team? Because its sprawl is uncontrolled enough to hold a playing field. Or did you build it to house one-third of your entombed ego?