I – My Favourite Word

I’ve been browsing one of Oxford’s dictionaries. It makes a big front of “over 183,500 British and American words, phrases and meanings”, plus other cultural words. I’ve been mulling: what is my darling, dashing word? Besides the endearing meaning (e.g. Love, Baby, Babe, Money, Girl), I have loved words which choose the letters “L”, “R” and “S” (e.g. Relish, Lily, Silver, Riddle, Silk). But, when I really think of it, and my endless need to self-express, my dearest syllable is “I”.

The One Who Makes You Happy

There is no single sensation called ‘Love’. This is the cupid-conquering carrot that fellow-blogger KFC defiantly dangled before me this morning. My fair feeling is he’s ringing right in many muddled ways, for love lavishes dissimilar favours on its smitten saints. But his maxim’s miles away from engraved-in-stone. I awoke with ‘weally wunnerful’ happiness today! And when I think of who I was thinking of, I know that the one you truly love is the one who makes you happy.

My Husband is Here 5

All At Once

She takes to gathering evidence
Of marital offence
The remnants of protected sex
Condoms enough to vex

She goes to confront him at work
To make him a public jerk
But as she scolds him openly
Two people zoom in slowly

The secretary her husband shags
His best friend "who always brags"
The same 'friend' with whom she cheats
And this the tale completes!

My Husband is Here 4

Closet Doubts

Three days and nights sail slowly by
They do not even try
The smoke and clouds swirl all about
There're closets full of doubt

He thinks she'll break and confess all
But she continues to stall
Will he explain the sudden limp -
Why he walks like a chimp?

My Husband is Here 3

The Return

He creeps back up into the bed
Nothing at all is said
He might as well be with a wall
She does not move at all

She feels him move behind her back
She's eager to attack
But she does not feel faultless tonight
She has just lost the right

My Husband is Here 2

Dread

He picks his crocked waist off the floor
And crawls towards the door
One thousand questions maul his mind
What excuse can he find?

Back in the room upstairs she wakes
But, still asleep, she fakes
She needs some time to understand
Th'embarrassment at hand.

My Husband is Here 1

The Jump

A man sleeps with his own dear wife
It is the peaceful life
Then, in a horrible nightmare
She screams, "my husband's here"

He shoots up in a mouse panic
And darts, his clothes, to pick
And then he vaults through the window
He hits the ground below

Kiddo Convo

I have kept the candid company of Tender Age, Youth and Twilight Years. I have heard each category’s care-less chatter. It’s dropped my jaw since juvenile to jack into all this jol talk that does not seem to mature. We always talk a jugful about other people’s business. Even when we juggle the more solemn subjects, what we say and how we say it does not ‘sophisticate’ with age.

Trading Secrets

We all nurse secrets. But there are a piddling, picayune few of them which need not be secrets, when we really think about it. I am about to share one with you, and I invite you to get one of such fiddlesticks off your own small One-Person's-Chest with a pshaw!



Three times in my three decades, the girl I was in loco love with was my cousin! All three times, reason reigned, and the fledgling flower was stopped pre-blossom. But I have always asked if reason really won.

One Million Dollars

You have one million dollars
But cannot spend two thirds
Except on common collars
Would it be on priests, dogs or shirts?

The First Thing I Remember

My maiden memory of life is of my brothers and I silhouetted outdoors, and stargazing on a dark night, and then scuttling up the dark stairway in the 'TV House' in Kumasi with 'Champion' the beautiful, big, brown-and-white dog. What's yours?

Loving Marion

Suddenly, I love Marion! I’m taken with her, enamoured, besotted. I carry a torch for every cutesy bit of her sleek, metallic sexiness. I divined this unthinkable, until Hades frosted over, when I reluctantly let darling Maxine go. But, like Maxine, Marion is a fastidiously faithful girl, once she warms her trust to you; and if you treat her really right. And, lately, there must be something sublime about the gorgeous girl, for people have uttered such great fancies about her, and that has tenderly turned me around.

Vanessa on my Mind

A rare Sunday find
One of her kind
Couldn't leave her behind
Beauty that will blind
My vow is undermined
Vanessa on my mind

Agreementual

Fellow human, scoff at the Matrix movies and the I-Robot because the machines will never come near to taking over the world.

Office Female #2 was reviewing a document in which the ally expressions ‘Contract’ and ‘Agreement’ had been alternated carelessly. She activated ‘Find and Replace’, and simply substituted every ‘Contract’ with ‘Agreement’. Then she triggered ‘Spell Check’ to finish it all off.

The crying changes had been made all right, but imagine our six-figure surprise when she discovered that the word ‘Contractual’ had been foolishly converted to ‘Agreementual’! What word is that? The miserable machines will not be taking over! They’re just not that smart.

Trick Call Exposed

THE END

He hobbles back into the car
His home now seems so far
The long drive back is Scheming Time
Revenge for her cruel crime

Back home, he hears sweet shower sounds -
His woman unannounced?
He draws the curtain to one side -
A man douches his bride

Trick Call Resolution

With raw intent he'd dumped his clothes
And shown her all his growths
She had not been way too impressed
Below his barrel chest

She'd only wanted skin cuddling
And not the whole-hog thing
"If that is why you drove this way,
You shall not get a lay!"

Trick Call Reloaded

He turned around to face the door
His eyes glued to the floor
But if you think he was loathing
He was sooo not leaving

He fed his gaze on her nude frame
Delighted with her game
He took short steps towards her spot
Somewhere, he lost the plot

Trick Call

She called him at the mid of night
And whispered all in fright
She sobbed and begged him to get her
Ending in sigh and purr

He stopped a distance from her flat
I think he smelled a rat
He saw her smile when once inside
And knew that she had lied

The Choice

There were two women were my pets
But time it came to choose
Was fun no more playing duets
I'd one pleasure to lose

The one was stunning beautiful
The other, pretty smart
The one had strings my heart to pull
The other, soul and art

I could not bear to show the door
To who had not hurt me
So, on an arbitrary score
The first it had to be

N.B. For the avoidance of doubt, this poem is fictional.

Obama in Ghana - A View from Ghana

At a football game, Americans celebrate each TOUCH DOWN, and, then, they go home to the bills they still have to pay.

In each of the last three US presidencies, the Air Force One has TOUCHed DOWN at, and lifted off from, the little airport in Accra.

Life goes on!

The Colleague

He’s riding pillion in your car
And soon drifts off to sleep
It figures how human you are
Not to push him out your jeep!

You’re playing music in your car
His phone’s playing some too
He comes to sit in like a tsar
And of music, you have two!

The rain brings mist into your car
He takes a rag to clear
He swipes only his view, as far
Forgetting who’s at the steer!

Man’s Best Friend

A frustrated, frenetic farmer failed to fob off his faithful farm dog from fawning over him. Looking for some time alone, he bit the startled mongrel.

In a far-flung country, a man, febrile from being freshly set upon by a mutt, seized its hinds, and closed his human teeth right back in its cur-coat in a rabid rage of revenge.

And some say the Sapiens and the Canines are best friends.

La Bianca TomaNto Paste

Somebody’s selling tasty tomatoes on TV with a cool calypso chant. Imagine my prize surprise, when I really listened to the blurb lyrics. I took it for gleeful granted that Ghana had ‘imagoed’ from the invented “N” in “maNtches” (that’s [a box of] “matches”) and “tomaNtoes” (well, you know what it is). But there it was in the delightful ditty: La Bianca TomaNto Paste.

I was granting genius to the songwriter-salesman for nosing the notional “N” into “TomaNto” to mimic the other “N” in “BiaNca”, but I reversed my reverence when a vellum-voice, at the end, said “Tomato” without the nagging “N”. So what happened? Somebody's mealy-mouthed about a mistake they didn't want to spend money editing. Or?

Painting for Obama in the City of Accra

The City Auths are lathering a lick of weak whitewash on the cracked kerbs and scarcely-sacred street furniture, one week to the cherub-heralded Coming of Obama. Why don’t they as well glaze some pasteurizing pastel over the sun-scorched faces of the street vendors and beggars too?

Browning the Home Team

My street neighbour was soaring to a grand house in a more genteel geography, and wanted a titled tenant for her old cabin. I revealed my best friend’s stress for a new address, and she said she would be in touch. But I saw her take sides with the ‘Away’ team, and put in an Indian couple instead.

Moods Withstood

I do not like this life of moods
It feels like I'm in jail
Or walking alone in dark woods
Unable to exhale

Urinary

A halting hombre in a rancid-butter-yellow shirt arrested me on the deserted stairwell of a comely courthouse, and blithely asked for the “Urinary”. I don’t know why I didn’t collapse in topsy-turvy titters! I think he remotely meant ‘Urinal’. Or per-frigging-haps, he misjudged the muted building for an urethra-healing hospital!

Bananas in Pajamas

A queer, questionable name for a children’s cartoon series. Many baby-dove diversions, like adorable nursery rhymes and clean ‘cable’ cartoons, conceal cunning, clandestine, adult themes, which only show their unfaithful face and crazy colours upon dwindled innocence. My favourite poet – William Blake – was a master at the stainless strain of this craft. Imagine my heart of horror when it suddenly settled on my mind, in the shower – my thinking place – this morning. I thought back to Bananas in Pajamas and the scandalous sense it makes to me right now.