Why We Write

A big, black bird with one bandaged, broken wing, spiralling backwards, wildly and upside-down, as if its steely claws are tethered by invisible solar threads.

Try rivalling that image with song or sculpture, photograph or paintbrush! It will be static; if not that, unfaithful to reality; if not that, frivolous; if not that, staged, disingenuous!

Take our fractured flyer again. A big black bird – it could be a ravenous raven, blistering buzzard, colossal condor, or an elegant eagle or some other brilliantly-plumed predator (altering the geographical setting every time). This is A-to-Z imagination at your choosing!

We write because we hate a blank, blue sky or a vivid, but frozen, gelid portrait.

The Frumble in the Belly

You’re roller-coasting on a dream date, or you’re delivering a professional presentation (one-on-one) or stoking the friendship Fahrenheit. Everything’s percolating in milky-smooth or honey-fine flow. Just when you’re a whisker away from rendering the deal-sealing line or cupid-calling candy floss, embarrassment growls from under your clothes.

It’s so loud that you know they heard it too. You, yourself, are startled, clueless whether you just slipped a good old fart, or if it’s only your stupid stomach rumbling. So, on you go, “I was saying that …” grrrrrrrrrowl! There you go again! Your face betrays your gastric black eye. This last one was surely a bleak, borderline case – a suspiciously sinister combine of the two. We shall have to call it a ‘frumble’ (fart + rumble) in your belly. :-)

Delayance

I thought he was a simple man
Speaking in cute, curt fanti
Just when I was admiring him
I heard him say 'delayance'

Neighbour-Watching

Are peepies only peepies when they look in from your own garden? Everyday, when I arrive home from work, I have to come and go three times from street to house because of all the books I pack. I do not really read them all, so they come along for the mental comfort.

And as I do my back and forth, I always catch the sudden dart of a human head here, a flash of artificial light or the slightest shift of a curtain there, from the corner of my eye – a neighbour’s been peeping again. Different neighbouring windows at different ETAs pull their curtains every time I pull up at night.

They are all youngish and married with little kids and many morals to protect with plenty drama – I guess. But even if I were the Male-Moral-Menace, I come and go way too late and too devilishly early for any impressionable infant to espy. Be-frigging-sides, no one has seen the single me bring devastating Danielles to my house to affront the sleeping morals of the street.

So, are they simply curious (we’ll explore envy at another time) at a young man – unmarried and free – among all these hindered homemakers? I bet they’ll keep curtain-drawing until they find out what they want to see. Their secret fears or thrills or curiosity simply amuse me. What I dislike is being watched like a dangerous animal.

Looking for a Man in the City of Accra

At the cloistered, wooded intersection of the East Legon Street and the Presec – IPS bypass, the sinister trees pitched their umbra over the un-peopled, bumpy scape. I saw a slim, lone man, on the turn, who was dressed in all white, and standing idly at the roadside.

He braced a big black belt on his thin torso, over his un-tucked-in shirt, the way the women do. My curiosity got the better of me, making me drop my pace to take an eyeful of his single-minded dress sense. It struck me at once that he might be looking for a man, for the money. He has to work too, no?

As I glided by, he looked straight at me, and his eyes shone brightly in his midnight face. A new thought jumped me – he might be bananas and dangerous, so I coaxed Maxine to dart forward a bit faster. As he swept out of sight, I heard him hiss as street walkers do. So, he was looking for a man, after all.

Another Flare of Lightning

I’m meeting her again, next week. Honeyed hints have been cunningly dropped. Reactions have not come rapidly or delayed. The agreed watering hole is remotely reposed from where prying familial eyes would see and scream murder, murder! The long haul has silently softened the forbidden tension, but heightened infernal expectations. The Rabelaisian appeal of breaking the possum rules is thrilling me in ravishing raptures. She knows, she knows, she knows. She says I’m still her favourite. She won’t talk about it directly, but she certainly knows. She knows!

Autopilot

Mental riot
Emotional harlot
Used to be a frenzy robot
Now I am on autopilot.