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.