Sunday, March 18, 2012

Happy 90th Greeting Cards

It simply had to say 'Get well soon'. Not one did. Upside-down, back-to-front, hand-soiled, crumpled cards, the stupid shop didn't have any get-well-soons. It made the pain worse that there was a card for a 90th birthday. Are there more nonagenarians than invalids in the city of Accra?

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone

Monday, March 5, 2012

Our Kids Are Smart; They Just Have Shitty Teachers

“If you can read this, thank a teacher.” That is my earliest memory of a saying. Well, there are others. “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” That one was rubbish in my gangrenous grammar. Were Apple and Day best friends? How could they work together to keep the doctor away? What was the doctor trying to get to? You get the point.

Let them go right ahead. A farming settlement outside Accra with exam-flunking kids snarls at the local teachers. Next, they threaten to lynch them, and issue a worrying writ to quit town. Be my guest. Sink deeper in your educational cesspool right there. At least you had some teachers.

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Girondin

Beneath his starlit eyes
All passions burn so cool
Smiles a lot, slow to speak
Mellow voice, mellifluous
He is a tone of brawn and braw
But he’s naked to the bone
He wins his hearts in serenades
And a smooth je ne sais quoi
Girondin is cast in steel
That no fire can hope to melt
His mystery flows beneath the floe
A halo crowns him like a charm
He stalks the wildest fantasies
And stirs the songbirds to a tune
He’s on, he’s off, he’s flittering
Who can hold bold Girondin?

Saturday, March 3, 2012

(S)Pin(n)ing

I did not know, the time we met
That it would end this way
I'd not have sung this long duet
Or walked to meet halfway


I did not know true love could die
Unlike in fairy tales
I would have sliced mine like a pie
And boxed a piece with nails


I do not know the way from here
Or if I want to go
Today, the sun did not appear
Tomorrow, it will show

Silence

It is the music of the trees
In the drone of the balmy breeze
It is the stretching of the hills
And the tears the sky sadly spills

Thunderclap in breaking hearts
The unseen tail of poison darts
It is the picture of the sea
The still before the storm we see

It is the depth of the deep black hole
The massive ice caps in each Pole
It is the cosmic dance of stars
And the sounds of life on Mars

The great allure of muted minds
The need to see behind the blinds
The presence of stark loneliness
The blank before each ‘I confess’.

Friday, March 2, 2012

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.

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

PatrOItic

Rubbish teacher. How can a person luring kids to a TV programme say "patroitic" and expect me to let my child watch? I've seen too many kindergarten teachers destroy our kids' speech and pronunciation with 2 decades of undoing to correct. Are teachers at that level not probably the most important? Patroitic? Idiotic!