First Blush

First time sparked only a light
Just a pretty passing thought
Then I looked at you again
And saw the sparkle in your eyes

Don’t know what I want from you
But I love your many ways
I love the times I spend with you
And the way you say my name.

A Promise on Love

I’ll stow your smile in a chocolate cake
Catch your breath in a red rose bud
I’ll hold your hair in a liquorice lake
And love you with blue blood

I’ll keep your heart in a glass fruit bowl
And cloak your soul in a crystal ball
I’ll melt your mind in a phial of gold
And love you, flaws and all

I’ll coat your touch in sugar strips
Set your feet in a jewellery case
I’ll warm your kiss against my lips
Love you in time and space

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.

The Seal

i’m looking for the little words
i never had use for.
the pretty pearls
that carry dreams
and cares to God
in prayer.

i’m thinking of the simple ways
i had and lost in time.
the erring touch,
the meeting minds,
the thrill of
stolen glance.

i’m dreaming of a happy place
where smile and leaping heart
dance hand-in-hand
from morn till night,
while fear and hurt
grow thin.

a magical moment will dawn,
reveal my open secret –
the truth of how special
you are,
and seal
what’s meant to be.

Standing Pretty in the Streets

Her incredibly increasing curves strut and swing my way. I demurely deflect my glimpse, for she’s clearly caught on to the fact that I’m madly amazed at her fluid flexure. Gliding gleefully towards me, she showers one last ridiculously showy sashay, and comes to a rehearsed stop at my window. She asks, “Will you buy?”

She wears her skin leathery and sable from strutting her stuff and selling her fruit (mutual advertising, no?) in the searing African sun.

The gluey situation only lasts a trice, and then the traffic passes on. With devilish doubt, I ask my Self whether I would genuinely judge her pretty, or any prettier, if she weren’t drudging and moiling daily on the streets.

Jaywalking to Sea at La, in the City of Accra

A combusting, constipating quarter in the city of Accra is couched on the cold and rocky coastline, by the Giant Gulf of Guinea. It pans out up-shore, across a major street and over red-earth flatlands. It offers boundless sweeps of hibernating beaches, except for enchantingly cultivated choice strands where elegant, self-indulgence-inducing hotels have gulped up the usable space.

Between its squashed southern estates and the two great hostelries, the fierce shingle streaks wild and primitive for maybe a double kilometre. The drive on the slightly bending dual carriage is spectacular unlimited, especially on low-traffic, moonlit nights. But the awestruck gazer is running risks of knocking down a dozen jaded jaywalkers at any time.

I’m bland and barren in imagining (no, I can imagine easily, really) what they treacherously traverse the streets for, appearing from nowhere and gambolling heedlessly towards the austere, inclement banks of the titanic Atlantic. They do not give pause, and stand to admire. So what in heaven’s holy moniker are they doing there?

Living on the Motorway

Reverse the fourth dimension to 1998. A masterly motif of a caravan of industries is spinning at great speed on the same spot: Tema, Industrial town, first cousin of Accra. Drastically dissimilar to any other Ghanaian commonwealth for its considerately-named streets; numbered homes; well-laid, clean and snazzy streets; small, engaging buildings; first-rate factories and swift-coming traffic.

The twenty-something-kilometre motorway, unfurled long ago, seemed a lonely, eternal cross. It was surrounded by vast, virtuous flatlands teeming with spry swamps, wholesome woods and motley hues of tall savannah grass.

In 2008, the virgin is gone out of the land between Accra and Tema. The formerly detached first cousins are now hideously holding hands on either side of motorway. A monstrous megapolis has stealthily sprawled its sinewy tentacles from Accra to Tema. The woods are ruefully replaced by sorry sprinklings of shrubs on tiny tracts of un-reclaimed swampland.

Unsightly blotches of massive houses, tiny houses and whole recumbent estates have sprouted on the diced land. Totally ugly buildings they are, not for the architects’ philistine flair (for the schematics are quite scenic) but what is a trophy tattoo of a black widow spider doing on the face of a beauty queen? Her looks are now limp, as is the dainty art.