Heavy Curtains, Pigs with Lipstick

In my Superior room, at dulcet dusk, Lil Girl glided round the heavy drapery onto the snug balcony for a breathtaking view of ivory-and-amber-lit, wooded, residential Kumasi. And I surveyed the sublime sights of her flowing roundnesses. I lent my ken, for a second, to the TV, for what McCain-busting move that god, Obama, was up to. Between pigs and a whole lot of laughable lipstick, I heard Lil Girl say, “Baby, I can’t find my way back in.” For a trice, I didn’t know what she meant. Then I saw hands on the carpet; lovely, shortened hair; a mischievous grin. Lil Girl had found her way back in by crawling on all fours under the portiere. On TV, the old man who first brought in the pigs with the lipstick was trying to pull down the curtains on his deliberate misinterpretation of the god’s wisecrack. He won't find his way back in.

Everybody's Love Triangle

Many years ago, I read Peter Abrahams’s ‘Mine Boy’. Even then, its rich ménage of themes came to life for me, but what really struck a chord was the racial bigotry that ran through everyday life, from the paper pass, to a simple drink of beer. And the sadness in the novel leapt out and gripped my heart in a vice for many long days.

Last weekend, I read Mine Boy again, and savoured, once more, its clean and colourful characters: Xuma, Leah, Elisa, Maisy, Daddy, The Red One, The Fox, that sonofabitch, J. P. Williamsom et al. But, in the simple plot, this time, my now-older mind fixated on the theme of love, and of wishes and reality.

Powerfully-built Xuma loved the dainty Eliza. She loved the trappings of the white man’s world. She wanted a gentleman (like the doctor); a man who could read. Who would have clever-clever conversation with her in the night, and not just the raw, physical thrust of simple love. So, although Eliza loved Xuma back, and became his woman for a short while, she left him like a twilight thief. And she was never seen again.

Maisy was not quite a finished work of art, but she had warm laughter in her eyes and a lot of sugar in her heart. She loved Xuma, and he liked her. She made him happy, and, with her, he saw his worldly woes fly away. But he felt he loved her not.

In the end, Eliza stole away. Xuma was going to jail for co-leading a strike at the deathtrap which was also called a mine (a thing a black man had no donkey’s right to do). Before turning himself in, Xuma fled to Maisy, and beseeched her to wait for him. Maisy said she would, and we are all sure that she could and would.

Somewhere in that triangle, I learnt a lot about love, and what it really means. It means being at ease, being at peace, and having free fun with whoever is the one it happens with. That is love!

Postscript: Thank you, Peter Abrahams. This was too special to edit. It had to be read raw!

School Rules

Too often, as a rule
They who've been to school
Act arrogantly like a King
But don't understand a thing!

Conference

It is icily intriguing to see plots poles-apart come forth, while the truly important issues are ignored. It is easy to identify who is shielding or protecting what immiscible interests. With sundry make-or-break motions afoot, I caught a mini glimpse of how political campaigns should feel like near the general elections.

I Speak My Mind

I speak my mind
And Foes I find
I keep it shut
And Friends a-glut

The Pips Come Next

I was panning out for the circus from the driving window as one does in another town, and I saw a woman shuffling her heavy feet on the squalid sidewalk. I discovered that what I mistook for tics in her face was a habitual case of bellicose chewing. Her hands come up, and I see she’s gnawing at an orange. I’m thinking that something is struggling for egress, because she puckers her lips into the spout that goes before a squirt. She folds her lips long again, ruminating for her life! Some liquids spews out, and I know the pips come next. As my peripheral vision whizzes on, she ejects the seeds one by one! Right on the street!

Distance

Will distance kill the flame
That flickered from pole to pole
And came to wax at home
Where it found a brighter light?

Can time delete the thought
That warmed to tender touch
And grew from great respect
To where it reached the skies?

Did hearts as deep as ours
Diffuse in world or realm
And flutter everyday
To create new shades of love?

Would being at your side, my Love
Would it make you fonder still
Or would my good guess still be good
That you’ll be always mine, anyway?

The Artist

A free flick of cunning hand
Cuts out the fullness of her heart
Each colour shows a crazy strand
Her every leap in the dark is art

The theme and texture flow forever
Her soulwater is a satyr’s spring
Her view of life is soft and clever
Each child of her hand is a graceful thing

She lives her art in gown and gait
A bold and elegant way of mind
The gallery glows in her beauteous bait
The artist is a wondrous kind.

[From the collection 'Mindfall']

The Lease of Life

Whatever happens
We're all here on a lease
And we'll all be evicted
In a year or two or seventy

Salsa Scandalous

Salsa is wonderful to watch! Guapea, Pa’l Medio, Sombrero, Gancho; one hundred salacious steps, sudden flicks, fluid twirls, swirling skirts, camaminos, dame son sopresa, soporific suenas, salsa is frolicsome! An unconscious hand (do you believe that?) strays smoothly over the sweat-scape of another’s body all the time.

Some call it a wicked workout – physical and mental. Surely, the only one you go to all dressed up. Permanent partners (a bit like marriage, really) dancing breath-close to you. Smelling your hair, slipping their ubiquitous arm round the small of your back (just the way I like to do).

If my girl suddenly turned to Salsa, the choices would be bright-red crystal. One, I go along. Two, she walks away from it. Three, I walk away from everything! And, still, Salsa really is sweet with maddening manoeuvres, crazy kinetics!

Missing Lil Girl in the Rain

The rain lashes the street
And fills up my shoes
Happiness crashes through my heart
And longing loads my soul

Head of Shame

At what fine point in God’s priceless time should a woman gallantly recognise that she’s hauling a hideous hairstyle on her head? Should she sit tight for public ridicule to come bruising her, or for a squirrel’s attempt to make a home on top of her head? Or should she notice before she heels out of the bungling stylist’s studio?

Office-Holders, Office-Seekers, You are Frigid!

Mephistophelian men and women, sweeping across the nation, making moonshine promises, and claiming worthless achievement. While you go back home in extravagant motorcades, led by suicidal dispatch riders, please spare an unusual thought (I know the thought or compassion must be mighty painful for you), but spare an unusual thought, all the same, for I who sat in the stiff traffic, and went nowhere at all for three long-ass hours. You are all much of a muchness, anyway. We’d like to see you all do a moonie on stage, instead – it means more than what you say. Shame! Shame! Shame!

Saturday

Saturday is excellent
at undressing the stiffness in you.
It releases your easy-going bent,
and reveals the sultry woman too!

Acceptance

Your mom called me today
When you couldn't pick your phone
She thought I would know if you were fine
She left a full moon in my face

No Eating in the Bathroom

The dashing artist was perplexed aplenty. Were his uber-skilled hands so beslimed, nay, begrimed? He shot back in his chair, and threw the woolgathering waiter a corner-eye dart. Was the tongs-wielder trying to scald him?

Our friend had asked us to dinner in a Chinese restaurant – her birthday (at thirty, she’s as lovely as a lily). Her happy, little crowd was lawyers, bankers and in-the-process-of-becoming-self-made people. She’d brought the artist along for the outré appeal.

When the steaming, tiny, white towels made their wont appearance, the manicure-haired artist was alarmingly out of it as to what to do with them, until he saw us take them in our own un-artistic hands. Kiz and I thought it so cute, after calming down from the stitches!

The Mermaid

I saw a mermaid at the beach
Sprinkling show crystals on the sand
As the beach boys all and each
Watched their manliness a-grand!

The Hype

Thirty minutes after the act
I know it for a frigging fact
That all I thought I lacked
Is nothing once it’s cracked

The ‘Bottom’ Line

You cannot tell if you’re in love until you’ve farted in each other's face, and laughed yourselves senseless! I heard this on some raunchy Russian drama on BBC radio. At the time, it felt like I was eavesdropping in shock on an unfolding scarlet scandal. But, now, I love it!

The bravado of breaking righteous wind in the hallowed presence of one you care crackers about, is even more wonderful because it tests their delicate senses, and their romantic vibes for you!

The almost imperceptible parting of the derriere crack, and the slight flutter and fall of the clothes at the point of impact; the thunderclap or power drill that brings the eerie, uneasy knowledge of what comes next; the tale of what last went in the mouth catches you on-the-fly, making you pinch your nares.

The choice: should you feel affronted? Violated! Or should you let loose laughing, and log on to the feel-good factor?

Dino Control

Under her mundane, abbess dress, Accra holds many puzzling marvels. One such is the way some of her people think. Today, at a hotel, my friends and I only craved to have the TV switched from the news to the England-Croatia game. By management rules, they had to summon the hotel electrician to do it. If it takes an electrician to change a channel on cable, it should require a molecular physicist on top of his atomic game to unscrew a light bulb, no?