Trading Secrets

We all nurse secrets. But there are a piddling, picayune few of them which need not be secrets, when we really think about it. I am about to share one with you, and I invite you to get one of such fiddlesticks off your own small One-Person's-Chest with a pshaw!



Three times in my three decades, the girl I was in loco love with was my cousin! All three times, reason reigned, and the fledgling flower was stopped pre-blossom. But I have always asked if reason really won.

One Million Dollars

You have one million dollars
But cannot spend two thirds
Except on common collars
Would it be on priests, dogs or shirts?

The First Thing I Remember

My maiden memory of life is of my brothers and I silhouetted outdoors, and stargazing on a dark night, and then scuttling up the dark stairway in the 'TV House' in Kumasi with 'Champion' the beautiful, big, brown-and-white dog. What's yours?

Loving Marion

Suddenly, I love Marion! I’m taken with her, enamoured, besotted. I carry a torch for every cutesy bit of her sleek, metallic sexiness. I divined this unthinkable, until Hades frosted over, when I reluctantly let darling Maxine go. But, like Maxine, Marion is a fastidiously faithful girl, once she warms her trust to you; and if you treat her really right. And, lately, there must be something sublime about the gorgeous girl, for people have uttered such great fancies about her, and that has tenderly turned me around.

Vanessa on my Mind

A rare Sunday find
One of her kind
Couldn't leave her behind
Beauty that will blind
My vow is undermined
Vanessa on my mind

Agreementual

Fellow human, scoff at the Matrix movies and the I-Robot because the machines will never come near to taking over the world.

Office Female #2 was reviewing a document in which the ally expressions ‘Contract’ and ‘Agreement’ had been alternated carelessly. She activated ‘Find and Replace’, and simply substituted every ‘Contract’ with ‘Agreement’. Then she triggered ‘Spell Check’ to finish it all off.

The crying changes had been made all right, but imagine our six-figure surprise when she discovered that the word ‘Contractual’ had been foolishly converted to ‘Agreementual’! What word is that? The miserable machines will not be taking over! They’re just not that smart.

Trick Call Exposed

THE END

He hobbles back into the car
His home now seems so far
The long drive back is Scheming Time
Revenge for her cruel crime

Back home, he hears sweet shower sounds -
His woman unannounced?
He draws the curtain to one side -
A man douches his bride

Trick Call Resolution

With raw intent he'd dumped his clothes
And shown her all his growths
She had not been way too impressed
Below his barrel chest

She'd only wanted skin cuddling
And not the whole-hog thing
"If that is why you drove this way,
You shall not get a lay!"

Trick Call Reloaded

He turned around to face the door
His eyes glued to the floor
But if you think he was loathing
He was sooo not leaving

He fed his gaze on her nude frame
Delighted with her game
He took short steps towards her spot
Somewhere, he lost the plot

Trick Call

She called him at the mid of night
And whispered all in fright
She sobbed and begged him to get her
Ending in sigh and purr

He stopped a distance from her flat
I think he smelled a rat
He saw her smile when once inside
And knew that she had lied

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.

Moods Withstood

I do not like this life of moods
It feels like I'm in jail
Or walking alone in dark woods
Unable to exhale

Urinary

A halting hombre in a rancid-butter-yellow shirt arrested me on the deserted stairwell of a comely courthouse, and blithely asked for the “Urinary”. I don’t know why I didn’t collapse in topsy-turvy titters! I think he remotely meant ‘Urinal’. Or per-frigging-haps, he misjudged the muted building for an urethra-healing hospital!

Bananas in Pajamas

A queer, questionable name for a children’s cartoon series. Many baby-dove diversions, like adorable nursery rhymes and clean ‘cable’ cartoons, conceal cunning, clandestine, adult themes, which only show their unfaithful face and crazy colours upon dwindled innocence. My favourite poet – William Blake – was a master at the stainless strain of this craft. Imagine my heart of horror when it suddenly settled on my mind, in the shower – my thinking place – this morning. I thought back to Bananas in Pajamas and the scandalous sense it makes to me right now.