Woods of Words

Threnody

2012-01-22T20:10:00.000-08:00

The simmering sun
Shall warm no mourners

No gathering in black
To bid you a ta-ta

No tribute to distribute
Your attribute

For your slate
Had tasted no chalk

A glowing candle strangled
By the harsh winds of death

Dropping the poet’s pen
In the midst of a dozen lullabies

Your memories will forever
Be a big bang upon my door
For the few weeks of delightful fatherhood

My child, my child --
They’ll never know

How it hurts to hear,
'The Lord giveth, likewise did he taketh!'

My Pain

2012-01-21T02:27:00.001-08:00

This is my pain….
when man caresses his fellow man,
vow and kiss at His holy presence
desecrating an ancient oath uniting two as one
whiles God restrains his aggrieved angels
ready to unleash another Sodom and Gomorrah

Here is my pain
when men see me as an obstacle
that need to be:
tackled and shackled,
tagged and bagged,
crushed and brushed,
Just of being honest in my nest

My pain is …
when my brother
gives with the right hand
only to wrench back with the left
through −
unfair trade pricing,
fees of no refund,
loans with ropes of death,
fares far from fairness,
all silenced as taboo, yet a tattoo

My deepest pain is …
seeing restless pursuit in technology of enrichment
whiles we remain grounded in theories –
making practicality a subject of scorn & mourn
worth a thorn in the flesh of academia

my pains will forever run deep,
if leaders gleefully pursue politics of antics
as a cruising course out of our predicament
leaving our cream of future theme and team
to trickle in stream to water another man’s dream

Wind of Peace [To Lost Soldiers and their Victims]

2012-01-21T02:17:00.001-08:00

like robots they are made to march on
death and honor, a banner misleading them
patriotism and defense, clouding their thought
a web wittily woven by the so called wise
just to achieve their selfish intent and aim
with truth about war wage a classified

conquerors are happy with damages unleashed
but the vanquished lick their wounds in waiting
as on their scars they keep nursing a revenge

but better the wind of peace blow……
blow to over the aching hearts silently dying in their closets
let it blow…
blow over the traumatized minds deteriorating beyond repairs
let it blow…
blow over the wrathful souls still restless in heat of their mass graves
let it blow...
blow to unearth the landmines and make the grounds safe-play for kids
let it blow..
blow to drop down hanging pictures, flashing back sweet memories now a pain
let it blow…
blow to sweep off the top man still clinching on against the masses’ cry
let it blow
blow to dry up strands of tears cascading down the widow’s sunken eyes
let it blow…
blow to settle the particles still hanging on the plains of Hiroshima/Nagasaki
let it blow
blow through the fluffy hairs who prepare the battlefield for us to walk wounded
let it blow…
blow to soothe the boiling blood still believing in the Hammurabi’s code
let it blow
blow to level up footprints unworthy of history for generations yet to come
O let it blow…
blow to drop all the withered leaves for a fresh birthing of greenness
For the hour of peace is now!

(c) 2011, Adjei Agyei-Baah

The Breast

2012-01-21T02:11:00.000-08:00

The breast!
Woman’s body crest
At prime time of projection
The eyes have danced
At the least chance of glance

The breast!
Infants fiddle for fulfillment
Fathers fondle into fantasy
A true point of mother’s
Care & possession of a child?
Or birth of Oedipus complex?

O breast
Tenderly I’ll tease thee
Tweak thy nipple to ripple
For there the frigid maiden
Must squeak, freak and leak
When the rod is unready to speak

Breast, thy beam bemuses
With passion I’ll prowl thy mount
And draw from thy purest fount
With delight, nibble thy jutted teats
Till all my sorrows drown in thy bosom

O Breast
In thy cleavage, did observed
Thy varied shapes and sizes
From deluding disappointments
To surging surprises

Breast!
The crown of womanhood
Have always adore thee most
When standing taut and erect
And will forever curse the day
When thy waving flag lost it winds.

Adjei Agyei-Baah
© Copyrighted, 2012

Face of Hunger

2012-01-21T02:05:00.001-08:00

A ghostly look sitting upon sunken eyes,
Eyes lifted up to the skies birthing no hope
For the rains had refused to burst its tears
Leaving the grounds parched and desolate

Children bare their concertina chest
With acid-tears running down cheeks
Their giggles lost in the heat of the day
For food they hadn’t come across for days

Mother tries to sustain her perishing child
With a flaccid breast that runs dry
She hopes and prays silently in her heart
While the world looks on with words of pity

Elsewhere beads of sweat fall off the farmer’s face
His cutlass swing, cutting his own shadow
City folks patiently wait on his usual delivery
But little did they know his barn had run dry

Swan In Flight

2011-08-02T14:51:00.000-07:00

Swan in flight,
Lufthansa,
A copycat.

Adjei Agyei-Baah (C) Copyright ~ 2011 All Rights Reserved

The Money Not Taken

2010-09-14T01:13:00.000-07:00

This job came
As a blessing divine
That relief i cannot define
Though a tot but not a jot
The pay was the heart for the season
Pumping a blood of hope
Through my family’s veins
And the least stop of flow
The grass we then had to mow

The source of my pay
Being a little girl
I’d been tasked to teach
And this particular month’s pay
Had to awaken smiles long time frozen
For nearby stood charismas ready with its demands
And my family’s cry was nothing but a command

Onward christian soldier
I gladly marched on for my pay
As my family eagerly await for share on a tray
Most anxious had been my wife
Who’d been cutting like a knife
Her xmas budget already designed
When the cheque had not yet been signed
A fowl soup she’d prepared on credit
To avoid in our neighbors’ minds a discredit
As many often their talk we’d come under edit

But the payday came with a surprise
That which nature bitterly devised
Men all clad in black
An ominous element: oh god bad luck?
My student had died the night before
Hours she had lain
Racked through with pain
And in the room
Her mother wails
As her father fails
And door opened up in my heart
And pain rushed in with so much dust

But deflated as i was
My money was printed on my mind
With my head bowed
My mind journeyed
Through the labyrinth
Of either takin’ or lettin’ go
For this was a decision
That needs a careful incision
No matter the side taken
One cannot leave unshaken
Homewards i sadly trod
With my decision taken
Lashing loud at my brain!

©adjei agyei-baah
2010 all rights reserved
kwakubaa@yahoo.com

First Love Calling

2010-07-03T14:16:00.000-07:00

Wish we can take a sky tour
On the wings of the eagle
And soar to the highest place
Where our fingers brush
The stars and the moon
Dreamt the entire cosmos
We could have owned
And fun till the fallen angels go jealous
But what if I hear my first love calling me?

Wish we can scuba dive
Into the ocean blues
And feed our eyes
On her coral floors of wonderment
And pursue her treasures long time abandoned
And bask on her sands no foot had ever known
And delight ourselves with the music
From her roaring waters
And tear our pleasures in the bosom of Bermuda
But what if I hear my first love calling me again?

Wish we can take a walk
Through the countryside
And perfume our world
With lavenders, jasmines and buttercups
And forever pollinate our God-given love
Till the sky kisses the ground
Dreamt together we could enjoy
The beauty of the butterflies’ galaxy
And dance to the tunes
Of the nightingales and the larks
But what if I hear my first love calling me once more?

Time Passage

2010-07-03T00:59:00.000-07:00

Time Passage

there is an answer to a mystery

at the end of time

for in time,there is a millennium

in a millennium,there is a century

in a century, a decade

in a decade, a year

in a year, a month

in a month, a week

in a week, a day

in a day, an hour

in an hour,a minute

in a minute,a second

in a second, a micro second

and micro seconds into a second

seconds into a minute

minutes into hours

hours into days

days into weeks

weeks into months

months into years

years into decades

decades into centuries

centuries into millennium

for the answer to the mystery

is always found at the end of time!

adjei agyei-baah

World Of The Poet

2010-07-01T11:37:00.000-07:00

In our world, rhymes come to you like a typhoon
Meant to catapult you to no place but the moon
How soon?
You will discover it at noon
Think of we, the poet, as a buffoon
And you our readers as a cartoon
Ready to take you up in hot air balloon
Where birds no noisily croon
Up there you are the tycoon

And we the poet below, your delightful cocoon
Feeding you not just from our poetic spoon
But making you appreciate beauty in nature’s saloon!

My Pain

2010-06-30T23:14:00.000-07:00

Ghost on Guard [To Nkrumah]

2009-03-10T11:17:00.001-07:00

They blinded him
For his vision
And crippled him
For his movement
They removed his chair
When he stood up
And clipped his wings
From flying high
To tear through the cloak
Of injustice and oppression
They sealed his lips
From sending sisterly messages of glue
And made him die in a barren land
Where he once sprinkled some seeds of hope

They saw his brain too big
To be housed in his smallish skull
But could not deny him a place of honor:
‘African’s man of the millennium’

And now his ghost stands on guard
Humbly watching and waiting
As his mighty works
Have become hunters
Haunting the visionless!

Freely Free?

2009-02-19T10:54:00.000-08:00

FREELY FREE

Are you free?
Am I free?
Are we free?

The feeding fetus
Detaches itself after birth
A true point of maturity
Saying goodbye to the placenta

Was it a point of independence?
Or was it a point of freedom?
Oh I've always ponder in wonder
For we are detached
But yet firmly attached
We are the puppets
At the agile hands
Of a puppeteer
Making us dance
Even when our aching joints
Need oiling and massaging

But why does the tick
Still suck sweet
When it has long bloomed?
Why should the guest
Turns a pest
After being given a bosom rest

And you!
Why always make haste
To taste his waste paste

Oh tell me
Are we freely free indeed?!
Where lies our future?
Where lies our destiny?

This Heart of Mine

2009-02-16T17:35:00.000-08:00

Wish I could unplug
This broken heart of mine
And cease this incessant throb of pain

Wish I could take my heart back to God for repairs
And keep it away from the eyes of lustful women
Who have many times stolen it away

Wish I could trade this tortured heart of mine for a baby’s
This heart now loaded with thorns and broken glass
Giving nothing but endless piercing and bleeding

Wish I could mend this devastated heart of mine
And make all the once broken cords vibrate again
And have a heart filled with true love, laughter and a little lie.

Fair Trade

2009-02-09T12:47:00.000-08:00

Resources

Rich but raw

Sent beyond the seas

To a doctor

To refine and impose his fine

Sweet, sweet
Consumables

Finally arrived

Purified and packaged

For the sender

Who cannot buy!

Baptismal Baffle

2009-01-26T14:58:00.000-08:00

A baby

Still a suckling

Being taken to the synagogue

For a baptismal unification with Christ

But does it know what is good or evil!