The Poet's Experience Read online

The Poet’s Experience

  By Rock Stone

  Copyright 2016 Rock Stone

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Poems

  Defying the odds

  An african childhood

  Choice and obligation

  Untimely times

  In spiration

  Lyrical taunting

  The global villager

  Tough lessons

  Only ifs

  Justice

  Untitled

  Hopeful dreams

  A question unasked

  Debut

  In this life, one of the best things you can do is to contribute your lot towards making the world a better place. No single person has the power to change the world. One single person can make the world a better place. However, when one establishes that platform to enable others reach their full potential by giving hope, inspiration and sense of purpose, he has started a revolution that like a hydraulic press will influence change and reform to make the world a better place. I am no great poet. Yet this much I know, I am a voice… A voice that calls. I hope you find my collection inspiring, worth the time, worth the effort…

  DEFYING THE ODDS

  Perhaps, this is not a good way to start a poem

  Perhaps there are better ways

  Perhaps, I do not know those better ways

  It is real hard to dig deep

  Like some gold buried in Tarkwa

  To find some themes

  Fresh or stale

  Some inspiration

  Great or small.

  You see?

  Life is riddled by doubts

  Every day, every single day!

  How hard it is to find inspiration

  From sources to make choices

  That sound our voices

  In art, in life.

  Though I am not an Awoonor

  To write about raising cathedrals

  Still I will write

  Though I am not an Achebe

  To wallow in political satires

  Still I will write

  Though I am not a Chieff Moomen

  To begin a new generation

  Still I will write.

  This is a matter of self-discovery.

  AN AFRICAN CHILDHOOD

  Childhood memories

  Are many I have often relived in my mind

  Clearly in my mind’s eye

  I still see many scenes of time

  Of many flashbacks

  Of many people

  Of many places

  Of many actions

  That like raindrops

  Gather in the Upper Volta

  Flowing in perpetuity

  Within steady banks

  Bending along windy courses

  Rejuvenating my mental faculty

  that pleasure cannot but birth

  mysterious emotion

  In hills

  In valleys

  Within the bounds

  Of close quarters

  The liberty of little feet

  On faraway soils

  On faraway lands

  Meeting faraway people

  Childhood memories

  Ah childhood memories!

  How I wish infancy was infinite!

  From dawn

  Till dusk

  Light skips, short runs

  On the brown earth

  Strewed with patches

  Of green grass in the wet season

  and laid bare

  skull baldness…

  in the cold, dry harmattan winds

  that rendered our lips and feet

  Gullied like lawns or terraces

  There were others that

  Entertained greater intimacy

  And built mines

  Deep shaft mines within

  The feet and lips

  Then mothers would rub

  The shea butter through

  As if to plaster a mud wall

  Then at festivities

  When the goats and sheep

  Swallowed their tributes

  And paid the ultimate

  Price for their innocence

  We hung round those places

  Where the ladles were stirring

  The flesh pots of every home

  Kong! Kong! Kong!

  You could often hear

  When ladles banged aluminum bowls

  And mother-cooks were enthused

  About the consistency of the stew

  And the softness of the rice

  And the dryness of the spiced meat

  And the richness of the salad

  Made of cucumber, carrots and cabbage

  And did I forget to mention

  Tomatoes and onions

  Then on Sundays

  Our best we wore

  Why?

  Because we were thought to

  Then the ritual would be performed

  By the pastor of the flock

  Then after mass

  We paid a visit to the ‘Kosee’ woman

  Ah, those days…

  Then on school days

  Brother would carry me

  On his back

  Then in class we learnt the ABC

  That madam taught us

  That madam! Our superwoman

  She knew everything

  Yet when you missed an alphabet or two

  You were sure to get a smack

  On the head.

  The memories of childhood

  Could fill a library

  And to recount them

  Would take a century

  Yet if there is any childhood memory

  That I will forever cherish

  It is my mother’s smile.

  CHOICE AND OBLIGATION

  You may be a man

  To hang out with the guys

  On Saturday night

  To catch up on old times and new beginnings

  Over a few bottles of beer

  And some strings of kebab

  And realize those days good.

  You have to be a man

  To go to school

  Learn the books

  Learn the ways

  Of reality

  Of fantasy

  Break some hearts

  Mend others

  Get a girl

  Settle down

  Have some kids

  And age.

  You must be a man

  To kill your conscience,

  And do what must be done.

  At other times,

  To hold back the tears

  And take in the sobs

  And silence the sniffs

  Even though its tearing you apart

  Because society says you must be a man.

  UNTIMELY TIMES

  There are those times

  When the headaches

  And heartaches of life

  Bring us to the brink of tears.

  That like calculated drumbeats

  Coincide with thunder

  At such rainy times

  Then time becomes silent

  And the tears hatch a voice

  That speak for us

  Then we weep

  Cry, lament and sorrow.

  And friends go

  Then we learn ugly truths

  Yet today's wisdom

  Gives fresh courage

  For tomorrow.

  IN SPIRATION

  Although it's difficult

  Bend not your spirit

  Castrate your heart

  Demand not ills

  Explore your potential

  Focus not on chances

  Gather no moss

  Harvest your lot
>
  Initiate breakthroughs

  Judge not your folk

  Know no sin

  Linger the past only

  Making a brighter future

  Now is the time

  Open up possibilities

  Propel achievements

  Question no mysteries

  Revive greater hope

  Starve not the mind

  Trust not in people

  Unite in freedom

  Vanquish all foes

  Welcome good culture of

  Xylophone and Drums

  Yearn for goodwill

  Zeal in deeds.

  LYRICAL TAUNTING

  A hundred triple chins

  In solemn nclave sits

  To face truth sour

  At a fine hour

  As volcanoes

  Erupt like pharaohs.

  Microphones lament

  And cameras dance

  And I make noise

  Of facts that fight.

  Mister School boy

  Give me some lifebuoy

  Your mama weeps

  Of water the thief.

  Oh Gee!

  You are still refugees!

  THE GLOBAL VILLAGER

  Black as soot stands proof

  Paying tribute to an ungone past

  Tough as Mahogany,

  Strong as tyranny,

  Content in chains, 

  Janus' visage yields you!

  One sees yesterday

  Better than Narcissus.

  One sees no more.

  Expert in bargaining

  Where are tusks?

  Your gold?

  Miniskirts brightens your barren wife

  Three piece three steps to Altar

  Amidst a parasite of locusts

  Tongue itches in your low-cost

  For you speak nothing but 'A bientot'

  Your sad neighbor is a stone's throw.

  You parade.

  'I am Amicus Curiae'

  While my chief wallows in a fool's paradise.

  You lack originality

  In all its proportionality

  For you are now the village

  Of the global village.

  TOUGH LESSONS

  I told you to find some love

  Not from without dear friend

  From within dear comrade

  You said you had friends

  Distinguished and peculiar

  Yet when the times are untimely

  And fate looks at you like a sheep

  And you need a shoulder to lean on

  A heart to care 

  An ear to listen

  An eye to gaze

  A hand to help you up

  A person to console

  Does Facebook grant you solace?

  Or Twitter bring you peace?

  For you see me not

  And no birds twitter

  For these are sorry skeletons

  Poor armatures

  Of life, of living.

  Friends will make you cry

  For the pain may be too

  Dark, too deadly and too entrenched to keep

  Yet they are the sunshine

  That outshines your stars at dawn

  Few will love you because of who you are

  And not because what you can do.

  ONLY IFS

  A lonely prisoner sat in crowded cell

  It's been a year.

  Born a boy he became a man

  Thriving in a direction he never wanted to recount

  To anyone, not even himself.

  At two papa lost his job

  Mama ran away 

  And he was left alone.

  Left alone at twelve he did drugs

  Traded crack

  Robbed and plundered

  At twenty he was a leader of his own

  A dark shepherd over dark people

  At twenty one

  Here he was holding the iron bars

  Life had been rough

  He worked hard

  If papa and mama had done better

  Yet these were the choices he made

  And must bear them so.

  JUSTICE

  I thought much.

  And in my thinking,

  I tried to discover man's biggest worry.

  Then it struck me much.

  It was simple.

  What distinguishes

  Right from wrong?

  Is it a conscience

  The law,

  Reason,

  Logic,

  Or God?

  UNTITILED

  It occurs to me often

  That man becomes too intelligent

  For his own good.

  Today a strategy to hew wood

  Tomorrow a mechanism to draw water

  Then what next?

  A dagger to slaughter.

  It's a question of existence.

  The more you try to understand life

  The stupid you become.

  For it appears,

  You've been born in the middle of sea

  You know not your bearings.

  Yet you are your own crew...

  Your own captain.

  HOPEFUL DREAMS

  Dream dreams,

  And seek to undream them.

  Inspire hope to dream more,

  And the world becomes amazed.

  Aspire to achieve dreams,

  And greatness will love you.

  Define yourself,

  And creation bows in homage.

  A QUESTION UNASKED

  There is a question

  Which in caution

  Men circumvent

  To prevent their reinvention

  .

  Therefore many sojourn

  In emptiness, in emptiness.

  Yet in the heart's core,

  There is a dance of authenticity

  That is unearthed in silence

  And reflection.

  Muster courage my dear

  Drop that phone

  And ask that question:

  'Who am I?'

  DEBUT

  Only if I could revert to the innocence of my infancy,

  And fancy the concept of adulthood,

  Only if the memory of my sins could go,

  Only if I could dream of reality,

  Only if I could love God and God alone,

  Only if the world had love,

  And funerals were unpretending,

  Only if smiles had memories,

  Only if I knew my roots,

  And my roots knew me…

  GLOSSARY

  Tarkwa: A mining town in Ghana

  ‘Kosee’: Bean cake made and consumed mainly in Northern Ghana

  Harmattan: The period in which the North East trade winds blow southwards in west Africa. The North East Trade winds originate from the Sahara and bring along with it dust, dry and cold conditions especially in the early morning and late evening. Northern Ghana is most affected in Ghana