The Poet's Experience by Rock Stone
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