Song of Africa
Africa,
O Africa!
A continent of tented
contingencies
Leaves you bloodied today
On a skid row street -
Your American dream undone.
Chorus:
“Ticket me. Give me
my day in court,” you state
when Safe Cities Suits shake you awake
and distant drums sound your fate.
No rescue for you
In downtown’s gentrified:
Shackled again
In mind and soul
With Cameroon voices calling
You home.
Chorus:
“Ticket me. Give me
my day in court,” you state
when Safe Cities Suits shake you awake
and distant drums sound your fate.
Nightmare days
Some generous nights,
Flashing dark and light responses,
You choreograph life
with 1500 others
street-bound, unhoused.
Tasered four to one
Did you really grab
The rookie’s gun,
As you struggled to survive,
Stay alive in front of
Worldwide eyes?
Safe Cities Initiative -
Thirty-six hours of training
To monitor you, but in
One hour you are dead:
Not the role you sought
To get ahead.
Chorus:
“Ticket me. Give me
my day in court,”
after all is said and done
that is what you sought.
Africa,
O Africa!
A continent of tented
contingencies
Leaves you bloodied today
On a skid row street -
Your American dream no more.
Chorus:
“Ticket me. Give me
my day in court,” you stated
when Safe Cities Suits shook you awake
and Bamileke drummers sounded your fate.
Siobhán
Ó Mócháin Breathnach ~ March 3, 2015
In August and September of 2013 we lost two revered world poets. In Memoriam
For Seamus Heaney, August 30, 2013
Big Bear City, CA
The rain today
breathes its tears
and gently falls
to mark your
passing.
Native plants, sage
and turf,
root within your
Derry
soul of word,
song, sound.
Big Bear wild
mountains,
stare green with envy,
at the
attention you steal,
yet search for you
in chiaroscuro clouds
framing their
heights.
The rain-screen you
move through
now
welcomes your
spirit,
Séamus
to Tir Na Nog,
your poet-right,
where you live
young
and loved.
Siobhán
Ó Mócháin Breathnach
the
Corridor studio
Big
Bear City, CA
8/30/2013
StoryMoja
For
Kofi Awoonor
Kagan drum retraces
March 13, 1935 - his birth.
Child of the Gold Coast,
Wheta wise man of words.
Kidi pulsates with the news
That
silenced his song-tongue.
Sogo drum throbs the mourning sound
As
Atsimevu thrums Kofi home.
There
in Nairobi
to
imagine the world,
Wazi Dunia,
In
poetry, music, ideas
Where
East engages West.
His
Earth, his Brother,
His
Blood now writes
A
different tale of
Verse
eclipsed by fire,
As
when his poet’s voice
For
justice gagged,
Stared
muted through
Prison
bars in 1975.
Rediscovery lingers still with
The
“feast of oneness”
Of
which his life “partook”,
A
communion of love he “forged.”
Between
the Mono
And
Volta Rivers his
Ewe
Spirit soars inland
Over
native soil with a
Promise of Hope.
By Siobhán Ó Mócháin Breathnach
the Corridor studio
Big Bear City, CA
September 22, 2013
REDISCOVERY
By Kofi Awoonor
When our tears are dry on
the shore
And the fishermen carry
their nets home
And the sea gulls return
to bird island
And the laughter of the
children recedes
At night
There shall still linger
here the communion we forged
The feast of oneness
which we partook of
There shall still be the eternal
gatemen
Who will close the cemetery door
And send the late mourners away
It cannot be music we heard that night
That still lingers in the chambers of
memory
It is the new chorus of our forgotten
comrades
And the halleluyahs of our second
selves
(Professor Kofi Awoonor, a Ghanaian poet and diplomat, died
after sustaining injuries during the terrorist attack on Westgate Mall in
Nairobi, Kenya, September 21, 2013.
His final collection Promise of
Hope comes out in March 2014. He was in Nairobi to read at the StoryMoja, a branch of
the Hay Festival of Literature and Art based in Wales.
Note: The Ewe people to whom Awoonor belongs and wrote of
have 4 drums whose sound increases as with age and stature: Kagan-child; Sogo-Mother; Kidi-Father
and Atsimevu-Grandfather drum. Wheta
is his place of birth in Ghana. Rediscovery,
one of his poems, I quote from) Wazi
Dunia or Imagine the World, the theme of StoryMoja. Earth, Brother, Blood is another one of
his works.)
Origin: A Myth (After Beckett)
When The
Great Toolmaker in the sky
made
dinosaurs
It squealed in delight
not for long
hurling a
fiery stone
into their
midst
WHOOSH
and little
john cage heard
his first
original
sound
Then The
Great Not-So-Pleased Toolmaker
in the sky
made mammals
squirreling
milk and honey
in their
veins
and
ideas in
their heads
to be
manwoman
womanman
It laughed
at hu-mammals
aping
thought sapiens
going from green
to black
sun too hot
ice to melt
water in
plastic
The Great
Not-Yet-Pleased Toolmaker
in the sky
turned away
from its
reality
moving toward
new space
simple matter
to try again
fail again
fail better.
Siobhán Ó Mócháin Breathnach
November 13,
2010
