The Obama Serenades

Cape Coast, Ghana

At Cape Coast,
we bowed our heads
in sorrow
and shame,
recalling the agonies
of our forebears…
the wicked complicity
of kinsmen
and sometimes
even parents…

At Cape Coast,
the ghoulish stench
of slavery
stared us
stiffly and
morbidly
in the face,
flaring up
our nostrils
to the wrenching
point of
hyperventilation…

At Cape Coast,
we were weighted down
with the bloody crimes
of yesteryear;
still,
almost senselessly
and capriciously,
we either flatly failed
or rawly refused
to grasp
this bleak season
of misery and
abject penury
was wrought
by ourselves
upon
our own kind…

At Cape Coast,
we could only
half-fathom
what was
and what might
have been
had there not
been…and then
staggered
by the stygian depths
of such epic
savagery,
we could not
hold back
our tears,
those tears
which were not
really our own,
but those of
our forebears
in eons past,
callously wrenched
from their moorings
and rendered
beasts-of-burden
by those pale-skinned
blue-eyed men
with frozen veins…

At Cape Coast,
we were shackled
and packed supine
as sardines
in urine and
human waste,
bound for
chain-gang labor
in the Carolinas
Georgia, Louisiana
and Mississippi,
shorn of our clothes
and tongues and
names and
dignity…

At Cape Coast,
a disoriented
mulatto class
was spawned
mimicking
every misdeed
of those blue-eyed
creatures of
yonderland,
while retaining
almost none
of whatever virtues
with which they trod
our shores…

At Cape Coast,
time and tide
came full circle
even as seller
and sold
stood
face-to-face
like total strangers
staring
at the horizon
with a young
orange-sun
beginning
to rise up
once more –

The Obama Serenades II

Christiansborg, Accra-Ghana

The stench
of past epic misdeeds
is rather too heavy
in the air,
the landmarks
of our hostage past
too striking and
palpable
to be forgotten
anytime soon –
the gaping scars
are there for all
to see,
wonder how
it came about
that we now seem
to have overcome
so much
in so short
a time;
and yet,
we also seem
to have so much
to overcome
in the years
and decades
ahead –

At Osu,
the old Danish
slave castle
still serves
as the seat
of the ship
of State,
as the stool-house
of our
chief-of-state…

the bloody tide
of slavery came
and washed out
the gray matter
beneath
our skulls;
and so,
these days,
we only carry
the empty skull-shells
of the defenseless
and war dead,
a horrible mound
of human
savagery –

our empty skulls
testify both against
our forebears
and the wickedness
of those blue-eyed men
who carved
a lucrative trade
selling
youthful
black flesh;
the very skies
in their bronze visage
swear against
our abject loss
of self-love
and dignity,
our frantic attempts
to role-play
our blue-eyed foes
of yesteryear…

which is why
these days
those who claim
to be leading us
into realms of peace
and prosperity
would not
bat an eye
ere
selling us
down
the creek –

At Osu,
our venerable
guest
and kinsman
and America’s
first African son
has sat down
for breakfast
with our three
most prominent
chiefs,
namely,
the red and
bloody one
whose drunken
Scotsman sire
dumped his mum
long before
Little Red
was even conceived
as the mutt who
fatuously fancies
his double
in our venerable
guest…

breakfast
is composed
of bacon,
whole-wheat bread
sandwich and
a handsome mug
of orange juice,
which makes
the Red One
a bit uneasy,
as he would rather
the bacon
were composed of
human flesh
and the blood of
those he tethered
to stakes,
at the Teshie
Military Range,
and summarily
dispatched
to hell
in the month
of June,
which is why
he is so dismayed
breakfast is almost
a full-moon
behind
schedule…

then,
there is our halting
mid-night dark
host with the English
name which makes him
curiously
mistake himself
for Little Red
sometimes,
which is why
he almost
invariably
treads the earth
in the very shadow
of Little Red;
a legal maven
of genius
on paper,
which is where
all similarities end
with our venerable
guest,
a veritable mutt
of proven genius
and ingenuity…

then,
there is
our soft-spoken
gentle-giant
with the bassoon voice;
no gentle-giant
at all,
save in this land
of a million elves,
a lecher
par-excellence
who ought to have been
the host
but whose selfish
and wayward ways
has effectively
doomed him to
wistfully playing
a grudgingly invited
guest at his own
feast…

nothing
really remarkable
about this breakfast-
for-four
in a dank
old slave castle
cynically named
after the Christ
of Nazareth,
a lurid
nose-thumbing
of blasphemous
proportions…

The Obama Serenades III

Kotoka International Airport

It is not that
Ghana has always had
the best and brightest
of the proverbial
cream of the leadership
crop;
not even that our leadership
has largely
or even mostly been
of the democratic stock;
just that some of us
have been brave
and courageous
enough
to be willing
to spill
our own blood
to ensure
the rest of our
kin and kith
live in peace
and freedom
with justice…

and so tonight
America’s first
African son
shall touch down
on Ghana’s earth,
the very sacred earth
selflessly soaked
with General Kotoka’s blood
callously spilled
as this patriotic giant
was felled
by minions
of a tyrant
who would only have
Ghanaians and our
land in perpetual thrall,
at his beck,
whim and
lunacy…

ours is
indeed
a land
and people
in peace and
at peace with
themselves,
a people
in whose culture
are embodied
the noble tenets
of love
friendship
and
hospitality;
a land in which
the commonality
of human
destiny and

Source:
Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame

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