Faces; the door to
beauty, bold, ugly and bad

I have the face of a
model, a madman, a prostitute, a doctor…

…a Zulu man, a
contractor, in fact, the face of a faceless face

You see your face in
mine because I see my face in your face

No wonder the face of
the world is in phases of faces

They call them
hominid, erectus and sapien

Yet I don’t talk
about the faces of these phases

Because this poem
itself has no face but a phase

I talk about the
faces of my phase, our phase not …

…the faces of their
phase

The faces of their
phase were green, blue, white, black…

…orange, brown and
others faceless

The faces of our
phase is one, a single generation from the same calabash

Drinking from the
same phase of milk

Yet, our face is just
a phase: it has an end!

So, tell Yaa, Akos,
Ama, tell that Asian women,

Those in the Americas
and Europe, they are beautiful!

But the beauty behind
their beautiful faces is their phase

My face is mine and
your face is yours

We have one face
because of our phase

If we have to remember
our faces,

We have to make our
phase a better one

Faceless faces of
dignity and patriotism make a better phase

Never shall our phase
be defaced by our faces

Because a phase
without a face is phase-less



Atawura Philip

Academy of Young
Writers – Ghana

Creative Writers and
Orators Club

Miraster2@live.com

0267 514131