*By Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema, Ph. D.

Juaso (Ash), March 22, GNA - A circuit court at Juaso, has sentenced a 25-year-old unemployed man to 18 months imprisonment in hard labour for stealing six bunches of plantain.

Elitist educated thieves are free
Sekyi-Hughes & co are free
Muntaka & co are free
Killers of the dream
Educated mercenaries
Armed robbers with pen
With infected signatures
With poisonous fingerprints
With toxic handshakes

Plantain thief jailed 18 months
Peanut thief jailed 36 months
Elitist educated thieves are free

Elitist sanctimoniousness
Threaded with legalese
Braided with inequalities
Colonial jurisprudence
Dressed in tailcoats
Arrowed with moral deceits
Grandiose probity posturing
Passing judgments of damnation
On noble plantain thieves
Lesser criminal elements
Six-finger plantain thief
Gracious, dignified thief
And eighteen months in jail

Ignoble thievery elite
Thieves of state wealth
Democratizing thievery
Ignoble, wicked thieves
Showered with flowers
Big-time elitist thieves
MPs, ministers of state
Bankers, bursars, accountants
Those who build mansions
Build mansions overnight
Build every sinful payday

Eighteen months
Six fingers of plantain
Eighteen months in jail
For the poor mmobrowa
For the impoverished
For the lower classes
For the marginalized

Six fingers of plantain
Eighteen months
For caressing plantain
Oh! The call of the stomach
Eighteen months
For cuddling plantain
Oh! The pangs of deprivation
Eighteen months
For touching plantain
Oh! Summoning life to the body
Eighteen months
For hugging plantain
Oh! A sense of wholeness

Ignoble thievery elite
Thieves of state wealth
Democratizing thievery
Showered with flowers
For stealing state money
For road-building
For education, healthcare
For housing, water
For our well-being
Killers of the dream
Educated mercenaries
With pens as weapons
Weapons of poverty
Deprivation
Impoverishment
Benightedness

Killers of the dream
Worshipful thieves
Educated thieves
Whose one day’s theft
Whose poisonous pen
Desecrated signatures
Build personal mansions
Hotels
Shopping malls
Petrol stations
Educated thieves
Killers of the dream

Sanctimonious thieves
Killers of the dream
Six fingers of plantain
Eighteen months in jail
Sanctimonious thieves
Ignoble thieves
Killers of the dream
Ignoble thieves
Free to enjoy their loot
Showered with flowers
In mansions of victory
Ignoble thieves
Our paralysis of hope
Our fonts of pessimism
Of our eternal misery
Ridiculed in blackness
Mummified in doom

*Akadu N. Mensema, Ph. D., is a nationalist Denkyira beauty. She is a trained oral historian cum sociologist and Professor in the USA. She lives in Pennsylvania with her great mentor and teaches Africa-area studies at a college in Maryland. In her pastime, she writes what critics have called “populist hyperbolic, satirical” poetry. She can be reached at akadumensema@yahoo.com