BY KWESI ATTA SAKYI 24TH OCTOBER 2011


Lemons are squashed and crushed into lemonade,
No trace of seed nor rind nor fibre,
Tribes clash and attrit with no serenade
No dance nor song nor fiesta,
Ghanaian tribes, strive for peaceful co-existence

Posh cars honking horns overspeed and
Crash and tumble into the promenade,
Blood is let in pools and dribbles amid mangled
Mash and mishmash of flesh,
Oh, life is not fleshed out as soft as a pomegranate,
Ghanaian tribes, strive for excellence in peaceful coexistence,
Life is not an accident, though full of incidents

Hand-held grenades explode expletives,
Rocket-propelled bazookas spew out invectives,
Booby traps and landmines trawl-out small fishes,
Shrapnel and cluster bombs detonate insults,
Smoking guns trace out snipers with whimpers,
Tribal clans’ hatred emblazons the headlines,
Fear’s grip is tattooed on the pale faces of poor peasants

Black on black, white on black, black on white,
White on yellow, yellow against brownies and darkies-
Permutations galore, divisions aplenty,
The human race is in a war race –
Physical, psychological, ideological, empire building,
Land and water wars, cultural colonization –
War is vending itself in multi dimensions in the global markets,
Or is it glocalisation?
Globalization, another dimension,
It has inveigled us into submission and oblivion

Scheming, they scheme dubious schemes,
In Davos, Doha, Geneva, Moscow, London,
Washington, New York, Paris-
Hotspots under global spell get media attention,
BBC, CNN, SkyNews, Al-Jazeera, Warmongers –
All vend and chant the ugly refrain of war ad nausea,
War is celebrated on the cavernous and
Carnivorous airwaves

No news is news unless tinted with mews of war,
Are barking editors and roaring media moguls
Sanguine war whores?
Or are the warlords and clan titans their hired hirelings?
Do they display skulls, bones and human spares
As trophies in their ante-chambers and wardrobes,
Wars, Security Council nightmare,
Debates upon endless debates rage on till they are outdated,
No action, only deadlines, inactions, vetoes and stalemates-

Dousing dozens of global conflagrations
Gobbles UN pared and straitened budgets,
War goes hunting out war on a black mare
What a nightmare red war dares us to stare?
Riding along on a horrid horse or mare

It spreads havoc among innocent bystanders,
Collateral damage snuffs out lives of
Children and women innocents,
Life is torrid, life is tough,
War goes galloping on a roughshod rampage,
Who will castrate this ruinous bull of war?

Is man programmed to self destruct?
Will war end after the end of man?
What then is paradise, if paradise
Has no man to mourn the mean ways of men,
Nor to celebrate end of all wars,
Nor to calibrate the horrendous
Timeline of senseless wars orchestrated
By war whores, silly and greedy
Bloodhounds and egoistic warlords!
( Fukuyama’s thesis, and end of history, Or
Noam Chomsky’s and Alvin Toffler’s trending trends and perceptive forebodings)


Note: This year 2011 marks the 66th anniversary of the formation of the UN. Sometimes I grieve so much in my soul when I ponder over what happened in some parts of the world, especially in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Kosovo, Sudan, Sri Lanka, East Timor, Chechnya and Iraq. It is cold comfort to contemplate what is happening now in Somalia, Afghanistan and Syria. What is the world and international community doing to arrest these debacles? What about global warming and hunger in the Horn of Africa? What interventions can be offered? War is not only physical war but other shades of war.

By Kwesi Atta Sakyi