By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr.

Kalashnikov-whipped
and thrashed
and trashed
and trounced
and bounced
and battered
beyond recall,
and stultified
by a morbid fear
of death,
my people
are befuddled
with foolery:
and so today,
they shall rise
at dawn
like slaves
and mourn
the demise
of the cancerous tumor
that reduced our clan
to beggers
of leftovers
of the fruits
of our own
sweat and toil -
my people
fatuously bewail
the stray songster
who callously conducted
our kinsfolk
to the gallows;
their sole crime
was to have loaned
rather than stolen
from the public till...
dear death-boat's
ferryman,
"Kukyiame,"
father was grossly misguided
in his fondness
for the ruthless cause
of you and your gang,
Trokosi-Shabab...
not the bloody
aspect of it,
though,
but the misplaced
sympathy
for a grievance
more chimerical
than real -
for comfortably settled
among the genial hosts,
he mistook
your cold-blooded screams
of greed
and pillage
for undeserved
anguish
and pain,
such is the generous spirit
of my clansmen
and women,
globally hospitable
to a fault...
and so,
alas,
being naive
to your wily ways,
we let our guard down,
we mistook
you and your
murderous kind
for our own
and awoke
to find
our bodies
tied to stakes
with severed heads -
my people
have lost
their way,
they have become rudderless,
strangers in the land
of their birth;
we have become rudderless,
and so
our guests
have now become
our hosts...

10/11/13