*By Akadu N. Mensema Ph. D.; Post-Grad. Dipl.



“Kumasi, Jan. 11, GNA - A Kumasi Circuit Court has sentenced an 18-year-old

footballer to 240 months imprisonment in hard labor for defiling a 13-year-old

Junior High School (JHS) student” (Ghanaweb Jan 11, 2010).





“Cape Coast, Jan. 12, GNA - Three persons, an adult and two juveniles, who

allegedly gang-raped a 14 year old girl, were on Tuesday put before a circuit

court in Cape Coast on charges of defilement” (Ghanaweb Jan 12, 2010).





I. BROKEN PETALS

Female child

Blooming petal on a branch of life

Vulnerable petal

Innocent, trusting

Our daughters, sisters, mothers

A blooming petal

Female child

Yet to see the sun

Violently plucked, trampled

Before sunrise

Suffocated under the cult of patriarchy

With magisterial freights of the phallus

Torrential storms of phallus violence

Razor-sharp deflowering

Petals bloodied

Battered

Bruised

Bleeding, oozing

Weeping, mourning innocence stolen

Damaged by the hurricanes of patriarchy

And set on lonely psychosomatic flights

Along passages of depression, suicide

Petals

Future flowers

That would blossom into national trees

Ruined

Stunted

And yet we sit idle

As our petals fall before sunrise

And wither before sunset



II. CLASSLESS RAPIST SOCIETY

Always the brutish beastly rapists

Are framed, seen

As farmers

Drivers’ mate

The mason, carpenter

The unemployed, bumbling males

Marginalized males in society

But silenced rape victims

Have different biographies of rapists

Of violent powerful males

Lawyers, ministers

Priests/pastors, head/teachers

Respectable fathers, uncles, brothers

The big men, the rich and powerful

Worst

Than the stereotypical marginalized males

Conventional ghettoized male rapists



III. PROTECTING PETALS OF YOUTH

We all need cultural re/education

On rights, freedoms

On sacredness of sex

About the sanctity of the body, soul

Gender rights, female empowerment

So let us empower mothers

So let us empower daughters, sisters

So that they can humanize sons

To end the feminization of violence

Ghanaians let us get conscientized

And bury patriarchy

That cultivates phallus rights

Over our blooming petals



*Akadu Ntiriwa Mensema 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