When I asked you a favor,
you shrieked as if I had put
a knife on your foreskin.
Yet, you more than I have
had unfettered access
to the largesse accruing
to the tenure of our friendship.
Our thin, red line of affection
can only stretch so far till
a bee's spittle rends it,
till I call in my chips
and remind you of
much that's taken for granted.
Let's therefore find
our separate paths and smile
at this simulation of a bond, for,
friendship is not an end in itself,
but an expression of vulnerability.
Sunday, July 8, 2012
Azonto
Azonto- bawdy, redolent,
asymmetrical piece of rhythm,
how proudly you wear
the scars of your scorned heritage!
Thus, inspired, we cast off
our borrowed robes
and leap, naked, into
the sumptuous embrace
of your wriggling, ethnic thighs.
You're bold and beautiful,
decadent and thoughtful,
festively irreverent.
And, now, your propitious birth
has shamed our zebra attitudes,
reducing us to starving infants
suckling at the breasts of your negritude!
asymmetrical piece of rhythm,
how proudly you wear
the scars of your scorned heritage!
Thus, inspired, we cast off
our borrowed robes
and leap, naked, into
the sumptuous embrace
of your wriggling, ethnic thighs.
You're bold and beautiful,
decadent and thoughtful,
festively irreverent.
And, now, your propitious birth
has shamed our zebra attitudes,
reducing us to starving infants
suckling at the breasts of your negritude!
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
An African Under Western Eyes
It was early afternoon on my first Super Bowl Sunday in the United States. I was getting to the end of my cleaning job at the Firestone Complete Auto Care shop near K-Mart when she walked in with her parents and made for the Manager's counter. I had already finished up at a smaller shop on Airport Road and looking forward to a short nap before the big game. The sweat poured off my forehead but I was too preoccupied with a particularly stubborn stain on the white tiles to pay any mind to the new arrivals.
When I finally raised my head, they were at the counter, a young white couple with their pretty daughter. She appeared to be about six, and looked wholesome in her shiny barbie-blondness, her pigtails caught up in dainty, pink ribbons. A delicate pair of glasses added a professorial air as she scrutinized everything in sight.
She watched me go at the tough stain for a moment, batted her blue eyes at me and smiled. Then she opened her mouth.
"Do you love this job?"
Everything seemed to slow down as all eyes turned on me. Time and space seemed to magnify and I imagined that the big clock on the towers of Bridge Street paused too. As did the birds in flight, and the cars speeding on Memorial Parkway.
"Do you love this job?"
The question reverberated in my brain. How dare this tiny tot ask me such a question!
It threw me off my feet, bowled me over, whirled me around and flung me across 6,000 miles of ocean into my country, Ghana, and into my prior existence as a TV producer before making the decision to pursue a graduate degree in the United States of America.
Did I love this cleaning job?
I was a Senior Production Manager at a blue-chip ad agency in Ghana where I had won two national advertizing awards in radio and TV, with my award-winning radio ad for Dasani archived at the headquarters of the Coca-Cola Company in the US. In producing a multitude of ad spots for some of the biggest corporations in the West African region, I had had the arduous previlege of working with top foreign film crews and auditioning countless glamorous models-sometimes, as many as three hundred in a single day-who would have killed for a role.
On arriving in the US, however, I realized that all my qualifications and experience amounted to zero. Zilch. Not that they had anything against degrees and qualifications from other countries; it was simply policy. If one wanted to work at a professional level in this country, one had to be certified here. Except, of course, in some rare cases.
Love this job?
I was acutely aware that her parents had tensed up. I could have answered in the affirmative, which would have been perfectly acceptable since it would affirm the dignity of labor. But I sensed her parents were scared such a response would lead her to think it was all right to be a cleaner, thereby wiping out-in a single word- about 4,000 manhours of inculcating the values of aspiration and personal achievement in their impressionable daughter, and causing irreparable damage.
But having been in this country for a little over four months-and having more than a passing interest in American history-I was also aware of the peculiar tensions governing the relations between blacks and whites. I was particularly unnerved by the idea that everything I did as a blackman had to be filtered through a white lens, that I had to weigh every prospective action in the light of how a whiteman would view it. But, truth is, I had never been conscious of my blackness till I arrived in this country. This had placed an unwelcome burden on me as a blackman to go the extra mile in any activity lest I fail to "uplift" my race. In short, I had to think carefully about my answer.
There's a passage in W.E.B. Du Bois' seminal piece, "The Souls of Black Folk," in which he observes that whenever he met a white person, an unasked question always seemed to hang in the air, a question-maybe of race, education and ability-either too delicate for some whites to ask or lacking the right words to frame it.
It occured to me that this little white girl could ask this question because she was unencumbered by the acculturative influences of her society which might have caused an older person to consider such a query as too delicate or politically incorrect.
So I looked her straight in the eye, smiled and spoke as sweetly as I could.
"Nope.This is just to pay the bills."
She blinked twice in quick succession. But the collective sigh of relief from her parents and the mostly white customers could be heard from Alabama all the way to Alaska. They broke out in wide grins and patted each other on their backs.
"Smart answer!" I thought I overheard one say.
I looked at my young interlocutor.
"Honey, you don't want to do this job when you're my age; stay in school and study hard, OK?"
She nodded gravely, her eyes firmly trained on me.
I went back to my task, satisfied with how I had handled the situation. If my eight-year-old son had asked someone this question, I would have expected the person to give him the same response; nothing more, nothing less.
You can, therefore, imagine my great surprise when the girl's parents returned half an hour later with a large box of Krispy Creme doughnuts and asked the manager where I was. I tried to sneak away but he beckoned me over. They handed the box to me with a cute, little speech they must have spent the last thirty minutes rehearsing.
I accepted it with equanimity , made the appropriate noises and tossed the box inside my car.
Before arriving in this country, I had never encountered this experience of looking at myself "through the eyes of others," of gauging my behavior through "Western Eyes," and forcing myself to, as it were, behave in a way that would "uplift my race." In my previous experience, "humor" was humor and being friendly meant exactly what it was, not an attempt to ingratiate oneself with a particular world. Respect was demanded, and received without clamor or condescension: it was a simple affirmation of universal brotherhood.
Once, during my first weeks here, I was cleaning the windows of a showroom when I encountered two white men smoking outside. One of them turned to me and delicately asked:
"Did you come here on the US Visa lottery?"
"No," I responded. "I'm a graduate student at a university here."
At this, they fell silent and ignored me. I never understood why they did that.
Till today.
So, I drove home that afternoon, sifting through the incident and the state of our union, acutely aware that no real progress would be made in the relationship between these two worlds till we dropped this nebulous, invisible veil and simply related to each other as men.
Nothing else mattered.
© Johnson Arloo
April 10, 2012.
Huntsville, Alabama.
When I finally raised my head, they were at the counter, a young white couple with their pretty daughter. She appeared to be about six, and looked wholesome in her shiny barbie-blondness, her pigtails caught up in dainty, pink ribbons. A delicate pair of glasses added a professorial air as she scrutinized everything in sight.
She watched me go at the tough stain for a moment, batted her blue eyes at me and smiled. Then she opened her mouth.
"Do you love this job?"
Everything seemed to slow down as all eyes turned on me. Time and space seemed to magnify and I imagined that the big clock on the towers of Bridge Street paused too. As did the birds in flight, and the cars speeding on Memorial Parkway.
"Do you love this job?"
The question reverberated in my brain. How dare this tiny tot ask me such a question!
It threw me off my feet, bowled me over, whirled me around and flung me across 6,000 miles of ocean into my country, Ghana, and into my prior existence as a TV producer before making the decision to pursue a graduate degree in the United States of America.
Did I love this cleaning job?
I was a Senior Production Manager at a blue-chip ad agency in Ghana where I had won two national advertizing awards in radio and TV, with my award-winning radio ad for Dasani archived at the headquarters of the Coca-Cola Company in the US. In producing a multitude of ad spots for some of the biggest corporations in the West African region, I had had the arduous previlege of working with top foreign film crews and auditioning countless glamorous models-sometimes, as many as three hundred in a single day-who would have killed for a role.
On arriving in the US, however, I realized that all my qualifications and experience amounted to zero. Zilch. Not that they had anything against degrees and qualifications from other countries; it was simply policy. If one wanted to work at a professional level in this country, one had to be certified here. Except, of course, in some rare cases.
Love this job?
I was acutely aware that her parents had tensed up. I could have answered in the affirmative, which would have been perfectly acceptable since it would affirm the dignity of labor. But I sensed her parents were scared such a response would lead her to think it was all right to be a cleaner, thereby wiping out-in a single word- about 4,000 manhours of inculcating the values of aspiration and personal achievement in their impressionable daughter, and causing irreparable damage.
But having been in this country for a little over four months-and having more than a passing interest in American history-I was also aware of the peculiar tensions governing the relations between blacks and whites. I was particularly unnerved by the idea that everything I did as a blackman had to be filtered through a white lens, that I had to weigh every prospective action in the light of how a whiteman would view it. But, truth is, I had never been conscious of my blackness till I arrived in this country. This had placed an unwelcome burden on me as a blackman to go the extra mile in any activity lest I fail to "uplift" my race. In short, I had to think carefully about my answer.
There's a passage in W.E.B. Du Bois' seminal piece, "The Souls of Black Folk," in which he observes that whenever he met a white person, an unasked question always seemed to hang in the air, a question-maybe of race, education and ability-either too delicate for some whites to ask or lacking the right words to frame it.
It occured to me that this little white girl could ask this question because she was unencumbered by the acculturative influences of her society which might have caused an older person to consider such a query as too delicate or politically incorrect.
So I looked her straight in the eye, smiled and spoke as sweetly as I could.
"Nope.This is just to pay the bills."
She blinked twice in quick succession. But the collective sigh of relief from her parents and the mostly white customers could be heard from Alabama all the way to Alaska. They broke out in wide grins and patted each other on their backs.
"Smart answer!" I thought I overheard one say.
I looked at my young interlocutor.
"Honey, you don't want to do this job when you're my age; stay in school and study hard, OK?"
She nodded gravely, her eyes firmly trained on me.
I went back to my task, satisfied with how I had handled the situation. If my eight-year-old son had asked someone this question, I would have expected the person to give him the same response; nothing more, nothing less.
You can, therefore, imagine my great surprise when the girl's parents returned half an hour later with a large box of Krispy Creme doughnuts and asked the manager where I was. I tried to sneak away but he beckoned me over. They handed the box to me with a cute, little speech they must have spent the last thirty minutes rehearsing.
I accepted it with equanimity , made the appropriate noises and tossed the box inside my car.
Before arriving in this country, I had never encountered this experience of looking at myself "through the eyes of others," of gauging my behavior through "Western Eyes," and forcing myself to, as it were, behave in a way that would "uplift my race." In my previous experience, "humor" was humor and being friendly meant exactly what it was, not an attempt to ingratiate oneself with a particular world. Respect was demanded, and received without clamor or condescension: it was a simple affirmation of universal brotherhood.
Once, during my first weeks here, I was cleaning the windows of a showroom when I encountered two white men smoking outside. One of them turned to me and delicately asked:
"Did you come here on the US Visa lottery?"
"No," I responded. "I'm a graduate student at a university here."
At this, they fell silent and ignored me. I never understood why they did that.
Till today.
So, I drove home that afternoon, sifting through the incident and the state of our union, acutely aware that no real progress would be made in the relationship between these two worlds till we dropped this nebulous, invisible veil and simply related to each other as men.
Nothing else mattered.
© Johnson Arloo
April 10, 2012.
Huntsville, Alabama.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Ruminance
Ruminance
Here he stands
at a junction between two worlds
where his identity is currencied in accents,
locked between the dream and the stark reality.
Here, a man's worth is shrouded in ashen dust-
the dregs of metal on wood and paper-
while all around, the shrill
of discordant metal belts
whip his senses into a ruminance
of the dying embers
of a once monumental ambition.
But wait; a glimpse- a gleam of a movie title,
a lop-sided grin of a famous actor long dead-
refreshes him with life's mystery: That, Art
which seeks to imitate life, outlasts the real thing by eons.
(©Johnson Arloo.
March,2012.
Huntsville, Alabama.
at a junction between two worlds
where his identity is currencied in accents,
locked between the dream and the stark reality.
Here, a man's worth is shrouded in ashen dust-
the dregs of metal on wood and paper-
while all around, the shrill
of discordant metal belts
whip his senses into a ruminance
of the dying embers
of a once monumental ambition.
But wait; a glimpse- a gleam of a movie title,
a lop-sided grin of a famous actor long dead-
refreshes him with life's mystery: That, Art
which seeks to imitate life, outlasts the real thing by eons.
(©Johnson Arloo.
March,2012.
Huntsville, Alabama.
Gasmilla's "Aboodatoi" and my Daughter's Left Foot
Gasmilla's "Aboodatoi" and My Daughter's Left Foot
My five-month-old daughter, Abrema, has a unique left foot. It is strong, curvy and well-shaped. Of course, she hasn't started walking yet. But her left foot has a mind all its own. It likes to wiggle and tap and lift itself in a little dance whenever it's stimulated by some good music. It's a highly discerning foot though. So you won't find her responding to just any pretentious aggregation of sounds that passes for music these days. To get a look-in from her left foot, the music must have style, substance and originality . It has wiggled to sounds running the spectrum from Kojo Antwi and Okyeame Kwame to Eminem and Michael Jackson. But I have never seen her left foot turning and tapping so fast to any song as the first time she watched Gasmilla's "Aboodatoi" on Youtube. That singular reaction forced me to take a second look at the cause of this stellar response by her left foot. And did I love what I heard!
According to the three criteria by which a song qualifies as Hiplife- funkified beat, a creative blend of rap and harmony, and avoidance of 50% singing while mantaining well-organized hooks and bars (Kwadwo Ohene-Akoto, "Hiplife: A True Definition,"06/28/2007, Museke, 11/16/2011)- " Aboodatoi" is a very good Hiplife song and quite representative of the genre. Still, in its purest form, it can be classified less as Hiplife than Jama, a call-and-response folk chant peculiar to the Ga tribe of Ghana.
"Aboodatoi" appears to be the missing link in previous attempts to trace the roots of Hiphop in Africa, most notably in Kwaw Ansah's epic film, "Crossroads of People, Crossroads of Trade" (1994). In Kwaw Ansah's documentary, he makes the case that clap-and-dance games played by native African girls form the roots of Hiphop music. But I think a stronger case can be made for Jama music with respect to the similarities between Jama and Hiphop in terms of themes, structure, content, choric style and group-performance. And, more than any Hiplife song to date, "Aboodatoi" exemplifies this unique fusion between traditional African rhythms and Hiphop.
The first verse, for instance, is comparable to anything ever coined by Wu-thang:
Gasmilla: Yoo fee yoo e...
Response: Yoo ni.
...
Gasmilla: Don't mind the body,
shi yoo tsui mli
Response: Yoo ni.
The most controversial aspects of the "Aboodatoi," however, is the chorus:
Gasmilla: Bo dientse oshamo noo
Response: Nyaa!
Gasmilla: Ni oduna agba
Response:Piaa!
Gasmilla: Ni omusu agbee
Response: Shingologo shingologo
For those unfamiliar with the Ga language, its rough translation means "be free to p*ss, f*rt as loudly as you can and sh*t to your satisfaction."
Wow!
No euphemisms and or attempts to soften the graphic words. For most first-time listeners, the reaction is undoubtedly one of disgust and horror: disgust for the graphic description of some private bodily functions, and horror that someone will dare put out such a song on the airwaves.
But there is a fortuitous design to it, whether or not Gasmilla is aware of that.
When our world-acclaimed novelist, Ayikwei Armah, first published "The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born" a few decades ago, many were those who howled and called him names for his graphic depiction of filth and pulchritude that had engulfed our country. On overcoming their shock and disgust, however, readers came to appreciate-and even enjoy- the novel's idioms and metaphors. Its language was described as "homeopathic" -a method of fighting infection by injecting minute doses of a remedy that in massive doses produces symptoms in healthy individuals similar to those of the disease being treated(Webster's New College Dictionary)- and hailed as a very creative way to draw attention to the rot and corruption engulfing our country's politics in that era.
Fast forward to the second decade of the twenty-first century. And from the same tribe as Ayikwei Armah comes a talented, young MC with no track record to boast of except his raw passion for Hiplife and "Azonto," the new dance craze that has got the nation reeling. In true Ayikwei Armahesque fashion, Gasmilla's "Aboodatoi" stands for the repudiation of all that is fake and pretentious about Life and Art, about unbridled foreign influences on the Ghanaian Hiplife/Hiphop scene: from wanna-be Beyonces and Nikki Minajs, to rappers aping T-Pain's auto tunes and Twister's fast rapping style. His is creative, raw, unapologetic and heady, like fresh palmwine!
This repudiation of pretentiousness is beautifully incorporated in the design of the video. And, whether or not the video director made a conscious decision to create these visuals, I find it one of the most creative synthesis of theme, message and style on Ghanaian TV.
The music video for "Aboodatoi" is a bold, no-holds-barred concept that showcases the raw beauty of Bukom as never before captured in any of the HBO pre-fight documentaries on Ike Quartey or Joshua Clottey. No attempt is made to glamorize the video by renting glitzy sets or sporting hip costumes that constitute the regular fare on MTV. No sir. This one smacks you in the eye with interesting low-angled shots of the Jamestown Lighthouse and head-on shots of the faded mural at Bukom Square. It's fearless in its visuals of the beach and canoes, the kenkey and charcoal seller, and a tro-tro bus dating back to a jurassic era.
We see Gasmilla not cooped in a claustrophobic club with caricatured models swilling cheap champagne. Here, he's surrounded by his friends as on a casual Saturday morning, lolling around in cut-off tracksuit bottoms and soccer shorts, ribbing each other and horsing around. He keeps it real. This is the essence that makes his video one of a kind and such a real feast for the eye; it's a pure synergy of lyrics and beats, genre and scenery, and, of course, the inimitable home-grown Azonto dance. Nothing works better.As for the "farting shot" at the end of the video, well, it's nothing more than a parting shot; a period, if you will.
The only aspects of his lyrics that I don't appreciate-which I'm sure he'll learn to respect as he matures as an artist accountable to society at large- are the references to the speech-impaired and those who suffer from epileptic seizures ("gbili-gbili").
Doubtless, this is not an exhaustive article about the song. Other aspects like its craft, meter, linguistics and narrative need further examination and i hope other writers will take it up. I'm particularly impressed with the Ga idioms which are heavy to the point of being baffling. Rich.
But you can ignore all that has been said here about "Aboodatoi." You can ignore its homeopathic message and its link to the roots of Hiphop in Africa. You can even choose to ignore its call to authenticity. But you can never forget its raw rhythms of happy feelings, its joie de vivre that-regardless of age-forces us into reminiscences of childhood, of a pristine period in our lives when we dared to be carefree and careless, wildly ululating on verdant communal playgrounds under bright moonlights before "progress" and technology ruined everything for us.
If you doubt this joie de vivre, just throw back a shot or two of Ahuodzen gin bitters, chase it down with a bottle of stout or beer, wait for that tingly buzz at your fingertips and lay on the "Aboodatoi" track: If your body doesn't contort and wriggle out of your skin in a spontaneous combustion of Azonto, you might as as well question the oracular truth of my daughter's left foot.
©Johnson Arloo
March, 2012.
Huntsville, Alabama.
According to the three criteria by which a song qualifies as Hiplife- funkified beat, a creative blend of rap and harmony, and avoidance of 50% singing while mantaining well-organized hooks and bars (Kwadwo Ohene-Akoto, "Hiplife: A True Definition,"06/28/2007, Museke, 11/16/2011)- " Aboodatoi" is a very good Hiplife song and quite representative of the genre. Still, in its purest form, it can be classified less as Hiplife than Jama, a call-and-response folk chant peculiar to the Ga tribe of Ghana.
"Aboodatoi" appears to be the missing link in previous attempts to trace the roots of Hiphop in Africa, most notably in Kwaw Ansah's epic film, "Crossroads of People, Crossroads of Trade" (1994). In Kwaw Ansah's documentary, he makes the case that clap-and-dance games played by native African girls form the roots of Hiphop music. But I think a stronger case can be made for Jama music with respect to the similarities between Jama and Hiphop in terms of themes, structure, content, choric style and group-performance. And, more than any Hiplife song to date, "Aboodatoi" exemplifies this unique fusion between traditional African rhythms and Hiphop.
The first verse, for instance, is comparable to anything ever coined by Wu-thang:
Gasmilla: Yoo fee yoo e...
Response: Yoo ni.
...
Gasmilla: Don't mind the body,
shi yoo tsui mli
Response: Yoo ni.
The most controversial aspects of the "Aboodatoi," however, is the chorus:
Gasmilla: Bo dientse oshamo noo
Response: Nyaa!
Gasmilla: Ni oduna agba
Response:Piaa!
Gasmilla: Ni omusu agbee
Response: Shingologo shingologo
For those unfamiliar with the Ga language, its rough translation means "be free to p*ss, f*rt as loudly as you can and sh*t to your satisfaction."
Wow!
No euphemisms and or attempts to soften the graphic words. For most first-time listeners, the reaction is undoubtedly one of disgust and horror: disgust for the graphic description of some private bodily functions, and horror that someone will dare put out such a song on the airwaves.
But there is a fortuitous design to it, whether or not Gasmilla is aware of that.
When our world-acclaimed novelist, Ayikwei Armah, first published "The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born" a few decades ago, many were those who howled and called him names for his graphic depiction of filth and pulchritude that had engulfed our country. On overcoming their shock and disgust, however, readers came to appreciate-and even enjoy- the novel's idioms and metaphors. Its language was described as "homeopathic" -a method of fighting infection by injecting minute doses of a remedy that in massive doses produces symptoms in healthy individuals similar to those of the disease being treated(Webster's New College Dictionary)- and hailed as a very creative way to draw attention to the rot and corruption engulfing our country's politics in that era.
Fast forward to the second decade of the twenty-first century. And from the same tribe as Ayikwei Armah comes a talented, young MC with no track record to boast of except his raw passion for Hiplife and "Azonto," the new dance craze that has got the nation reeling. In true Ayikwei Armahesque fashion, Gasmilla's "Aboodatoi" stands for the repudiation of all that is fake and pretentious about Life and Art, about unbridled foreign influences on the Ghanaian Hiplife/Hiphop scene: from wanna-be Beyonces and Nikki Minajs, to rappers aping T-Pain's auto tunes and Twister's fast rapping style. His is creative, raw, unapologetic and heady, like fresh palmwine!
This repudiation of pretentiousness is beautifully incorporated in the design of the video. And, whether or not the video director made a conscious decision to create these visuals, I find it one of the most creative synthesis of theme, message and style on Ghanaian TV.
The music video for "Aboodatoi" is a bold, no-holds-barred concept that showcases the raw beauty of Bukom as never before captured in any of the HBO pre-fight documentaries on Ike Quartey or Joshua Clottey. No attempt is made to glamorize the video by renting glitzy sets or sporting hip costumes that constitute the regular fare on MTV. No sir. This one smacks you in the eye with interesting low-angled shots of the Jamestown Lighthouse and head-on shots of the faded mural at Bukom Square. It's fearless in its visuals of the beach and canoes, the kenkey and charcoal seller, and a tro-tro bus dating back to a jurassic era.
We see Gasmilla not cooped in a claustrophobic club with caricatured models swilling cheap champagne. Here, he's surrounded by his friends as on a casual Saturday morning, lolling around in cut-off tracksuit bottoms and soccer shorts, ribbing each other and horsing around. He keeps it real. This is the essence that makes his video one of a kind and such a real feast for the eye; it's a pure synergy of lyrics and beats, genre and scenery, and, of course, the inimitable home-grown Azonto dance. Nothing works better.As for the "farting shot" at the end of the video, well, it's nothing more than a parting shot; a period, if you will.
The only aspects of his lyrics that I don't appreciate-which I'm sure he'll learn to respect as he matures as an artist accountable to society at large- are the references to the speech-impaired and those who suffer from epileptic seizures ("gbili-gbili").
Doubtless, this is not an exhaustive article about the song. Other aspects like its craft, meter, linguistics and narrative need further examination and i hope other writers will take it up. I'm particularly impressed with the Ga idioms which are heavy to the point of being baffling. Rich.
But you can ignore all that has been said here about "Aboodatoi." You can ignore its homeopathic message and its link to the roots of Hiphop in Africa. You can even choose to ignore its call to authenticity. But you can never forget its raw rhythms of happy feelings, its joie de vivre that-regardless of age-forces us into reminiscences of childhood, of a pristine period in our lives when we dared to be carefree and careless, wildly ululating on verdant communal playgrounds under bright moonlights before "progress" and technology ruined everything for us.
If you doubt this joie de vivre, just throw back a shot or two of Ahuodzen gin bitters, chase it down with a bottle of stout or beer, wait for that tingly buzz at your fingertips and lay on the "Aboodatoi" track: If your body doesn't contort and wriggle out of your skin in a spontaneous combustion of Azonto, you might as as well question the oracular truth of my daughter's left foot.
©Johnson Arloo
March, 2012.
Huntsville, Alabama.
Homage
Homage
For three thousand seasons
I searched for you
among the ancient groves of memory.
In my bated heart
I thought I'd lost you forever.
I had never spoken to you,
never held your hand,
Still, I heard your voice
in the middling brooks,
glimpsed your cherished eyes
in the tawny grass,
holding your velvet hands
to my worshipful lips.
This pain was sharper
than the journey of the Magi
for, here waited no messiah
at the end of my rainbow.
Then, at a witching hour,
your essence reappeared
on a disembodied screen,
captured, as in a surreal dream.
I would have wished upon a star
for more-something tangible.
But beggars cannot ride.
So, I settle-ancient in attitude-
hands turned palms up; a wan gesture
of my ineffable gratitude.
©Johnson Arloo
March, 2012.
Huntsville, Alabama
I searched for you
among the ancient groves of memory.
In my bated heart
I thought I'd lost you forever.
I had never spoken to you,
never held your hand,
Still, I heard your voice
in the middling brooks,
glimpsed your cherished eyes
in the tawny grass,
holding your velvet hands
to my worshipful lips.
This pain was sharper
than the journey of the Magi
for, here waited no messiah
at the end of my rainbow.
Then, at a witching hour,
your essence reappeared
on a disembodied screen,
captured, as in a surreal dream.
I would have wished upon a star
for more-something tangible.
But beggars cannot ride.
So, I settle-ancient in attitude-
hands turned palms up; a wan gesture
of my ineffable gratitude.
©Johnson Arloo
March, 2012.
Huntsville, Alabama
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