Ralph Geeplay

To Broad Street

Let’s head to where we have been once
Through this garbage filled town
From side to side
To the dark alleys
To Carey Street

Where pedestrians go down
And up looking for income
That was not there in the first place
Let’s go there to the teashops
There we drink ‘ataya’ where

Peasants envy power
Laced with thoughts
Their minds, mouth and hands amble
About today’s convolution you see the craze
That haunts their beings like ghost presence

Pestered with evil – they roar like lions
As they rant you see their faces
Brawny with emotion
They wish they had talismans
To gut solutions from thin air

And they all snivel life isn’t fair
I am telling I am not liar
This here alley
Is the nuts that is Monrovia
But let’s go anyway and

Even though times are rigid
If providence went away and we lost our last hand
Dealt by fate on the hill tops of Ducor
Where a wheelbarrow boy as husband

Strays the streets as famished mouths
Wait abroad to be fed reckon your chance
Let’s trek, drop worries aside
I am here for your side
Like I know you on mine

We walk from end to end
This African sun enjoying
Savoring every bit of bliss
That is our affliction
For the love we put

Is spiteful but it reverberates
Let’s move on to Broad Street
To the café shops
Where we kiss
And we miss the surrounding

Not because it is not there
We just don’t care – always
Fairy eye we hope to see the sun rise
We watch now the raindrops
Beat against the windowsills

While yellow caps crawled
The soaked streets
With no running red lights
Women drenched carry groceries
You and I only you

When the moment bereft stood still
And perpetual peace soothed the cerebral air till
We meant to capture it all
Embrace our warm eminence we fill
The space we hoot we blubber we love

Let’s go to where we have been before

A Refugee Cry

No respect
When you come to seek refuge
No aspect
Of your life seems main
Like a suspect I mean
In the eyes of those men
Who expect
You to be like them
Speaking Twi at Katnetshi
So that you discount their mother’s country
No.

No bread
When you wake in the morning
No tread
Of our lives seems useful now
Like the dead we mourn
Our fate lies not with us but those
Who dread
Our very company in this state
So we lose thrust when tomorrow
Still never dies
No.

No peace
When you watch the faces of your brood
No piece
Of their crushed lives seems entire
Like mice
They feed off the morsels left unwanted by those
Who price
War over quiet and here we are
Wandering stunned craze scruffy
Oh! How we longed for that sweet land sprawl
Athwart the Atlantic for we must crawl

If we must for no longer must we drown
And massage these forever miseries
The Dahoma tree so situates stands
And it must weather the weather
On the store front of the Cavalla
We must heave atoll apt and purple like lava mad
That roll in fury at the doom of heat that within flamed
Down slopes for it can no longer be contained
The fizz that binds it to hot rocks in frigid weather all told
Wistful home bound we are a boost of oomph high head
Readying westward no matter the cost is the read

Where we glimpse the superb knolls of Mount Tienpo
And hear the empty cries of skeletons grudgingly secreted
From the wreck which perforates my people and mortals do
I now park myself and fret about these dark
Scab Gold Coast men—with deep gashes to their cheeks
Red eye walking around this Katneshi market half draped

In their proud kinte robes speaking Twi then and now
Here and there like angels on clouds—Ah Charlie!
Me I go go home tomorrow – tomorrow!
From where I from the sweet palmbutter smell
Beckons soothing in kissme and spices arouses my brow
Peace go come done is the row

And when I pace and pace thinking nothing
But the kola nuts and sweet pepper offered when I finally reach Kalorken
The dusty tip of Cape Palmas when mothers dance and spread their lappas
On sacred earth for me to trample waiting welcome palm wine
Gaze the faces of elders stroking breads
Puffing tobacco smoke slipshod fused with kindness a father’s gawk

In infamy not today pal must I bow
No not today this Kwa head sets off for the Grain Coast
Squat morale I cast to this Buduburum and I know
To where I go to my eat rice in peace that’s that

Yes. To Monrovia where the sun still shine on Waterside

*Twi is a major language spoken in Ghana

*Katnetshi is a popular open marketplace in Accra

*The Cavalla River is a major waterway in the southeastern region of Liberia

*Mount Tienpo can be found in Tienpo District, River Gee County

*The Kwa are composed of the Belle, Grebo, Kru, Bassa and Khran peoples

*Buduburum is the wasteland of a Liberian refugee camp in Ghana

*Waterside is Liberia’s own popular open marketplace

Night falls In Kanweaken

As night falls the sun placates its far-flung self faded
Then wives having fought their day’s battle filed
Themselves fatigued like militia on the petite village road
Heavenwards look they hunt God

Their kinjas slightly poised on their heads
They march with regal posture
As wanting Young
Bend their backs
Like leaves to branches
Their inundated perturbed hearts
For yearning, for craving to do more–
But little else can they bid but breast milk
Husbands stroll behind meek
Speaking in the murmurs only men can lick

Wielding spiky cutlasses they whip
Their backs and legs to keep
The tsetse flies away steep
As night falls in the jungle deep

In the rain forest hush
Night falls hurriedly in Kanweaken
And now then only the chirp chirp of the pepper bird resonates
Wives matter little else but the new rice fields
They howl for cause to clouds
Offspring swathe their backs utter soft moans
Thunders knock the skies
The wrath of heaven roars
This was the new day
What was has vanished this now is famine

The locust came and razed the village lies in tatter
This after the wars all smiles gone
Behind them smoke rise to the
The heavens from the slash and burn

Kanweaken is a town located in River Gee County.

Copyright © 2009 Ralph Geeplay