Faces

The choir is broken into a million pieces like my broken
soul.
My poems remind me of how I fail to make sense
Whenever I am called upon to conduct an anthem
For the marriage of the ghosts and the dark.


How can I conduct the choir
When all I have known is discordant melodies
Splashed on the faces of beasts?
Sshh! There is serenity in hopeless.


If you listen carefully,
You will hear Silence disturbing Noise
Or the wind playing the black and white pearls
In the solitude of nothingness.


JYF says, if we are patient enough
We can be able to see our faces in the wind.

J.Y. Frimpong

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Short Story: REWARD

Kofi was nothing like a gentleman but for the sake of things he had to pretend as one. He was to be a teacher, a profession he was in because his grades somewhat did not qualify him to go to the university like most of his friends. He had no love for the profession, his mother had suggested it to him! He graduated by strictly the mercies of God.

When he finished, he had one hope and that was to be posted to an all girls school. He had heard that in girls’ school, the teachers ‘used’ the girls a lot. It made a lot of sense; having lots of girls crowded in one area meant the probabilities of sleeping with a girl or many was high. Indeed, God was merciful and answered his prayers. If he couldn't attend university, he could at least satisfy the little “organisation” down there.

On the first day at school, he was blinded by curves, breast and buttocks of all sizes. He had a boner alert the whole day and had more than four ejaculations. He slept a happy man, he told himself that that was perhaps his only consolation in life.

His first victim was Beatrice, she was a flirt! She loved throwing herself around every handsome teacher in the school. Getting her to bed was easy, it practically took him three days and some biscuits. He was mortally satisfied with the results. He was so happy but his happiness was cut short when he heard other teachers laugh at him “Na Beatrice ye obaa a yedi no? Obiara edi no bi da.” He was very hurt, he felt like a gigolo (as if he wasn't one already). Then came the second victim - Emily, then the third - Sylvia, the fourth - Bella until he lost count.

He didn't care about the perceptions about him outside. Of course, he heard many birds singing that he was a womanizer but to me having (seemingly) unlimited sex was God’s reward for him not going to the university.

But God is not a fool. He slept with one Ama and died during the act. Ama was afraid to tell anyone that Tikya Kofi had a heart attack when he was pulling out. She lives with the guilt till this day. 

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Short Story: HEALING

He tried to, first, love her, second, compare her to his favourite character in a novel he remembers half the lines and lastly, he tried to make her his all. But he failed. The afternoon he first saw her, he became restless, the afternoon she left, he became restless.

The very first day he saw her, he was with two lusting young fellows who were shouting false sexual escapades. “Oh! That girl? Lef am koraa. I chop her last year koraa ooo. Now ibi like she wan do her body like she be brand new product” Daniel, one of the boys said in a high-pitch tone “I chop her basa basa. She dey even scream for help that night”

“Dannie dier you dey form ooo. But abi you know I chop your cuzon yestee” Peter tried to tease Daniel.

“Abi I don’t give a fuck! Massa, you for use condom oo and chop her well well. Make sure her body come oo na that my cuzon koraa she no dey even pect any bro. Massa chop am”

The two looked at Seth simultaneously obviously expecting him to say something. “Why? What's wrong?” he asked obviously lost as to what they really want.

“Seth dierr! He dey do en body like he bi Roman fada but i hear he spoil pass” Daniel looked at Seth condescendingly.

“I am a virgin” he replied almost in a whisper.

Peter stood up from the short wall they were sitting on and circled Seth as if he had said something extremely unheard of in history.

“Make you commot for there! Wey nonsense you wan blow we this evenin tee?” he neared him “bro, you be seventeen ooo not one and not seven. Even Primary Five kids koraa them chop demabody! Clear off koraa!”

Just then she walked by. At first, Seth gave her no attention, she looked vaguely familiar, all he knew was that she lived close by and that was the extent he wanted to know her.

“Seth, call the girl and flow her say you wan her number.” Daniel whisperrd.

‘But I don’t even know her” he said a bit louder, embarassed and dead sure she heard it.

Peter lowered his voice “Do wild and diet her keke. You for experience life oo and be guy small. See if you small bro koraa hear say you are a virgin koraa he no go call you Bra Seth again ooo.”

He stood up shaking, doubled his footsteps and whispered something inaudible. The girl turned and looked at him frowning.

“What do you want?” she asked sternly almost shouting so that Daniel and Peter could hear it.

“Your number” he stammered.

“And you ---”

“Can you please lower your voice? Please, I am begging you. Just pretend you are giving me a wrong number, I only don't want them to make a mockery of me” he interjected with so much quaker in his voice.

She looked at him and saw paradise. This is what she always dreamt of, to be loved by a boy so handsome and soft. She knew him, in fact, she admired his decency. He was a part of the few boys who did not sag their shorts in the name of fashion. Regardless, she disprove of his association with those boys and wished should they ever go into a relationship, he would stay away from them.

“What is your number?” she asked him

“Zero….two…..zero…..four….six……” he replied carefully mentioning ever number correctly.

She called him, his phone rang and it was her favourite song! How lovely, she smirked.

“Call me” she walked away.

That was how the heartbreak story began. Since he wanted to keep the relationship, he stomached every pain she subjected him to. He really wanted to marry her despite everything but she was a wild horse who wanted not to be tamed. She wanted more of him (which he couldn't provide). Then one day, she left. He never healed till this day and had to settle on alcohol and a promiscuous lifestyle. He often reasoned “If I had had sex with Estelle, she would have never let.”

But she loved him and he also loved him but she was afraid she had made him a womanizer and would cheat on her with other woman and he was afraid he was incapable of loving again 

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Death (co-written by Doyselle)

Death doesn’t come when you expect it
Not when you need it desperately
Or when you wait earnestly for it
I saw death pass by my window
But it wouldn’t come to me
Not even when I taunted it

Death comes when you least expect it
It creeps upon you in the afternoon breeze
When the sky is brightest and the birds cheeriest
It arrives at the dawn of the New Year’s Eve
Just when you step into the kitchen for a glass of water
It swamps up on you in the spring
When the flowers smell freshest and leaving is hardest

I heard a wise man say,
“Don’t expect death-
Don’t revere death-
Don’t fear death-
Do not hate death-
For what comes to you as dread
Is relief to another”

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Curse of the moonlight (co-written by Kwame Botchway)

There is a curse in the shadow
Lurking around this ruins
On which we have built our dreams on.
Every night,
I whistle in dreams.
I see often a blind magician,
Who smiles in cauliflowers
"Build your home on this dream."
And so I would
Only to realise the doors lead to nowhere
The windows open to blockades
And the roof is rained mixed with thunder.
And in the lights behind the lid of our terrified eyes
I whistle again
Only to dream of us dancing again and again in circles
To the heightened laughter of new lovers
For in this ruins in the sky touches this very spot
Where rainbow is nothing than a song.
Even those were built with a broken drum.
The moon came tumbling,
Our silent night wind rumbling
but as always, she whistled into my nightmares,
Our songs will fade and dreams turn often pale
The sun too fail to rise
and the dark shadow lurking in the dark floats our only way out
Full moons are not for the forlorn
neither are silent dawns
‬
But as for us...it's in the pitch dark pits of hideous love we shall thrive ;
In these ruins
I pray and dance in the lights of jealousy.
My eyes are a half moon
My hands are a deserted castle,
My feet, a haunting voice.
In all these,
My dreams is what keeps my heart beating,
Though the streets are silent whistles
Lighted up by ecstatic terror,
All what I have to keep this ruins alive
Is a drug and a dream,
A romance and a worm
A joy and a foe.
My magician, you were last seen in a forgotten smile.

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Short Story: RE-LEARNING

I do not remember when but I know that at about seven years old I was very hardened. , I did not really care and I could not understand why all the young people around me cared. They would constantly remind me that I was a girl, I needed to be soft and prettier. I knew myself as a survivor; ever since I had known myself, I knew I had to fight for myself and what was right.
Once upon a time when I was a baby, I used to sleep on a piece of tattered clothe on the floor and watch old and older men smoke and drink. My father owned a drinking spot, it was in the most obscure places, as to how people got to know and frequented there, I do not know. All what I knew was that life was all about drinking and smoking. When I was older enough, like nine or ten, I started to sell alcoholic drinks and cigarettes to old men. Some of them touched my breast (I did not know what they derived from it but my father looked on as they did), some also had sex with me (I had my first sex when I was eight, it was very painful), I had a feeling my parents knew but I was getting tips from the people who slept with me so I never reported.
At school, I never had too many friends, the few I had drunk and smoke like most men I used to know. When I reached JHS One, every girl I knew started getting into a relationship of some kind. Everyone had this strange belief that I would never get one but I did and this shocked everyone. What shocked them the most was that he was two years older, was in a first class Senior High School, had averagely rich parent, so handsome that he was close to beautiful and on top of it all so quiet and calm. I do not know what attracted him to me but he really loved me.
He thought me how to be soft, apply make up, walk, be beautiful and more importantly self dignity. I no longer slept with older men, I no longer sold drinks in my father's shop, he changed me so much that even the mirror in my house saw me as a stranger. Our relationship lasted for eight years, it ended when he went abroad. At that time, I was in the university and my father was so proud of me. When he left me, I was so depressed that I found solace in older (but this time richer) men and my old behaviour.
I had to re-learn all my old habits just to forget him, I had to re-learn that there was no difference between happiness and sadness. When men are happy they drink when they are sad they drink more. When men are alive they drink, when they die people drink on their behalf.

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#Cinnamon

Your friends never told you 

Mothers are like cinnamon

That their eyes are factories of sugar?

When you were born, 

You tasted like a little war

A little atomic bomb 

Waiting to worsen other wars and burn the world. 

Then she looked at you 

You were crying 

And she said to you

"I can neutralize the poison in your eyes 

With the sugar in mine."

Didn't you ever know that

Your mother's breath tasted like salt?

You walked in and out of the room where she kept patience 

You robbed her of all the pleasures in the room. 

Every night she would cry and say 

"I have to sacrifice

I know I have to sacrifice

I just have to sacrifice" 

But you didn't care because you never saw those tears

But even when she was salt, 

She made your food worthy of being tasted. 

Foolish girl, didn't your friends ever tell you 

That you turn your mother into pepper 

And in order for her to be useful 

She grinded herself into paste 

So you would know that she is still sweet. 

Foolish boy, didn't you ever read 

That you can't build homes on whispers? 

Someone whispered to you 

That she is a witch.

So you walked into her house 

And started a war

Which she never recovered from. 

After everything she has done for you 

You only remember her

As a badly prepared food 

Which you gladly spat out.

Photo Credit: Maame Akua Acheamponmaa Boamah

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Living in shadows

Your father taught you to be a runner and a winner 

So you run into innocent ladies' heart and colonised it. 

Your father taught you how to drink and quit 

So your drank from the thighs of innocent souls 

And quit when you broke their hearts

Like how your self has been broken. 

Be a mason 

Learn how to build your own thoughts. 

Learn how to create your own home 

And stop living in illusions. 

Be your own man 

My dear friend 

Demolish every barriers your father built in your mind 

And fly free as the bird.

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