The language by which we call our ancestors

Lose their mythical meaning to the winds of exile,

Baptizing an African child in America indoors, on the carpet

Is not an act of naming a child outdoors; done at dawn

On the African earth at home –

The libation loses its mystery

The proverbs recounted without the weight of wisdom

Ancient as the tongue with which they are spoken

The oracles shrink in scope and the

Mystic magnitude of sacred rites become lost

To the sound of appellations spoken in multiple languages,

For the less erudite to understand –

At the end of the ceremony, the act

Of divination fades away at the moment it is uttered.

But still,

The symbolism of ritual is enough to mark the soul of the child –

On the concrete floor of this urban earth

That he is African, named after a grandfather

Hunter of sea lions by spring

Farmer of corn fields by summer

Vegetables by the setting sun

Husband to a dozen wives at the prime of life –

Africa’s name is whispered

Through the vanishing languages of our ancestors

Exiles’ toll on tradition is heavy

Memory becomes metaphor, for a journey to nowhere.

But the giggles, the laughter and the mirth

By exchanging gifts are genuine…

Liqueur is poured, libation takes place

Cola nuts shared, food enjoyed

Reminiscences of the old country

Of tribal life, deceased relatives, gossips

Soak the air with conversation.

I bid the women gathered my farewell…

Thinking: We are the sons and daughters of a vanishing era.

New tribes of another country and the

Children born in exile, grow up

Only capable of imagining what Africa could be –

On the magical morning of any day

When a child is named in the enchanted language of the gods –

===================

Contest and Text

Are there poets, writers and academics amongst us?

People who can craft a vision out of the

Imagination of philosophers and visionary sorcerers

To draft and later enshrine a parable for history to infer

To protect our sacred dreams of our well-being within –

From the wrath of future and present despots

Do we have the will to imagine a world beyond tribe?

That transcends the imprisonment of nationality,

Into the area of a continental country –

Do we have the wit to witness to ourselves the

Inept undoing of potentates and war lords – Do we?

To live life without riddles is to live without history.

Parables are the preamble to the evidence of things

Yet to come – A metaphor of the future

And the things of beauty and affluence yet to be seen –

So every experience is a clue to something beyond

The realm of what is within our sphere of knowing.

Are the civil wars the coups and dysfunctional governments –

The mass famine and thirst – the diseases, epidemics, filth and hate

Evidence of more things yet to come –

Or are they visible signs of treasures wasted

Opportunities missed, faith subverted, dreams deferred

Resources ruined and wealth drained? I suppose…

I am making room in my imaginary country to elect

A philosopher king, lover of books

An entrepreneurial leader, creator of wealth

A sorcerer of science, dispeller of superstition

And an advocate of commerce, icon of free trade

To set an example for Africa to see –

Who has a very loud voice to speak?

That it shall reverberate across the land, beyond the tribe of nations –

Out of the slumber of time and the curse of self-hate

A bell must ring to awake a continent in slumber

From the psychic coma of history

And to rally all the exiles to come back home

To preach the prosperous gospel of enlightenment –

Once in a life time when the secret of self knowledge

Is made plain on the crowded streets of Africa

Shedding light into the dark despotic haven of fear,

To set shackled minds free, once and forever more –

 ===================

African Dreaming

There is a story waiting to be told

That story is deeply asleep within

The collective unconscious,

And that story is the parable of ancestral gathering.

It is a story that is an allegory through

The valley of the shadow of death, fear and shame

Through the sacred corridors of illumination

And in the chalice of divine awareness

Africa becomes already united…transformed and whole.

What do we do with this knowledge

That we become what we think about?

And the evidence of thought is but the thing

Thought about –

There are sacred scrolls, hidden gospels

Mythical dreams, spirit gods and ritual processes…

Prophesies foretelling the second coming of the Osagefo –

The mythology of this gospel, the earth was never flat…

So let no tyrant, dictator or head of state put asunder

The mythical meaning of the dream –

This is the story waiting to be told

Within the inner sanctuary of the soul –

From slavery to salvation

From colonialism to self-conception

From self-betrayal to rebirth

From fear to faith,

From poverty to prosperity –

Deciphering the secret codes, symbols and ciphers

Hiding the secrets into the inner realm of opulence –

Africa is waiting for the voice of the storyteller

To tell the world of our faith in the evidence

That this continent is already one, living an abundant life

One in spirit, thought and in consciousness –

This is an invisible truth, awareness into the kingdom of light.

Of all things made possible by creative thought.

She has been a mother of the earth of our faith

Magdalena of history, myth and metaphor

Vilified yet valiant, defiled yet defiant

Persisting within the conscience of the world

To be decoded –

Her name is Africa

This is the heresy of history waiting to be told

“What happens to a dream deferred?” asked Langston Hughes

It returns to haunt. It returns and returns…Until,

It is told by those who are ordained to be storytellers

Of the mythology of the heroes journey…yet to be made plain –

This is the meaning of a self-fulfilling prophesy…

And a self-actualizing thought

In the magical meaning of my African Dream –

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Symphony of Words

The opposite of love is death,

Hate is too weak an adjective

To stand against the power of love –

I am bemused by the magic of this invisible earth

Giving birth out of the passions of history –

Where do I go to find the realm of infinite love?

For I am mapping out new paths

Into the kingdom of prosperity

Through the labyrinth of my mind

Making affluence my companion

The mythical goddess of possibility my counsel –

Death is my ultimate evidence

That life is real and thoughts are but

A metaphor of things yet to come –

Oh, sacred flower of a dreaming heart

Show me the recipe of God’s alchemy

To transmute thoughts into things

Imagination into image nation and dreams into reality

To render all things good in the end –

Pain and suffering evaporate into the ether

Of God’s crescent space and His mind made visible

In the invisible sphere of human thought –

Time becomes empty, shaping out the seasons of life

Healing myself of regrets and mistakes

Before the empty slight of the traitors’ eye

Ungrateful multitudes who couldn’t appreciate my song –

So I depart from the material realm into the spirit world

Learning at last the meaning of the Emerald text

“As above so below, as within so without…”

Till earth becomes one with heaven –

I am but a miracle made alive by love

Dreaming, dreams of a dreamer who has but glimpsed

The infinite world of endless possibilities –

So I sing my song all over again, Symphony of Words

Out of the note books, from the Promised Land –