MAMA,CAN YOU STILL BE PROUD OF ME?

If it all turned out that I have lied.

   1. You have really done well
       You have kept your virginity
       Now we can give you out in good name

       Papa Ojoula
       Come, come and listen to good news
       Let the prekese boast of its own aroma
       Ojoula tell him, that which you just worded
       Papa, I tasted the banana in primary six
       It was Sumpa, my brother
       He convinced me, I liked it
       We did it again and again

       Mum, wipe those tears
       Yes this is the good news
       You had no heart for it
       Papa has, though he will slap
       I still know he has.

2.   You took me to church on Sundays
     Placed me in the Bible quiz team
     Made sure I grew in the church
     I told you Mum, thanks for the church
     I shall never depart from this gift

    Now you have heard and seen me
    In black suit, white shirt and tie
    Seated with the men around that table
    With the big book, you crave to know
    Whether it was a Bible
    No Mum, am sorry, it is the codex gigas
    Jesus couldn’t save me when the church ended.

3.  You never listened to me
     You never wanted to know me
     You were into their world
     So you also said some
    “Go to school, get good grades, job and you rich”

    What can I do to please Mum?
    That question bought you a new son
    Far different from the one you had raised
    Those white papers with A’s and few B’s
    Those that made you smile and called me proud son
    They were just typed results from the café behind

4.  Look, that was Sister Gloria’s daughter
     The one who just aborted a baby
     She will soon be suspended in the church
     Am glad you pointed only a finger at her
     And the remaining four pointed straight at me
     I was responsible for her pregnancy
    She kept quiet because I had to make you proud

    Mama, am sorry all these Years
    I have been making you proud
    Now can you be proud of me too?

Written By: Oppong Clifford Benjamin

Read More

HYMNS OF THE BLACK VOICES

Builders of the African Dream Anthology's mouth is still opened and all cups, gallons, buckets and pans of juicy poems are welcomed. Pour in your Poems.
 It only must have a taste of Africa.
We so will be grateful for your contribution to building an African Dream with us. With your Poem we can take the hands of the street children in Uganda and walk them to a house.

We can together paint their faces with smiles and show them a tomorrow they never dreamt of. Your Poem can go to the extend of weaving a hope for the future and release their destiny tied in sutures.
Send your poems to any of the emails below;
victoradex94@yahoo.com
kabagambemoses01@gmail.com
cliffordoppong@aol.com

Join Builders of the African Dream to make the streets for cars not homes.

Read More

THE RIVER TOO DRINKS

Frimpomah
Sits at the bank of Ankobra
Her head planted in her palms
Eyesfeeding the river with tears
And Ankobra drinks with no fears

Frimpomah sings a dirge
"You them boys swimming
 You them girls fetching
 You them women washing
 If you see my mother, tell her I wait for her body." 2x

Dufia,do me no pity
Cry me no more
Go tell Nana Brago
We came fetching
She dived for a swim
I watched with eyes screaming
and my bones crying
whiles Ankobra ate and drunk her

The home is no longer home
The hen will greet bad morning
the Oracle will speak
Today the gods have taken one of their own.

Tell Nana brago
her daughter drowned
my mother is dead.

Written By: Oppong Clifford Benjamin.

Read More

WHY I WILL CONTINUE TO BE A BEGGAR

If you see me in one way or the other begging, please don't be surprised, am not too ashamed of my status as a beggar. I am so because mendicacy is a chronic hereditary disease in my family as a Ghanaian. 

Dad genetically borrowed mendicity from my granddad when he couldn't be any different from working for the whites in the gold mines.  He offered them all he had in his bones as energy to cook wealth and lick the remains of the pot as his salary. When he woke up as early as 4am to work and gets back home as late as 9pm only to wake up and come back again with empty hands and stomach crediting foodstuffs from Auntie Julie's grocery shop. 

At the end of the month,he stretches his begging hands only to be offered 1/10000 of his sweat as his most honourable reward for 100000J of energy used.  On his pay days we all stay awake and gathered around the TV set which best telecast only one boring station, GTV. We will all make our list of books and items to be purchased and lay ambush for the already spent salary. 

The salary is unruly dumped on the centre table in our living room when he returned home, Mum will first welcome him in that her voice which was heard only at the end of the months, in the rest of the days she sounded different and more like a lioness. In the most grand style, supper will be served to the poor begging gold mine worker and he will eat with mouth unwilling to swallow the balls of fufu. 

Whiles he ate, Mum will draw a knife into the salary and start cutting it into different portions, the greater fraction normally went to Auntie Julie for the food we had consumed on credit, so that we can be allowed to eat again for the month ahead. Other parts went into our school fees and other utility bills. My Dad after eating will throw his discomfited self backwards into his lazy chair and ask my Mum if there is any remainder after doing what we all know is ineluctable.

On lucky months we have some left for our lenghty list that most times stand on four pages. Dad will first ask for our list, He normally will scream or laugh uncontrollably upon seeing our pages of items and will then instruct us to tabulate our list into 'WANTS' and 'NEEDS'. So right from infancy I have known the clear difference between want and need and have been warned to always cry for the needs and allow the wants to go searching for themselves. 

So from my basic education to now, I have always been surviving on my needs but I dream of my wants and get to use them in dreamland, morning normally comes to wake and separate me from my sweet world of my wants. I remeber one day in my second world, I was using my own calculator, had for the first time a pair of newly bought sandals and was not wearing those ones my cousin had gifted me. I had not attended the dinning hall and was enjoying canteen food with the 'Dada mba', had a new school bag and was smiling and conversing happily with no worries planted on my face, Snr Labat please wake up, it is time for dorm dressing, then I realized I was again dreaming. Yes all those were my wants. To my father, your school fees, books and transportation back home are the needs, Period.

Growing up, when Life started advising me, I decided to also take upon myself the job which had fed the stomachs of my ancestors. Beggary in labour. So now am a beggar. I work hard for people and after which I beg them for my meagre salary. They somtimes tell me in my face that we can't pay you because we have not fed our families.

We resort to strike, hit the floors of the street and cry out our hunger, most times they listen with their right ears but during unfortunate days, they listen with the left ears and it appears we never will get paid. In other words, they are telling us to keep striking till we will realize we are harming nobody but ourselves since none of their relatives live in the country or is affected.

It is a miserable reason why I can't stop begging, just like ASUU.

Written By: Oppong Clifford Benjamin

Read More