DEAD HARMONIES

Death knocked on their door

Countless times this year

but nobody answered.

In his luring voice

 He began to sing.

Soprano, alto, tenor, bass,

 In key.

 But none of their voices matched his,

 So they kept mute

To avoid disrupt in harmony.

 They waited for some units of time,

Hoping that

 Death will the same way to the end.

 But fear anchored

Their voiced down that

 They could not stomach it anymore.

 So one after the other,

 Starting from a youngest folk,

They started giving birth to sounds

Through vocal chords

 But they were just dead harmonies. 

---Evans Owusu Kissi & Fampah Coyish---

PROFIT AND LOSS

From outside comes sounds

Of cutlass cutting into a tree's skin..

Chaa... Chaa... Chaa...

For God knows how long.

Little timbers falling With mighty unheard sounds.

Creeping little things Run for dear lives.

Cha... Cha... Chaa.

 God knows where to.

 Is the tree's name a stranger to this man?

 Does it matter?

 Does he know the harm caused to other living beings?

 Does he care?

 No, no matter.

 Once he feels not their pain,

 No allowance of care

Could sneak into his untamed heart.

Oh life....

 Look how unfair you could be.

 While one gains here

Another loses there.

 Oh dear!

Why are you this cruel?

 Until when shall your bosom blossom with mercy?

 When?

 ---Fampah Coyish & Abotreh---

Evans Owusu Kissi is a Ghanaian poet with pen name Abotreh which means patience in Twi-one of the Ghanaian dialects.

We have done some collaborations together , and this is our second work done together.

I COULDN’T WRITE YOU A SONG

The days of toil

on this soil

Gradually passing as clouds

and age is only become,

Something of great interest to men-

something to be celebrated.

I wish I could write or even sing you a song

to complete this celebration

So I write you a lullaby

in your youthful days

As my alibi

for I couldn’t write you a song;

May your troubles and problems, fall to sleep

as this lullaby is heard

And your love grow,

like the old Adansonia digitata in the Savannah

May your joyous songs be full

and in days where there aren’t any left,

In your heart,

May your mind be full of songs

and your heart turgid of prayer

I would write you a

if I could,

But I couldn’t

I would paint you with words,

if I have the brush of numerous vocabularies;

But I couldn’t know how best to

but, a lullaby I leave you with,

To alibi you in your sleepless times.

---Fampah Coyish---

THE MOUNTAIN

1

Oh beautiful sculpture
Standing proud above the hamlet,
Above the hills and valleys,
Above whole rivers and rivulets

Oh Gods creative masterpiece
Drawing up grasslands and forests
Painting greens and greys together
Viewing fine pasture and hot deserts

Oh great traditional edifice
The guardian of our little hamlet,
Protector of our flora and fauna
And providing us with food and meat

2

Many are  that wish to

Climb you up from afar

Bend themselves over to take off

their shoes or even put them on

For they have not met a kind like you

Afadja; thick, tall, beautiful!

Let your beauty be heard in far lands

That they may wish to come applaud your elegance

O mountain Afadja!

---Oke Iroegbu, Fampah Coyish---

This is my  second collaboration with Oke Iroegbu, a poet from Nigeria. This time, we wrote a piece on Nature, and about a Beautiful Mountain called "Afadja" found in the Volta Region in Ghana.

SILVER SPOON

Many are, that were born with gold spoons in mouth

And some in old nest

And when they cried gold fell

That their voices were clouded,

and not even heard

we, we were not that favoured

so we, when we cried

 they shoved big rusty spoons in our hands

we were warned to hold them glued

for with time, they will grow into gold

or the nearest to it-silver

to feel we rocked shoulders

for blood will drain both, when cut;

this was to give credibility for their doing

but when cut, we knew one thing they knew we knew

blood will surely drain one to the graves

we were stretched to believe

we all have rights, and a reason to be happy,

amidst all odds

schooled to think, and feel, we are all equal

but whom should we rain blame on?

For we all never chose this life

We were just placed here

We grew, but when we grew,

our rusty spoons never changed to silver or gold

so we polished it with gold dust

to keep our pride without blemish

but they were only telling us

we shall take pride in the trade

in which we have been born.

---Fampah Coyish---

TIPSY DIRGES

This is not a song
cooked from the core of hearts

Not a tale told from
wild tortured thoughts.

This is a dirge,
of bravery.
A eulogy
of drowned aspirations.

A comfort for the
broken, sunken soul.

---Fampah Coyish---

DECEMBER TIDES

1

Tasty for the spoils of the dry month, we are

Dry air, dry waterhole, dry lips, dry paper

Moisture lost to the heat of the traveling sun

But our feet has got many options, wait or run

And today the breeze drives the wind to us

We savor, we enjoy, to you emissary we trust

You have come with the mighty Harmattan 

Your dry airs and heat has become our tan

2

Trees sway

With blur visions on sight

As a bonus for being alive

At the point of the year

Air so dry, with hot sun rays

You only bring us dry tidings 

Cracked foot, that hurt

But we the people of this land still loves you.

---Oke Iroegbu, Fampah Coyish---

I wrote this piece with Oke Iroegbu, a poet from Nigeria. The both countries of ours Ghana and Nigeria fall in West Africa, and enjoy the same weather and climate. We have written about December and her tide. Oke Iroegbu, wrote the first stanza and I have got the second.

December, Harmattan, Nigeria, Nigerian poet, Ghana, Ghanaian poet.

OCEAN'S BEAUTY

Oceans too crave for beauty,

The colour of the sky they envy

 deep within their bosom,

 they selfishly devour.

 If I ask you to bring to me a blue seawater,

 You'll see oceans never had a colour

Of their own.

A life of pretense they exude.

At the white shore,

What they are is truly displayed;

At the feet what they hide they show.

 A life so fraudulent, they live.

---Fampah Coyish---

MY DESIRES

    I am glad that you said to me; “I love you”

For these words are full of hope;

That I may not die in lonely

Sleep at night alone

   These are my heart desires

Let me not be poor in love

For most have been sick, died

Due to the malnutrition of love 

    I do not want to say

There isn’t anything as ‘love’

That all women are the same

These are my heart desires.

---Fampah Coyish---

EBBING INTO THE TIDES OF SILENCE

You paused your heart for me
but it was so much a precious gift
to be appreciated by me
here you lie as a thread
lifeless like a stone
but stones, even make noise when stricken.
every sound in you has gone dumb
you are deaf to my slaps.

Now you're definitely going to go
on the rough narrow road
where grand pa and ma
said they'll be waiting
tell them, I shall join soon
but then, not until grand ma
stops preparing her naked
ground soups with Banku
for the wife she found me
has given me ductile reasons to stay
bolted to a woman irrespective of her cooking skills

Tell her, it was her skills she learnt
which is keeping me alive for another century
and unlike her saltless soup, I've found
a beautiful reason to live while I may.
but soon, very soon, we will end up like grand ma
with dead taste buds stuck on my tongue.
---Fampah Coyish---

RESPECTER OF NONE

Life, a respecter of none

Favours not the ugly

Handsome, fair or dark

His whips he equally unleashes on all.

With hard work

His favour could be earned, not his trust

The determined he seeks

Not even the hard working in heart

Has won his trust

His test he serves to all

Today he makes rich

Tomorrow the rich he turns pauper.

---Fampah Coyish---

NUMEROUS BITES

It was a beautiful day

A day with leftovers

Of last night’s anger

Everyone bypassing looked

But could not look, so they looked in awe

With disgust in their strides  

I sat and cried

With swollen lips, and bleeding head

That day everyone was surprised

Men could bite dogs too.

Yet that day was not the first,

For a man to bite a dog

That day was not the first

For my wife to abuse me physically

Today’s bite hasn’t been my first bite

I have just been doing

What I was taught to be-

Strong (a man).

FOR LITERATURE~

Let's lie in repetition,
Let us lie in pun.
Let's lie in oxymoron,
Let us lie in diction.

Let's lie in personification,
Let us lie in euphemism.
Let's lie in onomatopoeia.

Let us lie-
Lie in literature;
Cover ourselves with comedy.
Put off the light of tragedy-
Turn the fan of romance on,
And use a perfect rhyme in our erotism.

Oh, let us lie in literature darling!
Far from the cares of this world.
Let's lie in fiction,
Let us lie in hyperbole.

For I want to be able to tell you;
I love you heads over hills.
Let us lie in imaginations me darling,
Where everything is happily ever after.
Let us lie to ourselves that things are fine
For the sakes of literature.
---Fampah Coyish---

©Fampah Coyish-Awoken by Poems 2017

MY STRUGGLE

No woman

Is

Worth

My struggle;

Except

The one-

That

One,

Who brought

Me forth

To struggle.

---Fampah Coyish---

WOMEN LIKE WINE

~WOMEN LIKE WINE~

Women like wine,

Men as wine bibbers.

Yet how many bottles or gallons

Can they drink,

To make them sober?

Because each differ,

With different alcoholic percentages.

In different bottle shapes and sizes,

Numerous colours and tastes,

Diverse strengths.

Some calm, some harsh-

But which can their problems, and depressions hush?

Women as wine,

Men like wine bibbers.

To find the one that sobers faster,

You need to take in a lot of shots,

Of the ones that does not.

Most that make you lose your stamina

Makes you sway as a flexible stemmed tree;

Leaving you staggering like a pendulum.

---Fampah Coyish---

~POETRY FARM~

I have a project in mind

I need a piece of land

To start my poetry farm

Not just for the rhyme and fun

But also for the benefits.

Forget about starting with a loan

So I want to start it small.

I need just a small plot

A good setting

And just an okay theme.

Never worry about pest and rodents

For I will fumigate and disinfect  pieces with copyright

I will include other varieties of bards

Both exotic and indigenous bards

I need a small plot

To start my poetry farm

Where all sort of poetry are brood,

And poetry equipment like metaphors,

Smiles, oxymorons, personifications,

Onomatopoeias, Dictions, Puns, and etc

Are carefully used and maintained.

---Fampah Coyish---

~RHYME SCHEME~

We live in a world

Where women are like banks

Where men have to

Deposit little amount of semen

For a huge investment called pregnancy

And these banks

Creating a conducive habitat

For a child or more to live in

Like tadpoles in a pond.

Women are actually amazing

And talking of women I think of God

For such a miracle.

But why do we still break into banks

Knowing the importance they are to us

But why do we hurt our women

Break our women,

Steal from our women,

Murder our women,

Disregard and disrespect our women?

Irrespective of the colour

Facial bone structure

And body stature

No woman is ugly

Cause nothing amazing could be ugly

At the same given time unless-

Unless you're using an oxymoron in your description

Which may have implications

Of you being a moron.

But whatever it is

Let us just ask ourselves

And be uncomfortably honest

Why are there more women

In banking institutions than men?

Why are women home keepers and not men?

And why are women given wombs

In additions to a stomach?

Where food is stored for bodily use-why?

Because men cannot handle that task

You know you cannot get at a bank

To steal so easily

So you cannot get to a woman's child

To harm so easily

Whether unborn or after birth

As a bank is a safe place to keep money

So is a woman's womb to habour

Another man as he increases in features

A woman's womb is like a safe in a bank

So safe to keep and grow money

And I am not sure men would deposit

Their livelihood and posterity there if it were not that safe

And I'm sorry this may not rhyme

Because most of the sense we make

Ninety-nine point nine percent do not rhyme.

Yet while they may never rhyme

They still have a rhyme scheme.

So let is just look beyond the rhyme

Of a message and

Let us look beyond the physical

Imperfections of women

And love our women.

---Fampah Coyish---

MY THINKER'S JOB

As long as my scribbling tools are absent
While I near 37 in this commercial wheel,
Many poems will be mummified
In the womb of my mind.

So I shall use this rusty tool
Handed me by life
Before I lose my memory
And cannot remember anymore
Where I place my muses to be scribbled.

Strengthen my thinker, O Love.
Remove all sieves from it,
For its job is to put down
That which pops up in it.

Strengthen my love O, thinker
For deep in thoughts lies great treasures of wisdom
For I shall never win this race
With this void of wisdom.
That which pops up
Within the bosom of my heart
May be sieved of folly.

---Abotreh & Fampah Coyish---

THE LAST BRICK

My mum told me:

"Relationships are like a bridge

One guy builds one side

And the other builds the other side."

I built my side of the bridge;

I worked soo hard for it

But you,

You held the last brick

Of your side

But you...

And just left with it.

Leaving this bridge half-way done

Leaving our bridge unfinished.

---Fampah Coyish---

WHEN I THINK OF YOU

~WHEN I THINK OF YOU~

You are a lesson I never wished to learn

You are a case I never wished to study

You are a journey I never planned for

A poem I never wished to recite

A play I never dreamt to be a part of

A test I never prepared for

A character so shrouded and so imaginary

I never thought of meeting

And that is what I think

When I think of you.

---Fampah Coyish---