"cockcrow" poems
Cockcrow harbour:
the gulls whining like tethered dogs
about rooftops
paliophobic cars and
grounded vessels..
Look:
on the hoary horizon
a glaucous strip
beguils
with backwater.
Not putting on a show
the frigid sea benumbed..
Easily,
with a tail of emerald jelly
skim a vanishing lane off that
lustrous sheet
and watch
the trailblazing mainland
scuttle.
Now,
Only scattered dreaming is possible.
In it's bachelor pad,
cradling over crinkles,
away from the meretriciosness
of validating the real by sharing it,
THE WIND
blusters off any veneer.
Here,
stale but spry,
fare your way around the inoffensive isle
to it's most shyest of harbours:
a mouth full of silver
saving it's breath.
The windows facing the sea
seem
black & white,
their wooden frames hooked to the wind,
the splattered gulls meow
your name
in a way
that's
personal.
Of course comes to mind.
The pines
are demanding a visit,
They're whispering
so you can hear them,
each as different as every snore,
these pines know
how to grow in the sand
and still reach for
the Nimbostratus with heads in unison.
The spaces
between their trunks illuminating
the blazing needles
raining down
painting the ground
familiar
to your lover's
skin texture:
Feel her closeness
from jilted borderwatchtowers
as she speads her mire
like no one's watching:
weedy and sugared
with bellflowers,
the waves in her shallow armpit
billeting a pair of white swans:
demurely they float
sometimes as pillows and sometimes
as question marks..
Go ask the seasoned locals,
they say the bones she parked
when she let her ice sheet melt
are portals
to her noble underbelly.
Hidden in the woods
reminiscent of your heart,
the red
tank-sized stone
is sealed,
but what the lighting reach cannot
the rain shall sluice apart
dumbly.
And though her hair has
come to be
the moss
black and hoarse
as sailor's beard,
there is still time.
The void says
her noisy neighbour is nothing
to die for.
The theadbear car with absent doors
incites
to drive her
in reverse gear
to the first few
days of holidays:
her golden locks a-blaze,
her arm around your
hind-sighted doppelganger.
Jul 20, 2018
Jul 20, 2018 at 2:20 AM UTC
They began without notice, in the city of Mombasa
By the Al shabab shooting baby Osinya in the head,
Killed the mother, leaving a slug stuck in Osinya’s head
Killing and mauling many others macabrously,
Killing for no other reason, but tribe and faith,
Their victims confess different religion and ethnicity.
They had initially lynched the West Gate Mall
In Nairobi, killing the aged and seasoned darling
Of African poetry and true fountain of peace
The dearest Kofi Awonor, in full watch of his son,
Confirming a trail of the ghastly curse of fate and death
That totted him arduously from his home in the west
Of the tropical gulag that makes the land of Africa
From where the terror maestro ; Boko haram reign scot free
Mayheming, Killing, ****** and kidnapping harmless virgins
Killing For no other reason but tribe and faith,
Their victims confess different religion and ethnicity.
They have now killed fifty peasants in Mpeketon town,
****** them in circles to puncture their virginity
and brutally kidnapping those that are not *****
Using the AK 47 and the Ak 74 to shoot and ****
Without reason nor course but failure of mind
Botched down by authenticity of holy diversity
Heavenly packaged in God’s idea of tribe,
Uhm! An African man with a gun is a brute of brutes,
Giving an African a gun is simple mess of the world
In to helter-skelter poise tilting peace higgledy-piggledy,
Killing one another like animals premised by Charles Darwin
As overtly seen in the warring Congo and CAR,
Where Africans **** one another in a stupid dint,
To ape Rwanda or no! To outshine the Jewish Massacre
In the Ammonium chambers of fuehrer Adolf ******
This stupid Africans baser than wild beasts,
Who told you that your greatness will come
from killing your neighbours; the fellow peasants?
These African men are the modern homoguerrillus,
Which one call cheap war making man
They and **** ! **** **** **** **** **** ****
For no other reason but faith and tribe,
Their victims confess different religion and ethnicity.
Gunshots of the gunmen in Africa are not
A song of the caged bird, no whatsoever,
They are cowardly maneuvers of the weak
As the weak and cowards rarely forgive,
They arm themselves to the teeth
With deadly weapons from Russia or wherever
Only to shoot and **** the old and malnourished
Peasant women, killing the likes of baby Osinya
Shooting a suckling baby to prove your heroism,
These African men are really a Whiteman’s burden,
They **** their fellows from cockcrow to chick roost
For no other reason but tribe and faith,
Their victims confess different religion and ethnicity.
Jun 18, 2014
Jun 18, 2014 at 9:45 AM UTC
Mayday: two came to field in such wise :
'A daisied mead', each said to each,
So were they one; so sought they couch,
Across barbed stile, through flocked brown cows.
'No pitchforked farmer, please,' she said;
'May cockcrow guard us safe,' said he;
By blackthorn thicket, flower spray
They pitched their coats, come to green bed.
Below: a fen where water stood;
Aslant: their hill of stinging nettle;
Then, honor-bound, mute grazing cattle;
Above: leaf-wraithed white air, white cloud.
All afternoon these lovers lay
Until the sun turned pale from warm,
Until sweet wind changed tune, blew harm :
Cruel nettles stung her angles raw.
Rueful, most vexed, that tender skin
Should accept so fell a wound,
He stamped and cracked stalks to the ground
Which had caused his dear girl pain.
Now he goes from his rightful road
And, under honor, will depart;
While she stands burning, venom-girt,
In wait for sharper smart to fade.
4k
Once it was the colour of saying
Soaked my table the uglier side of a hill
With a capsized field where a school sat still
And a black and white patch of girls grew playing;
The gentle seaslides of saying I must undo
That all the charmingly drowned arise to cockcrow and ****
When I whistled with mitching boys through a reservoir park
Where at night we ****** the cold and cuckoo
Lovers in the dirt of their leafy beds,
The shade of their trees was a word of many shades
And a lamp of lightning for the poor in the dark;
Now my saying shall be my undoing,
And every stone I wind off like a reel.
3.3k
Cock-a-doodle-do! Cock-a-doodle-do!
Cockcrow! Wake up, you poor humans!
The crazy, heartless sapient-irrationals!
You glug your cocktails in our names,
And slay, roast, and offer us to God,
And atone slyly your un-atonable sins.
Our lovely sickle tails, you used, once,
To concoct the cocktails you gulped;
And coveted our red comb and wattle,
The bright yellow of our cape and hackle,
The glittering blue of our wing bows,
And the violet-red of the back and saddle.
Oh no! Don’t strip us of our fair plumage
Our sickle, main tail and the lesser sickle,
Our fluff, hock joint, shank and the spur,
To the toes and claws, for you to toil
Hard, to fry--stir-fry—us, **** in your oil,
For your vain cocktail-less cocktail summits.
Dec 23, 2013
Dec 23, 2013 at 8:47 AM UTC
Cock-a-doodle-do! Cock-a-doodle-do!
Cockcrow! Wake up, you poor humans!
The crazy, heartless sapient-irrationals!
You glug your cocktails in our names,
And slay, roast, and offer us to God,
And atone slyly your un-atonable sins.
Our lovely sickle tails, you used, once,
To concoct the cocktails you gulped;
And coveted our red comb and wattle,
The bright yellow of our cape and hackle,
The glittering blue of our wing bows,
And the violet-red of the back and saddle.
Oh no! Don’t strip us of our fair plumage
Our sickle, main tail and the lesser sickle,
Our fluff, hock joint, shank and the spur,
To the toes and claws, for you to toil
Hard, to fry--stir-fry—us, **** in your oil,
For your vain cocktail-less cocktail summits.
Nov 7, 2013
Nov 7, 2013 at 11:00 AM UTC
Snoring gangling giant,
Slumbering away on a snowy
night.
Spoil of war unprotected,
Opening ways for ingress of
worrisome infiltrated
interlopers.
Remember the lord of Philistine
Samusini,
Who returned not from the
seductive antics of his
mistress,
Perished in the furnace fire of
frustration,
And drowned in the Laguna of
no return
Slumbering hindered the move
of the water.
Howling of devourers enclosed
your shack.
Heterocercal caudal fins of
sharks prevented the sailing
of ships.
Wolfished wailing of tidal waves
consumed the anchorage
ground.
And the apparition of foes
lurked-up in darkness like
the foehn on the Alps.
Awake before the devastating
night owl.
Awake from the abyss of deep
slumber.
Awake before the cockcrow,
When darkness of defeats
Controls the reigns of night.
Snoring gangling giant,
Awake unto light.
Dec 20, 2018
Dec 20, 2018 at 6:40 AM UTC
Passing away, saith the World, passing away:
Chances, beauty and youth, sapp'd day by day:
Thy life never continueth in one stay.
Is the eye waxen dim, is the dark hair changing to grey
That hath won neither laurel nor bay?
I shall clothe myself in Spring and bud in May:
Thou, root-stricken, shalt not rebuild thy decay
On my ***** for aye.
Then I answer'd: Yea.
Passing away, saith my Soul, passing away:
With its burden of fear and hope, of labour and play,
Hearken what the past doth witness and say:
Rust in thy gold, a moth is in thine array,
A canker is in thy bud, thy leaf must decay.
At midnight, at cockcrow, at morning, one certain day
Lo, the Bridegroom shall come and shall not delay:
Watch thou and pray.
Then I answer'd: Yea.
Passing away, saith my God, passing away:
Winter passeth after the long delay:
New grapes on the vine, new figs on the tender spray,
Turtle calleth turtle in Heaven's May.
Though I tarry, wait for Me, trust Me, watch and pray.
Arise, come away, night is past and lo it is day,
My love, My sister, My spouse, thou shalt hear Me say.
1.8k
The ivory of the egotistical lily,
The morning hymn of the pious jenny,
The dazzling ebony African beauty,
The sweet spice that seasons my honey,
Rain thy glaring love once again
Upon my careless dispirited pride,
As I rain these tender tears
Upon this stagnant dry land,
I have tasted thy venial venom
With seasonal ache and repentance,
Now, purge my narrow breath of life
From this wicked roaring hunter
Who fire’s at my forlorn nights,
Do not preserve this deficit of mine
For our innocent image,
Lest the gods of the City of the Dead
Keep close to our naked hut,
Calibrate my disobedience with thy soft wind,
And let not thy fierce storm approach,
Resurrect my muscles from the grave
And cover my bones with the flesh of thy kisses,
Open thy wonderful cataract to stream
From thy tongue into my barren bones,
And seal my cockcrow and thy twilight
In the clouds of thy slender cotton wool,
Come, oh my dear Kabutuwaa,
Come and visit my farm this bedtime
And let us **** the blazing stars mutually,
Set free the promising arrow of my daylight
And the pretty bow of thy nightfall
Via the thick murkiness of this gulf,
Allow me to crawl up thy tree of life
And taste of its couple peach anew,
For my craving lips longs for thy
Indispensable eternal ******
© PRINCE NANA ANIN-AGYEI
Email: [email protected]
Apr 7, 2013
Apr 7, 2013 at 1:12 PM UTC
She tears through
her insecurities
on fridays and saturdays,
shameless small talk
with bouncers,
and she dresses to ****
railing lines at pre drink,
and talking up free drinks
with ***** hawks
circulating the scintillations
of spotlights for victims
of a cockcrow regret,
she picks and chooses
and it’s easy for her,
finding a jawline
in a haystack seems
almost inevitable
when she did her make up
in front of a mirror,
not 3 hours prior,
she fills her empty
bed with cheap cologne
and sweat and gel
to only empty again
not 3 hours later.
Jan 1, 2017
Jan 1, 2017 at 6:02 PM UTC
While whispers shush on sheltered shores, as soon the cockcrow quakes,
the seas descry a skittish sky, sense summer zephyrs wake –
roused passions neath the sunrise pulse, the whitecaps throb and ache.
Along the crests crawl shallow shades the soaring sun effaces,
and rain in streams belies the dreams that fantasy embraces –
the ocean sprays of yesterdays conceal forsaken faces.
The midday sun has slowed its run, a shrinking puddle steams,
between the knells for shattered shells drift wounded seagulls’ screams –
affection blends but sometimes ends, or so it sadly seems.
At dusk a ruddy disk descends, the skyline's furnace burns
and neath the swells where Neptune dwells, an undercurrent churns –
a seahorse hides and seaweed bides until the tempest turns.
While twilight hosts the winds with ghosts of barbed electric spangles,
a mermaid braves the crashing waves adorned with starfish bangles –
the spirit yearns in twists and turns entwined in rockweed tangles.
As seven stranded ****** scan the dimple-dappled moon,
eleven sultry sirens serenade a lonely loon –
the breakers pound and sometimes sound a melancholy tune.
Soon gales ignite the briny night and rip the skies askew
with zigzag teeth flashed deep beneath a blazing bolt tattoo –
storms, spent, subside with ebbing tides, then all begins anew.While whispers shush on sheltered shores, as soon the cockcrow quakes,
the seas descry a skittish sky, sense summer zephyrs wake –
roused passions neath the sunrise pulse, the whitecaps throb and ache.
Along the crests crawl shallow shades the soaring sun effaces
and rains in streams enhance the dreams that fantasy embraces
while ocean sprays of yesterdays reveal forsaken faces.
The midday sun has slowed its run, a shrinking puddle steams,
between the knells of shattered shells drift soaring seagulls’ screams –
the beauty wends but never ends, or so it surely seems.
At dusk a ruddy disk descends, the skyline's furnace burns
and neath the swells where Neptune dwells, an undercurrent churns –
a seahorse hides and seaweed bides until the tempest turns.
While twilight hosts the winds with ghosts of barbed electric spangles,
a mermaid braves the crashing waves adorned with starfish bangles –
her spirit yearns in twists and turns entwined in rockweed tangles.
As seven stranded ****** scan the dimple-dappled moon,
a brace of surly Sirens serenade a lonely loon –
the breakers pound and sometimes sound a melancholy tune.
Soon gales ignite the briny night and rip the skies askew
with zigzag teeth flashed deep beneath a blazing bolt tattoo –
storms, spent, subside in ebbing tides, then all begins anew.
Feb 3, 2017
Feb 3, 2017 at 4:21 AM UTC
Stagnancy living
in colorless morning.
sunflower sunshine disconsolate
the rooster sings
eulogies and clamored verses
ringing alarm bells in cockcrow
cough drone weary eyes
dew-tied memories of
reverie weepy
aching legs and chest pains
cotton cozied pills crashing
underneath plastic caps
prescription taps
Tylenol Benzedrine
relapse body thinning
cities wearing
ergonomic tragedies
encircling business quarter
daffodil rooftops
steady rain descending onto
varnished sidewalks.
Addicts pirouette dazzled the
hazed-minds dreaming of
Aprils and consistent harmonious
ecstasy visions stampeded
by the brickwork flickered with
lamplight demons overcast this illusory Babylon
trembling flesh retreats into the shadows it came
and nightmares remain similar to days before and after.
Recycled horrors lightning flash abhorrent death
whether they be wearing black suits or black robes
scythe or satchel the wide eyes scour gaunt alleys
for fixes to fix the monotonous life bewitched
with false material variety anxiety deity
Desecration City express way to depression
oppressed people hide away in simultaneous acts of
camouflaging fireballs
spiraling into decadence.
Diamond days few and far between
communal woe reverberates through skins
and skeletons in opening of top story windows
during Winter. Despite the fragrance chaos,
pandemic paranoia,
extinguishing elation,
All bodies continue to be
alone.
Mar 19, 2015
Mar 19, 2015 at 8:47 PM UTC
i draw in a new day ; CockCrow
a spirit substance
to devil in
character pulled from the world surround
picked
and plied of its madder details
doing others a favour
leaving the easy-to-manage material
i am mastered by these firing elements
orbited
i take on a particularly creative project
with uninhibited frothing
Sep 18, 2021
Sep 18, 2021 at 10:38 PM UTC
I am a violent volcano erupting
In the very fiery darkest hour
Bringing down errors
From mountains of fire
Devouring evil at cockcrow.
It's the dawn of a great glory
In gunpowder power explosion!
All pawns in evil chess game
Come to rainbow rain contrite
As darkness has no hiding place
In emerald golden sundown glory
As trees of darkness uprooted dead!
Jun 28, 2019
Jun 28, 2019 at 11:05 PM UTC
My sleepy eyes
they almost become two full pools
when I see you
My heart, rends.
And when the cockcrow hits
I cry
at the memory.
Feb 25, 2019
Feb 25, 2019 at 1:49 PM UTC
I experienced experience
I witnessed experience
Swarming like wild bees
Swimming from the brooks
Of outer Marina
Racing into the fountain
Of Islet of Lagos.
Our Lagos,
Their Lagos.
Diverse religionists
On spiritual missions,
Raising up hands in supplications
For open heaven,
For praise and worship.
Some on mundane missions.
Spivs, urchins alike
But this congestion suffocated
Spaces wept for control
Sea breezes searched for outlets
From outer Marina
And wants of oxygen waves
Hands for recognition.
Both faithfuls, penitents , miscreants needed air for survival.
Protestations appealed for audience.
Legs spent and tired ,
Craving for rhapsodic attention
Where are more seats?
Where are more spaces?
Helpless ushers uncaring.
But from the stage roars
Songs of inspirations ,
Songs of supplications
Like war cries.
Sounds from desk to dawning,
Music from dawn into deskiness.
And seat glued me till cockcrow
Night broke into day.
Fading music expelled adherents
Out of arena.
A loud silence now reigned.
Freedom from the fangs of stampede.
I experienced experience
I witnessed experience
Dec 9, 2018
Dec 9, 2018 at 10:16 AM UTC
We can see the winds flying
on eagles wings in rainbow
colors
The ecstasy of the roaring sea
stretches beyond the viscera boundaries in sonorous voices,
uprooting the trees of sorrow and grief
into the abyss of the charcoal ocean
As sunrise appears at sunset,
bringing eternal eclipse of the moon
of grief
We cannot forget the ravages of the dead cockcrow at midnight, when songs of oppression were made lullabies,
as our liberties were frozen in iceberg of shame and reproach.
Oh! It's the morning of joy in glorious fantasies unending, laying for us red carpets to victory eternal.
Jul 17, 2023
Jul 17, 2023 at 2:38 PM UTC