Canadian or Ghanaian, which one do I choose
This conflict I experience always leaves me confused.
Who am I and where am I from.
Do I say where I was born or what's in my blood.
First generation Canadian, should I be proud?
Is it okay that I can't speak any Twi?
If I don't know my parents language, is the culture still with me?
How do I identify, what is authentic, what is the truth, and what is right?
Some thoughts I think about when I lie awake at night.
I feel like my parents culture is just going to get washed away
That I'll have no trace of Ghanaian culture in me.
And I don't give learning the culture the time of day,
To help me become who I want to be.
Because I love saying I'm Canadian, I love what it entails.
It is the country that I call home.
But I love what my parents show me about Ghanaian culture.
I enjoy thinking about the unknown.
So you see my dilemma and why I'm so lost, why I don't know who to be.
Why I don't know how I should explain my culture, I'm still working on my identity.
And I guess there's no rush, I can use either or.
It'll depend on the context of the question that is asked.
But it's who I am, it means so much more,
It is how I define to who I am.
I take pride in both cultures, I want them both, my definition has no restrictions.
So next time I'm asked where I'm from, I'll explain that I'm a Ghanaian Canadian.
I guessed I'm not as confused as I originally thought, I know who I am inside.
A Ghanaian Canadian, that's my identity, and I'll identify with it till I die.

Sitting calmly aligning in-between the three sitters
Adorn with a silk from milk
Thinking about the libido of her crown
Like a star lost in the galaxy
After seeing a Ghanaian movie

A sudden push through her opening
as placenta push through during birth,
as water break through from underground
a cloth of blood,  fought  through
She felt it,
she saw it,
But what to do? What not to do? and how?
Was a question demanding an answer,
Like a man lost on the crossroad
On his wedding night,
On his bed
Close to the bride like a ****** bird
To be and not to be like Shakespeare

She shouted
What is this?
Blood!!!

This is the making of a woman
An end to her holiness
A new spring of emotion and pain
No more daddy and mummy play
Remember "Always" always
When the visitor is around
you are now a woman

The beloved country Africana can boast of is Ghana.                                                                                                                                                               The manana of Africana black star is Ghana                                                                                                                                                                                  A nation rich in culture and natural pasture.                                                                                                                                       
Its nature reflects the creatures’ caricature

We are black reflecting our true beauty.                                                                                                                                  
And we are packed with captivating ability.                                                                                                                                       The typicality of our nationality brings unity.                                                             Who knows whether our safety lies in our variety?

This unity amidst our diversity is our reportage.                                     About twenty-four million are surviving in our age.                                                               Over sixty ethnic groups and fifty-two major languages.                                                       There are hundreds of dialects which are to our advantages.

In W/A, Ghana records the highest percentage of Christianity…                                                      Yet the modernity of our sanity portrays minds of malignity.                                                 But the fraternity of our humanity builds our community.                                                        The variety of our morality and privity builds our society

Who said Ghana cannot be capaciously superfluous?                                                        We have the very illustrious and exuberant resources.                                                                The elites and the voracity are harnessing the recourses.                                                                      The destitute remains poor and the gentry linger the forces

Our democratic government is an African paradigm.                                                        Our peaceful political regime is of no pantomime.                                      Who of course would help us measure corruption?                                                The whole nation would have tensed up to eruption.

If not the gargantuan wayomelogy of the wayometer.                                                                                      Who knows whether the next tool would be attameter?                                                     Who wouldn’t love to be a proud Ghanaian to enjoy                                                        our hilarious fila and jargons tongue can employ

Take me back to the days of a Ghanaian sunset.
When hope dwelled above the waters of despair
And I gazed into the eyes of a sinking soul.
Where trust and fear were honest and pure --
Felt in the mountains, cities and fishing boats alike.

I want the hot air, the mango juice dripping down my hand, the dirt kicked up around my shoes, the roosters in the streets, the taxi cab dodgeball games, the eggshell passenger rides, and the shy children singing across from me on the shore. Because I want it all back.

It's the feeling I had when I was there in a wide space so open -- it is a feeling I call free.

Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya;aopicho@yahoo.com)



In response to the United States versus European Union  deliberations on Ukrainian- Russian stalemate  that were concluded on 25th may  2014 at Brussels , in which President Barrack Obama looked at the Putin’s political  behaviour in global set up of the postmodern era as a weakness, I beg to take my position within my capacity as global citizen, to go contrary to this stand of Barrack Obama by positing that President Vladimir Putin is a fact of global urgency , but instead it is Obama who suffers from universal class intellectual deficiency often  observed as insensitive rhetoric but branded as unmatched eloquence.
Firstly, let me give the sequential enumerations of facts which validate my position and hence this discourse. Barely the facts are; Ethnicity, Islam, terrorism, Guantanamo prison, Sino-African relations,Arab-springs,politics and human psychology and American political culture as state and an international citizen.
President Obama has always refused and rejected his ethnic connexion with Africa, he always refer to Africa as the land of ancestors. This is a stand that has most irritated Africans. Both in Africa and in the diaspora. Obama never learned a simple pre-industrial wisdom that every man needs ethnic identity for positive reasons. Because as per now Obama still stands as a Kenyan and as well as an American. This connotes a political fact that he is neither a complete Kenyan nor an absolute American in terms of political emotionalism. The empirical position of all these abode in the fact that there are a thousand and one Americans who feel politically belittled to be led by a first generation African American. Thus, a leadership fact has to be indentified in this juncture by inferring that, their voter consciousness as Americans is not fit to be crystallized as emotional resource to be enjoyed by Obama politics. In a sharp contrast Vladimir Putin has acquired substantial political strengths from positive recognition of Russian ethnicity. Putin recognizes Estonia, Crimea, Georgia, Serbia, Moldova and all small and poor lands around Russia in terms of ethnic connection to Russia. He calls these lands as the dear burial grounds in which Russian military heroes were buried. In a comparison, America has a lot of racial connection with Africa, but president Obama has earnestly worn blinkers on this. He only looks at Africa skeptically as a land of injured civilization in which terrorists abode. He has been wrong. African folk wisdom has a lesson that, you may not need your tribe in peace, only to need it in war.
Why did president Obama masquerade as a Muslim when he was vying for his first term? Moslems feel that he duped them only to turn around and **** their leaders. In Islam it is a heinous sin to pose as a Muslim when you are not one. President Obama mobilized the plotting which had to occasion the killings of Muammar Gadaffi and Osama Bin Laden. These two incidents fuelled high strength in anti-American feelings among the societies of the Arab world. Reasons are that both Gadaffi and Bin Laden deserved fair trial the same way Henry Kissinger was not tried when he perpetrated macabarous mass killing in Vietnamcong war. Muslim community least expected financial and ideological funding of the political hullabaloo known as the Arab Spring, through which heroic Moslem leaders were killed, to come from Obama government. But the contrary was surprisingly a fact. The meaning of this is that , in this tussle of show of mental mighty between Putin and Obama, All African and Arab states are behind Putin, China is behind Putin. Maybe it is Tanzanian and Ghanaian presidents who are in Obama camp, but not the Moslems in Tanzanians and Intellectuals in Ghana. The perceived rationale for this positioning inter alias is that the Number of North African Moslems in Guantanamo prison is the highest of all the detained terrorist suspects.
China is all over Africa today; African schools are teaching Chinese languages with passion more than they do with English language. The University of Nairobi in Kenya, has established the most prestigious Kungu Fu tze institute. Students in this institute are more self-confident and hopeful than those in schools of English and literature. China has designed a special business city for Africans, known as the chocolate city. Africans are more dignified in this city than their counterparts in Chicago.Negroes in Chicago of today still taste a vestigial pepper of negative racism on daily basis. All these conditions have graduated into appalling status from George Bush high school to Barrack Obama state University. These at times confirm the Russian Joke that Barrack Obama is an avatar of George Bush without a Nobel Prize. A political condition not evident during the Reagan and Clinton administration. Obama did not benchmark the shrewd equation of Vladimir Putin; good politics is equal to putting people at center stage.
Psychology of politics has a theory that being eloquent is not a connotation of political effectiveness. It may be sheer rhetoric. This is not a necessary variable for effective policy formulation and implementation. History of politics also has a testimony in confirmation of the same. The French society goofed when it fell victim of Napoleon eloquence, same to the Germans when they became emotional captives of Adolf ****** due to the razor sharp garrulousness of Adolf ******, which he adopted when selling **** values to German voters. In Africa Tanzania is the poorest country without hope of initiating any development this century. And all this is a preposterous protégé of utopian communalism planted through eloquent tools of prosaic socialism wielded by the articulate Julius Nyerere. The American society has also gone into annals of history to have collectively failed in its political choices as a national society by succumbing to rhetorical but policy insensitive conference management knack of the one Barrack Obama. These have happened in a capitalist conduit in which capitalism is killed by its success, just the same way which ignorance is never murdered but at most commits suicide.


Alexander K Opicho, is a social researcher at Sanctuary Research agencies ltd., in Eldoret, Kenya.  He is also a lecturer for Governance Research Methods.

I am a Ghanaian girl born on Basotho land. I ask you why my relatives know how to speak Twi and I don't, it was then when I was aware of the decision you had made to keep me away. My family has been filled with Ghanaians who can speak their native tongue but you made me the only different. When it's all set and done I do not know my native tongue. The truth is my I'm filled with Basotho air rather than the identity of Ghanaian princess. I was born to you as a citizen. I am trying to join them but I am stuck. Also, I wonder, who am I?I haven't come to a conclusion. I am forever shopping for a new identity. So I am an actor, I did Drama in high school and usually I have my props on stage but in this poem all my props are gone. I'm just revealed with nothing to hide asking myself who am I?I could say I am diverse but then again I think not. It's sad how I can't even pronounce my own name.

Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya;aopicho@yahoo.com)



I have been reading the old copy of Saturday Nation, a week end edition of the daily nation in Kenya. It was published some weeks ago. It has some enticing feature stories that have made me to reflect on a certain family value in Africa. The three feature stories I have been reading are ; Lupita Nyong’o stellar performance in the movie, 12 years a slave, in which she emerged a top American actor, attracting in the same course the most coveted Oscar prize, I have also read in the same paper the shooting literature star of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, an American based Nigerian writress, who had had her last book Americana win the American Booker Prize, and lastly , I have also ready  a very captivating account of Wanjiku wa Ngugi’s spellbinding debutante in her book, the fall of saints. Wanjiku account was written by Proffessor Evans Mwangi a Thiong’o literary scholar based in Newyork. Mwangi being a Ngugi wa Thiongi’o, scholar wrote this article because Wanjiku wa Ngugi is also a daughter to the world famous Kenyan novelist, Ngugi Njogu wa Thiongi’o.
In each of the three above cases, emanates a significant observation that the fathers to the respective ladies are great men in their respective capacity, and that the ladies mentioned are now obvious heirs to the family names, family intellectual domain and family selling point respectively.
Lupita is heir to proffessor Peter Anyang Nyong’o, Adichie is an heir to the African literary heritage of proffessor Chinua Achebe, and While Wanjiku is a promising successor to Proffessor Thiongi’o.
These are actually a crystallization of strange unfolding that time has now challenged old mindset among African societies. The mindset in which Africans have not been counting girls as children .This family value has been there up to today. If an African man tells you that I don’t have a family it means that he is expressing three connotations; he is not married, he is married but he does not have a children, or he is married but his wife have only been bearing him girls, because if anything; an African man is only responsible for siring sons, daughters are a mistake of the wife.
This typology of family civilization got to its peak in the mid of  last year, when the Luo council of elders, hailing from Siaya County of Kenya, where Baraka Obama is rooted, expressed their open puzzle over Baraka Obama as per why he can’t take his time to have sons. They are now organizing a delegation that will go to America to counsel President Obama over the matter that he needs to re-organize his posterity strategy other than thinking in terms of Sasha and Malia.
What I mean is that Africans don’t believe if at all family interests can be carried forward through a daughter. They don’t believe if a girl can be an intellectual or command any wisdom that can go places. But realities from a historical experience that great African men don’t sire great sons but instead they sire great daughters must make this society of male chauvinists to have a mental paradigm shift in relation to child valuation and recognition. To accept a social déjàvu that daughters have a big capacity to carry forward the family name than the previously mistaken notion that they are only sons who can do this.
Facts on the ground range from the case of Julius Nyerere,Kwameh Nkrumah, Malcolm X, Frantz Fanon, Richard Wright, Tom Mboya, Masinde Muliro, Nelson Mandela, Mutula Kilonzo, and Francis Imbuga just to mention a few African heroes. Justification of this list showing Africa’s reversal of Prospero complex abodes in the facts that; Susan Nyerere is currently the most outspoken in the Nyerere family. Similarly, Nkrumah’s daughter is currently a politician in Ghanaian parliament and very promising politically. Betty Shabazz X was recently reported to have put Louis Farrakhan on the spot over the ****** plot of her father the late Malcolm X.Mireille Fanon Mendes is the director of human rights activist organization known as Frantz Fanon foundation. This is the organization which recently recognized Mumia Abu-Jamal with a prestigious prize. Mumia Abu-Jamal is an African-American writer and journalist, author of six human rights focussed books and hundreds of similar spirited columns and articles. He has spent the last three decades on racially biased Pennsylvania’s death row. And now general population in America and in the world knows that Mumia Abu-Jamal was wrongfully convicted and sentenced for the ****** of Philadelphia Police man, Daniel Faulkner. His demand for a neutral trial and unconditional freedom is enmassely supported by heads of state, Nobel laureates, human rights organizations, scholars, religious leaders, artists and bioethical scientists. All this is nothing other than universal singing of the tune in the poetic writings of Frantz Omar Fanon entitled Facts of blackness, through his daughter Mireille.
And equally enough, those of you who have delved into posthumous family conditions of Richard Wright must have appreciated stellar performance of proffessor Julia Wright in respect to the genetic legacy of her father. Dr. Susan Mboya is currently living in South Africa and she is serving the society in the same tandem her late father Tom Mboya discharged anti-colonial service to the people of Kenya, Africa and world in general.Masinde Muliro has Mrs. Namwalie Muliro and Mutula Kilonzo has Kethi Kilonzo. The point is that, just like all of other heroes in Africa, these two great politicians have their daughters; Namwalie and Kethi as the heirs to their political legacy.
This phenomenon is not unique to Africa. But it is a universal genetic condition. The study of genetics has a concept that inferior genes of the mother are passed through an X chromosomes in XY to the sons, while superior genes of the father are passed through an X chromosome of the ** to the daughters.
Just but to wind up my story I want also to counsel The Luo council of elders that president Obama, their son who lives in America does not have misplaced values in projecting his posterity through Sasia and Malia. Personally I am aware that as per now there is no any African boy at age of Sasha Obama that has ever read Yann Martel’s Life of Mr. Pi. But in stark contrast the international media reported Sasha Obama to have vividly read this book until she commented to Baraka Obama that, ‘daddy, this is a very good book’.  And of course this is how an intellectual is made.

Ghanaian Girl

I saw her coming back,
Red-smocked urchin riddled with the dew of false promise,
Beaming as she spoke of bright tomorrows.
Couldn’t bring myself to tell her of the sorrows
That waited to strike us down.

Yes, we’ve been happy,
In moments stolen after work sharing dreams spawned by their lies.
She believed them, is believing still.
Yet, I fight to find the will
To raise my head each day.

They have our hope hostage,
Its holy nature yoked to their greed, deceiving us daily.
They shout to us often of pay rises,
Promising rewards and great surprises,
If only we gave more.

I hate to leave my child.
Some uncle’s wife is struggling to cope with the village young.
When she first bleeds I will be here,
I cannot know another year
In separation from my light.

Last month people came from Europe,
They saw their new school, fresh water and underprivileged smiles.
Such self-congratulation! Such effervescence!
I will not assuage collective conscience
With demeaning thanksgiving.

We yet have our dignity.
We know great honour and pride in the quiet suffering of our duty.
(Do you think He will stop the pain?
Will He pause in his great work to explain
Why I was singled out?)

I was born in a city and time where and when
things were described by their name in the name
of realism and truth, uncoloured nouns of honesty
depicting society as it was fearing nothing
while no one took offence, as none was intended

in the atmosphere of autocriticism and self-
deprecating humour. In the countryside village
peasants called my father the Greek, as there were
no aliens other than us and the English man
who lived down the valley. Black skins

only existed on TV, and Africa was far more distant
than maps ever suggested. Our Ghanaian origins
were a mesmerising fable to the curious ears
of those willing to imagine exotic airs, indefinite
populations they had never seen. Italians

were used to migrate abroad in search of dreams,
though no one came to dream in Rome until, they did.
First strange faces appeared for myths to become
realities integrating slowly fast-forwarding thirty years
to see, Filipinos housekeepers, cheaper butlers,

Rumanians and Moldavians caregivers to our elders,
Chinese empires beginning with restaurants and shops,
Selling almost anything one could ever think of affordable
to all, now expanding to own bars creating jobs,
employers of impoverished locals and new arrivals.

Bangladeshis taking over once-was Italian grocery cash
and carries working hard, a 24/7 policy just for some.
Those who don’t are found selling umbrellas on the road
a minute before the storm, or taking polaroid pictures
of tourists at night when the gypsies come out

of nomad camps to sell, unscented roses to lovers
unnaturally blue for the day is reserved, to picking
pockets on public transports everybody knows,
signs are put up for those who don’t. Lebanese
hairdressers hiring young Italian girls, eat in Turkish

kebab fast-foods buying halal ingredients in Iraqi stores.
Only blacks in Rome own nothing but their shoes
and reputation. Those from North African countries often deal
on sidewalks for drug addicts playing instruments
sitting next to dogs on Tiber bridges as they beg

for one more dose. Though Egyptians mainly deal
with chefs, closed in restaurant kitchens learning
pizza-making skills, while Pakistanis make excellent
dishwashers. Turning back to blacks Nigerians,
Senegalese, Malians and many more improvise

themselves as clandestine street vendors
of jewels and fake bags, the latter secretly supplied
by Italian mafia-like wannabes. Often spotted running
away from police, packing goods in white sheets, held
on their backs as they flee, leaving fallen merchandise

behind them. Finally some remain unseen, straight
from heart of darkness and surroundings they stay
strictly on TV, passing from satiric sketches of the past
to NGO adverts crying out, for help against famine,
poverty and sickness, calling for action two euros a day

via sms to keep, consciousness clean, as we close
our eyes not to see, pretend we do not know, hiding
behind words we call, politically correct not to face, take
distance from reality and truth, disguise inconvenience
and uncomfort with ridiculously embellished, jargon.

Some exceptions obviously exist, as many manage
to live outside the box, though alas and do not blame me
for speaking the truth, they remain to date exceptions
dear to my heart, as are all the characters of this portrait,
scattered pieces of humanity, pieces of me.

title: \scrap\
body:
/methods/
|in|
/to/
|and| \back\ - a 502 bad gateway bypass

well, you drink, get up, you drink some more,
you vacuum the house,
you correct the tomato soup your father has
started, blitz it up, sieve it,
add more Kashmiri chilly powder, sugar,
two chicken stock cubes: the sour cream will
be served individually... you'll cook the vermicelli
later on...
maybe it's just me: my parents instilled in me
a sense of dis-belonging to my fatherland...
since i left Poland when i was 8 years old...
they instilled in me the "argument":
what has Poland ever done for you?!
well... when the regime changed...
and my father married up... my mother's father:
my grandfather, was a known Communist Party
member, that's why he rose in rank
to become a foreman: brigadier in the metallurgy
industry... so after the regime change:
stigma... obviously...
what did Poland ever give me? erm... ah ha...
a childhood... my memory bank goes as far back
as being 4 years old... that's the expanse
of my consciousness... 4 years old... standing in
a darkened room... watching a football match...
Lothar Matthäus was my hero...
Germany was my favourite team...
          maybe because his surname sounded like
my name... maybe i'm just a reincarnated German...
even though: i don't believe in reincarnation...
an abhorring idea... i.e. there's only a fixed number
of souls... migrating from one zombie body to
another... but i'm thinking... Poland has always been
human traffic junction...
name them: Mongols, Huns, Goths, Vandals,
Russians, Swedes... there was even an elected Saxon
king... Scots... perhaps an ancient past has woken
up in me... "my" people once spanned the lands
between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea...
"we" used to own Kiev...
        so my father left me when i was 4... he in turn
was abandoned by his parents: raised by his grandmother
and her second husband... so not really his grandfather...
first grey hairs at 18 taking care of him...
an alcoholic father who was a diligent worker
but who tended to sleep on park benches completely
out of it: my father would get the grunt and jokes
about his father: who abandoned him... blah blah...
oh, my father's a ****** when it comes to drinking...
a complete teetotaler... i haven't been so "lucky":
i just enjoy it too much... esp. when cooking or doing
household chores, gardening or... ahem: this...
doodling...
my mother left me when i was 6... we were all reunited
all the way in England when i was 8...
allegiance? well... perhaps if we weren't deported
when i was... starting year 7 at Canon Palmer R.C. School...
i had to lie that my grandmother died...
i just remember punching the wall... crying...
giving the Home Officers a death-stare when
he commented on me having a nice p.c. -
watching my father and mother get hand-cuffed...
we left two weeks later and i spent a year back in
Poland watching the 1998 world cup,
reading Umberto Eco, the Little Prince...
     was home-schooled... focused on the math...
again... thrown back among people who
didn't speak English... a bit like being thrown among
people who didn't speak any Polish...
ping-pong! even my grandmother remarked
that i was losing my capacity to speak my mother tongue...
all in all? i reckon it was a good thing...
since i doubled down in my "schizoid" bilingualism...
i wouldn't speak English in private... i still don't...
no chance am i going to play the atypical immigrant
plotline ranging from India to somewhere
in Africa where first generation immigrants
don't teach their 2nd generation immigrant children
their mother tongue: to fit in... to "integrate":
while those kids rebel against the whole establishment
and blow themselves up: why? out of spite for
their parents... unconsciously... they might think it's
against their host country... but it's unconsciously
against their parents... for not leaving them an open
avenue with a chance to return: should they wish...
to speak their mother tongue...
  but now i wake up... hmm... what did Poland ever
do for me? i remember being spat in the face...
by fellow countrymen as a young boy...
my grandfather's reputation as a Communist Party
member spread? who knows...
children are cruel... the change of guard was certainly
the pivotal reason why my parents immigrated...
fun facts from world war II...
it took **** Germany and Soviet Russia longer
to subdue Poland...
than it took **** Germany to subdue France...
i mean... France... Napoleon... a colonial superpower...
but that's how it goes... i'm sniffing gunpowder
on the doorstep... what does Poland owe me?
what do i owe, though? splendid first 8 years of my
life... childhood was more fun in Poland
than it was in England, there was a sense of community,
of belonging... all that shattered: disappeared in
England... even though... those weekends spent
with Peter Richardson and Kieran O'Mahoney...
yeah... no complaints there... we used to run round
5 storey car parks and play a game of spitting
down on people walking in...
   this one time i managed the impossible... my phlegm
landed on a guy's head... oh the joy we shared...
a security guard caught up with us: but we blagged
our way out of it...
whatever my feelings concerning Ukraine: historically...
the UPA genocides of Galicia...
and in general... but at least... we're taking in refugees...
women, children... unlike Western countries with
their superiority complex... we're better... because we've
been taking in... cultural enrichment gangs
of fighting age men... where was that?
                           Cologne? hmm... my my...
                      ref-u-gee?! i'm gleeful at the irony in all
of this... but i'm waking up thinking... **** me...
explosions as far west as L'viv... hmm... that's what?
2 hours from the border from the fatherland?
should i be thinking about conscripting?
      well... if i still didn't have a job... by now...
                         i'd be thinking about nothing else...
but it's on the cards...
       hard to imagine... but that there's a real chance
of me conscripting to go to war...
like: i would never celebrate war in poo'etry...
      venerate the warrior... i'm far too an existentialist
to give into the myths of war...
it's just new... there was never a prospect akin to this
ever... for me at least... but now it's on the cards...
would i pledge my allegiance to England
as more important than pledging my allegiance
to Poland? should the most horrible happen?
      being a dual-national... i have all the paperwork...
i have the tongue... the prospect of me settling
down with an English girl fizzled out completely with
Jeminah and that trio of storms that raged over
England days prior to the Russian invasion...
i translate that as a butterfly effect...
a broken heart in England and elsewhere... Russian troops
stomping their boots...
   and believe me: there are more deluded people out
there... western leftoids who are just a headache when
it comes to this subject matter...
for me... even contemplating conscripting in the ******
army feels... rather... surreal?
    but if one has to level a few КAЦAП heads
so be it...              whatever needs to be done...
etymologically, i think this intra-racial slur lent itself
from the word: KAPTUR... meaning hood...
   since... it would almost take forever for England
to be threatened and i still hold a little grudge
against England for being deported when i was a child...
2nd time: oh... all manner of legality...
but seeing how England started treating ethnic minorities
(even though i am, technically an ethnic minority,
ethnicity comes prior to race)
sort of ****** me off, a little, an itsy-bitsy bit...
esp. how these ethnic minorities started gloating
and boasting, blowing themselves up...
   eh... just an itsy-bitsy bit of me tells me:
i might just have to pledge allegiance to a country
i only spent 8 years in... and the summers with my
grandfather from the ages of 13 to... 21...
even though i'm not equipped with those people's
mentality... i don't know... i really don't...
but pandering to racial minorities: that are no longer
******* racial minorities...
whenever race comes to the fore and ethnicity is
ignored... it's a bit like telling a Welshman he's English...
just because they're both white...
****** me off... big time...
  you go to Africa and learn: the Kenyans are
importing timber from Ghana... well...
because a Kenyan is a Kenyan and a Ghanaian
is a Ghanaian... who gives a **** whether they part
of the same race... a Kenyan is not a Ghanaian
and vice versa... that's how you spot the real racists...
on the western front... child-speak...
roses are red, violets are blue...
                                   all felines... all canines are...
Alsatian shepherds... it's almost like an inability
to see a three-dimensional object in two-dimensions...
ha! that's exactly it! these people can't see
a cube on a piece of paper!
i'm still trying to figure out who subverted these people
to this level of nonsense...
the old Soviets?! the proper left, all those years ago?
you think?
i don't know... i'll let the ideas ferment a little...
see if there will be any Russian teasing with lead
on the Polish Ukrainian border...
                           but it's going to be hard...
i don't really have a tongue to defend...
          that fear of being made extinct by either Russian
or German in the years prior to independence of 1918
is long gone... given the ****** diaspora across
the world being as prominent as it were of the Hebrews...
i clearly don't have a ******'s mentality...
the only person of importance for me back there
is my grandmother... and that's about it...
fight for... a memory of a place from when i was 4 through
to 8? is it really worth fighting for?
i'm not going to move back there...
                            fickle... fickle little me...
i would have more concern to fight for England
than i would for Poland...
just like in the old days...
England states that it will make war against
Germany for having invaded...
yet no English soldier fought on that land...
while ****** soldiers were involved on English soil
in the air-force...
                     such are the days...
                          then again: i can't imagine fighting
for anything as obnoxious as LGBT+ rights either...
for the grand dodo project... no offence... sure... be gay...
have your kinks... but... fight for these rights?
as a man who has been stripped of the possibility
of starting a family based on the fickleness of women...
i'm more of a free agent of any idea i wish to will...
and will it to my advantage...
                oh it's a bit different, right? when it's on
your doorstep...
    can't exactly hoodwink it... can't put it to the back
of your mind... it's staring you right in the eyes
and you're not expected to blink...
                well... the cards are on the table...
                 thank god Ilona got engaged with me and later
broke the engagement off...
like i said at work... 2 weeks ago...
having a Russian girlfriend, right now... would be sort
of problematic...
yes, yes: NOT ALL RUSSIANS...
                         but... yeah... whatever.

Infancy talked to me various languages, switching
Tonalities for different melodies, to be learnt.
Naturally acquiring the discernment, recognising
Faces and voices to choose applicable native tongues.

English with my father, whose name echoed as Plato,
Iranian with my mother, Italian with my siblings, French
With school teachers, Greek on summer holidays.

Growing up my hair and accents, led to the inevitable
Repetitive question, ‘Where are you from?’
Timidly answered as it was hard to comprehend, until I set
Myself to do so untiringly drafting precious family trees.

Investigations interrogating relatives to exhaustion,
Ignited my pride for every single drop of blood,
Composing me and drawing borders
On geographical maps delineating my essence.

My story was one of many, they labelled me a multi-ethnic,

For my daddy’s naissance in Accra from a mulatto beauty
Queen, daughter of a British doctor and his Ghanaian lady friend.
For her husband, his Hellenic pater, son of Chios, born in Sudan.

For my mummy’s naissance in Tehran from a noble
Banker, progeny of the Qajar dynasty originally Turkic,
And his pure blood Persian wife.

My parents met in England where they studied only
To marry and move to pre-revolutionary Iran. I was born
In Rome where they fled, when insurrections began.

Now if someone asks I forcefully respond,
“From planet Earth. A terrestrial little sphere at the heart
Of its star system, on the edge of its galaxy lost
Somewhere in space in the maze of the Universe.

My story is one of many, I labelled us humans.

well Bukowski and the drudgery of work
and Mathias Eshlert
and the arbeit macht frei of
work about
to cook chicken wings
    and make a potato salad with spring
greens
and radishes
and i remember a line from a movie
form the 1950s
how radishes were the supposed cause
of going mad
or rather not marrying a girl
because a witch cast her eyes
on the to-be-wed
i mean:

          at the Leeds vs Southampton
match a manager with no high viz
then you know you're dealing
with someone senior
(not important, senior, there's a distinction
at work,
there is no hierarchy as such
only tenure,
there needs to be a philosophy of work
and there really isn't a philosophy
of work
there are no philosophical works
concerning the philosophy of work
but you can mention
Heidegger's analogy of the hammer
in that there are these supposed
laborers who are working
and while working they talk about
philosophy

well currently the hot topic in the workforce
and we are talking a predominantly
male working environment there is talk
about history and esp post-colonial history
of the English
a talk of the English before the union
with the Welsh and the Scots
it's as if these former colonial subjects
think it is easy to find an English identity
from all the quashed qualms with
the Scots
and to be honest

i've seen father bring back construction
schematics
and read them

i finished writing the poem Alz Heinz
and decided to go and buy a bicycle
waited like a **** / a stump
at the bus stop for eternity and realised
with the fresh air hitting me...

yesterday this manager approached me
and gave me a bundle of A3 pages
crowd control schematics
which is a dynamic schematic
of colored dots
on construction schematics
and we're talking dynamics
given i was only in charge
of 3 guys to cordon bag restriction measures
and we weren't even drawn onto the schematic
there were the soft ticket checkers and their
two supervisors, roughly 30 of them
and there were the two response teams
and their supervisors but
there was no... SSE? that's code for EES
we weren't on the schematic
but i was given the schematic drawings
it's a dynamic affair
exposing the left hemisphere to such drawings
so with my right hemisphere
i turned the drawing into a dynamic
could call it spurring on a hallucination
or rather
i just heard of this theory of the brain
and its asymmetry only today
getting the blues from a day off
lying in bed
no i will not listen to the audible book

in the end father picked me up
and we sped to the shop
to flash cash
but instead got turned down
because only used bicycle can be ridden out
of shop not display bicycles
i truly felt like a ******
or perhaps this time is precious
and i shouldn't feel embarrassed to have
family perhaps there's this familial stigma
burn in the air of modern society
that you sometimes experience
the CRAB BUCKET...

         KRABBEIMER
    MISTEIMER...

              i was handed down a holy grail
no, of no importance
my neighbor came round and they chit chat
with mother
no the day is still not spent
but just refreshing the memory:
kept the memory it jolted me in the fresh air
should have kept the schematic memorandum

in the end i was supervising  four supervisors
an ego-trip now
when written
but an ego-destruction in live time
yesterday
negotiating with Leeds fans
and i managed to persuade people to throw
away their rucksacks
unprecedented when on gate 3
working with the quadrant manager
Marc "zee Frenchie"
i.e. i was tested for quadrant stature
on the east stand with the two staircases
if i were to be given both staircases
and Altantik Way
but just saying the fact that i was given
the schematics
it almost felt like i advanced
away from construction
but construction made alive
by people using venues post-construction
and these are no houses
we're talking about
but the two arguments that make my life
easier when dealing with rowdy customers
(of experience)
is that: you don't walk with a drunken
hard-on to argue and fight in a supermarket
so please excuse our staff from
dampening your little euphoric excursion
to watch a concert or a football match
never mind
i always thought that supposedly appreciating
any sport while intoxicated
is the ultimate debauchery
of spirit and of heart and the **** of fog of mind
because when it comes to utilizing
alcohol and **** i need
music and the capacity of literacy
a literate agency
a stress of not being a surgeon
an architect a werewolf or pirate
in the sexed-up mixocology of feminine hormones
of studying attractiveness levels
ugh that 1 - 10 scaling
like it's so ******* vague but so vogue
so distraught am i
ugh...

         12h standing the commute sit-down
doesn't help
i need to kneel to relax the shins
i need to kneel and write
idle hand's ******* jesus
or satan
last time i heard the devil appreciated
more the idle pleasure of typing
typo itchy fingertips
or if no itchy fingertips then
people biting their fingernails
last time i heard
keratin does not taste of carrot
and there is not carrot taste to be found
in biting nails
or ******* hair
although i must agree that i love
a little bit of hair just above the ****
maybe i'm old fashioned
but that's my sexuality
and i have had Ilona aged 20
when she was all happily shaved
but then i think about:

puff pastry, candyfloss
and the burrowing of the nose
in both hair then oyster of the *****
and then i remind myself of, only recently,
scratching myself till i bled on
the stubble that appeared with chin
after a 10 year tenure of Robinson Crusoe
although i must say
with some Turkish tailoring in the barber
category of aesthetics
but i do like some fluff just above
the **** i'm about to eat
and if Jesus was a Woman
i would have given an oyster to eat
instead of bread

    and Eidie this is a religious experience
to counter your "chirst":
cosmopolitan joke
choke i swear to god the apycryp...

nassfotze!                nassfotze!

i'm done with spelling this one word got away
i will keep it live
and abrupt
seriously there is no need to oblige the editorial
process this is not getting printed
but then printing was cheap
back around 900ad in Baghadad
i don't understand the European fascination
with firsts
that printing press was hardly revolutionary
but made so by the second christians
of Alexandria i.e. the Mongols in Baghdad
set us back over 1000 years
what a trip
thank you: so many people in Pakistan
have the surname Khan
like that was the Mongolian ***** deposit
that precipitated with the surname
that was once a title

Genghis probably Great Magnitude of Charlie
Can do what the **** i can
not-transliterated as Khan with the surd H
to give an almost diacritical emphasis
given its inclusion but overall silence...
the eyes see what the tongue is ought not speak
the eyes see what the tongue ought not speak
                     the eyes see what the tongue is not to speak...
wow wow wow what a strange word
this ought...

             oh jeez and Louise and i'm getting
all tremor enamored
all tremor enamored
30 messages no reply
finally i replied after three days of 12h hour
shin breaking shin straining
like torture
before kneeling and writing into the night
high puff no ****! and somehow i'm gone
like there was no magic act

oh how i'd wish for this earth to swallow me
how i've grown
and maybe understand women
through that little tickle
and then downing myself with *******
today i managed to **** a *****
from a ****
honestly i just tweaked my fingers
on a semi limp ****
and i ******* lazily into my underwear
and the stuff of life soon clotted
and all fluid glue associations shrunk
and it felt like the botanical world
of talking trees didn't realise
anything about the existence of mushrooms
and that fungus is not exactly
a botanical leech
parasite i mean a turnip is not a fungus
is not a mistletoe
is what i missed when towing mist and le
and ole
and it just needs to feel like a conversation
of consolations
and it can't just be a babe screetching
on the other end of the telephone
and me trying to compliment and reward her
face because that's what she's primarily
concerned with: her face
as i was somewhat too
because of my double chin
or whatever
and me using a beard as a contortion feature
not a tool
since the face uses it and not the hands
it can't be called a tool
but a feature
since the face like hands does many things
and it's the work of hefty
crowd management techniques
that disparage me from the service provided
at retail shops
where things are sold
yet but this is premeditated
i'm going to have a good time mentality
of spending money in advance
this industry concerns itself with
CREDITORS
and not DEBTORS
we entertain creditors -
not by how they spent the money
but how they spent the money in advance
to be there:
dasein - which is so far removed from what
Heidegger might have implied
in the airs of the Black Forest in complete
dissociation from throngs
and the bellows of Behemoth
o the pangs of the hundebeiarbeiten -
the talk of police dogs you have to see it
the talk of police horses you have to see it
up close and personal
and you have to **** the ego and experience
of the body of id in all its glory
constipated, tired, hungry, wet, cold,
hot, angry, stupid, angry, stupid
you have to shut off all narrative
and so many people in this Wembley-Mecca
this trance like mantra of a h'um dl'um
ah'um dl'um -
indeed that apostrophe could be indeed judged
as the letter Y'od
             Yyod                  why-yod of the wide ought
and then hide the letters GH
and instead OH'T...
         like you write the letters but hide their sounds
in Gloucester
asked me this guy Andrews
who works with the Nigerian Sunday
(his name, Monday Monday,
literary scene had a Friday)
Andrews is Ghanaian
and he's fresh
i mean he's not what one could call
descended from slaves
honestly you get to pick up
the African original the african original
pride and love for life
not this stench of post-colonial dread
of: jeez still living with these former slave owners
and ooh come on why didn't
we go back to Africa
and why are the old Africans coming to Europe
to tease us or whatever
spiraling with stadium concerts calling for
Africa Unite blah blah semi Black ******
also comes with Black Jesus...
don't ask me how but honestly Black Jesus
comes with Black ******...

Abu Dribble i feel like escaping into naked
lunch rather not fascination with Arab historiology
from the 10th century
or a German thinker...
although i must know that if dog in german is hund
pies in ******
then horse in english a koń in polish
means horse in german is...herseh?
           no... the diacritical mark doesn't help
no room for transliteration like
in semitic languages
between 'rab and                                        Heb'

what is horse in german? d'uh!

pferdbeiarbeiten...

            not the sort of horses i swear are we the last
people to work as humans with animals
are we the last stronghold
we are not Bukowski genius to drink and read
sparingly the postman
i mean we are not farmers because farmers
no longer use animals
to work
instead
i mean: are we the last professions on this planet
to work with animals
i love working with animals
so much so that i'm petting one on the side
if i were to take a cat into the life cycle
of a dog or a horse
we breed these animals for a purpose

have you ever worked with horses
and dogs
in a crowd management environment
it's like double the high
of being high at a concert
when you come back from work and unwind
and have the side project to write
down everything bubbling to the boil in your
head your ego-death
and then the ego-resurrection
with a concentrated focus on narrative
that requires it to be written down
rather than aired / thought

and then release like a sling with no shot
just the snap of the sling
against the skin to wake up

KREISEL

  kreisel...

          spinning top is not even a word...
it's a worded ideogram...
without an actual ideogram
SPNNNGTP   looks better...
best to have that printed and framed
and advertised...

       Bączek...  well then... my neighbour
brought me one of those in a 50p
bag of goodies...
there was that and there was blowing
bubble machinery
i don't know does she think me *******
or happy or did i come to the fore
of children at large events and
i was authority and i was benevolence
and i'm still thinking of the jobs
that make humans interact with animals
and i know it's not in farming
as such especially when pig farming
i mean farming with plow and not plough
or maybe the two are not that far apart
because this is not the sort of euphoria
experienced at an event
this is a private euphoria
and not simply of just being there...
i.e. the opposite of Dasein
the opposite of Dasein is Seinda -
being there i.e. a place an event a polity
a necropolis is by far the best strain
flex and then thrown into this disarray
   of fates and omens and ills of people since now
even these people venture out
in the full abode of sky... wheelchairs and scissors
and schizoids...

i said i need to write this is not a novel
if anything this is also not Zukofsky's A
because by god that looks good
on paper but not in that voice
              since i'm thinking that's the last masquerade
but still the impetus to write
and why not record with Charlie but then
Charlie etc was also in the same circumstance
as me or then
sober does it: great parody of the formal
                    in whatever order of magnitude -
yes those wax eyes wore
off and then night came and i toked some more
and not to excess in drinking i obeyed
t.v. rules for half an hour
but then the show was so disastrous
that the only thing i was looking at was
laila rouass
   and thinking of my woman and yes he's 48
and she's 52
and i'm pretty sure Edie wants to make
it adamantly so
that there's that tease of *******
in that she's 55 and i'm 38 and she's still not sure
what
in what the hell would that mean
when the ages shrink
and then there's also the age disparity
between the other forbidden love of necrophilia
and that's not really as prominent
in society as *******
                                         well who knows
the statistics show...

                             but at least now: silence...
i have not given excuses but
pointers as to what i also do: alias no alias
persona non grata
                                should i fly above the aqua politik -
sieve through
this spectacular advent of man
this spectacular celebration
because honest to god and winter months apart
there is this air of celebration in man
with the obvious hags and anchors
and drags from the past but still the perserverence
is there to mindlessly go forward
without any static of but one universe
instead so many others to come
should this only be one experience
i doubt there might be more
with brain-deaths and heartaches
                          
                                      brain-labyrinths
and loud-libraries
                          or those pirates -
the pigeons at Baker Street...
some travel as far as Amersham
and Chesham on the Metropolitan Line
for their holidays from the city
you can see them on the trains anchored
coming into the carriages looking for
pecking orders...
and then as the train speeds on tracks
they fly about less
like bothersome flies
but as frightened animals: that they are...

                  and we are not?

When she first walked through the door
She was a Ghanaian priestess
A titan
Large and mythical and unbelievable
Her eyes held mystery
Deeper than poetry
And her walk
More grace than a royal procession
I can’t believe she looked at me

She sat detached from the lights
The crowd, the noise, the libations
Her presence was louder
I felt every inch of separation
Wanting distance to shrink
Wanting her eyes to question me
I can’t believe I talked to her

Weak prose and memorized verse
Why hadn’t I written something new
Of dreams with answers
Words that could entice her sight
Instead I opened a window
And shared a simple view
I really wanted to bust down a door
Or demolish a wall
Or flatten a building
As sacred space for her feet
I can’t believe I got her number

Insightful reels and pics
Over analytical data
Assumption of interests and realms occupied
I think she rose from the ocean’s depths
To swallow the earth whole
Or rebirth it
All this from 10 minutes
How exactly do light years condense
Into such time
I can’t believe she said yes to a date

Ears swoon at her voice
Tongue delights in sushi rolls
Heart pounds at something
I am unable to admit
I wish for more time to sip her tea
To savor her umami
I go in for the hug and omit my lust
I can’t believe I didn’t go for the kiss
I can’t believe I didn’t go for the kiss
I can’t believe she said yes to a second date

In a foreign house
with more comfort than my own
Fung shei challenging chaotic thoughts
Chaotic thoughts racing through her unknowns
A touch to feed her laugh
A look to feed my longing
My lips to her lips
In a time outside of time
When chaos and order dance together
I can’t believe I’m falling
I can’t believe I’m falling
I can’t believe I’m falling
But my stomach knows this feeling
And my heart knows this pace

I can’t believe I found her
In another lifetime
She can’t believe I ever left