Atukwei Okai: A Tender Homage to Noisy Poetry

Part Two

Was it the drum that called you or it was you who called the drum? One attempts to answer that and finds the inevitable gap that clouds all searches for antecedents of genius. Maybe in this case as well as that other well known one, there were no calls. Not from either side. No calls. No voices. No supernatural portents.

But find each other you did. The drum and you. You and the drum. The ancestrallogic of the ancestraldrum in the high tide of Romanticism in Blackface.

For you came to us at a time when all poetry, for us neo-Euro-bourgeoisie of the Anglophone West  African species, had to go through the clearing houses of Chaucer-Shakespeare-Marlowe-Pope-Wordsworth-Keats-Browning-Hardy ad infinitum to weave comedic strains of inane parrot-vogues that not even we ourselves would give a second hearing to.

And while we jested our offbeat iambic pentameters and imbecilic hexameters in the marketplace of others looking for sympathetic ears to buy our songs-dead-at-birth, it was you the iconoclast from Ga Mashie who burst on our stage with the "shocking" reminder that our ancestors did not talk in the esoteric accent of foreign coinages to rouse the Asante bush to the full stature of its erotic cheer. No, you said, even in the midnight of high betrayal, when our sons and daughters were sardined off to unnameable places to serve unnameable gods of unnameable morals, even those sons and daughters lost in alien soils trying to come to terms with life without home moorings, even those sons and daughters did not forget the primal ancestral birthcordial watu wazuri drums...

The wail of the guitar might be fine for Andalusian soils soaked with Lorcaian blood, but over here in Africa, we start with the drums.

We start with the drums in order to give voice to authentic Afro-discourse in this world that we live in it where the quantum physics of existential inequality blows up the dorkordiki bowl of human sanity...we start with the drums we start with drums we start with the drums.

For drums make noise and in this world that we live in it where the quantum physics of existential inequality blows up the dorkordiki bowl of human sanity, one needs to make noise in order to let it be known that we are just taking our time to make sure that it is you who is standing on our testicles that it is you who is squeezing our existential testicles that it is you who is trying to bracket our life-brockos...

Those are words you spoke and then you started with the drums you started with the noise of the drums even when it was clear the special branch our knowledgeable dons thought your visions were coming from a country with which our masters in the West were not on ayeekoo terms...

But did you care?

You returned you returned from the doldrums you returned with conundrums you returned with soles burnt upon coals you returned
You returned manuring our memories into a fertile remembrance of things recent and past
You returned and succeeded in re-entering the realm of the Old Odomankoma Okyerema against all the 666 barricades they set up against you all the 999 fake smiles before the stones they flung at you...

You started with the drums and swore your oath against all those who throw stones at us. We emaciated besieged ravaged uncertain returnees heard your first wail as though it were cool water to the parched palate of the droughted desert:

My brothers
                  My people
                                  My brothers
I am sought,
                  I am sought because
When you want to starve
                                  the ocean
You paralyze
                  its source
                                  the river

And who were you? Okai, who were you in the incarnation that called us back to the life of the noisy living drums?

You were the fontomfrom!
Fontomfrom! Fontomfrom! Fontomfrom!
You are the fontomfrom.
Fontomfrom! Fontomfrom! Fontomfrom!

Fontomfrom! The noise of the drums! Fontomfrom! The sense of nonsense! Fontomfrom! The sword of Nat Turner! Fontomfrom! The wireless phone of our ancestors! Fontomfrom! The mobile networks of our forests! Fontomfrom!

You began with the drums and the drums began with Fontomfrom! Fontomfrom! Fontomfrom!!

Atukwei Okai: A Tender Homage to Noisy Poetry

Atukwei Okai

Part One

The cry of the fontomfrom wakes me from a studied slumber as I steady myself to pay homage  to our own version of what Walt Whitman and Allen  Ginsberg  could well have been if only they had worked a bit harder.

Fontomfrom. I throway salute. Fontomfrom. Fontomfrom.

Atukwei Okai is certainly not meat for milk teeth. Even though meat will certainly destroy milk teeth easily. I will take my time because the man who specializes on killing people for a living, executioner style,  may not take kindly to being flayed without appropriate preambles.

Okai's rumbunctious swagger alone would compel rumblings in the tell-tale heart. His verbose braggadocio would never spare the silent witness. And when his fontomfrom begins to wail begins to wag begins to call arms to war, one knows that it is time to re-member the most colourful Ghanaian and African poet of the 20th century.

So I will re-member him tonight. And tomorrow. And the day after. But I will take my time. After all, when we stage our traditional epics, we take our time. When we play out our Ozidi sagas, we don't rush out things  to shatter the miracles embedded in the tortoise crawl in the snail walk. We take our time we take our days we prate we stay our speed in slow paced imitation of the royal laze because we know when a chief stops a procession to do his thing, it is not for mere mortals to start asking infantile questions about schedules/timelines/deadlines. So I will take my time with this one.

This is just the beginning. Fontomfrom! Fontomfrom! Fontomfrom!
Somebody's newspaper salesboy. Fontomfrom!
Somebody's  rapper before hip-hop came along. Fontomfrom!
Somebody's love-lorn Rosimaya cuckold. Fontomfrom!
Somebody's bula-matari on ayekoo terms with too many gifts so many gifts. Fontomfrom!
Somebody's pseudo-Soyinka as good as the Nobel Laureate himself, Fontomfrom!

Fontomfrom! Fontomfrom! Fontomfrom!


Part Two

Was it the drum that called you or it was you who called the drum? One attempts to answer that and finds the inevitable gap that clouds all searches for antecedents of genius. Maybe in this case as well as that other well known one, there were no calls. Not from either side. No calls. No voices. No supernatural portents.

But find each other you did. The drum and you. You and the drum. The ancestrallogic of the ancestraldrum in the high tide of Romanticism in Blackface.

For you came to us at a time when all poetry, for us neo-Euro-bourgeoisie of the Anglophone West  African species, had to go through the clearing houses of Chaucer-Shakespeare-Marlowe-Pope-Wordsworth-Keats-Browning-Hardy ad infinitum to weave comedic strains of inane parrot-vogues that not even we ourselves would give a second listening to.

And while we jested our offbeat iambic pentameters and imbecilic hexameters in the marketplace of others looking for sympathetic ears to buy our songs-dead-at-birth, it was you the iconoclast from Ga Mashie who  burst on our stage with the shocking reminder that our ancestors did not talk in the esoteric accent of foreign coinages to rouse the Asante bush to the full stature of its erotic cheer. No, you said, even in the midnight of high betrayal, when our sons and daughters were sardined off to unnameable places to serve unnameable gods of unnameable morals, even those sons and daughters lost in alien soils trying to come to terms with life without home moorings, even those sons and daughters did not forget the primal ancestral birthcordial watu wazuri drums...

The wail of the guitar might be fine for Andalusian soils soaked with Lorcaian blood, but over here in Africa, we start with the drums.

We start with the drums in order to give voice to authentic Afro-discourse in this world that we live in it where the quantum physics of existential inequality blows up the dorkordiki bowl of human sanity...we start with the drums we start with drums we start with the drums.

For drums make noise and in this world that we live in it where the quantum physics of existential inequality blows up the dorkordiki bowl of human sanity, one needs to make noise in order to let it be known that we are just taking our time to make sure that it is you who is standing on our testicles that it is you who is squeezing our existential testicles that it is you who is trying to bracket our life-brockos...

Those are words you spoke and then you started with the drums you started with the noise of the drums even when it was clear the special branch our knowledgeable dons thought your visions were coming from a country with which our masters in the West were not on ayeekoo terms...

But did you care?

You returned you returned from the doldrums you returned with conundrums you returned with soles burnt upon coals you returned
You returned manuring your memories into a fertile remembrance of things recent and past
You returned and succeeded in re-entering the realm of the Old Odomankoma Okyerema against all the 666 barricades they set up against you all the 999 fake smiles before the stones they flung at you...

You started with the drums and swore your oath against all those who throw stones at us. We emaciated besieged ravaged uncertain returnees heard your first wail as though it were cool water to the parched palate of the droughted desert:

My brothers
                  My people
                                  My brothers
I am sought,
                  I am sought because
When you want to starve
                                  the ocean
You paralyze
                  its source
                                  the river

And who were you? Okai, who were you in the incarnation that called us back to the life of the noisy living drums?

You were the fontomfrom!
Fontomfrom! Fontomfrom! Fontomfrom!
You are the fontomfrom.
Fontomfrom! Fontomfrom! Fontomfrom!

Fontomfrom! The noise of the drums! Fontomfrom! The sense of nonsense! Fontomfrom! The sword of Nat Turner! Fontomfrom! The wireless phone of our ancestors! Fontomfrom! The mobile networks of our forests! Fontomfrom!

You began with the drums and the drums began with Fontomfrom! Fontomfrom! Fontomfrom!!


                                        

Merari's Merry Spirit Merges With the Stars

Merari Alomele

And of Merari Alomele, they say we must not say much. Not rouse the truculence of  the Fates by questioning their sense of timing and their choice of target.

So we will cultivate some silence here. But we cannot pretend to suddenly unknow a kinsman because of the fear of powerful Ones who have robbed us in broad daylight.

After all, Merari was the poet-cantor of our village who sang many laughters into our pained nights and taught us that a man may laugh at any fate that befalls him and by laughing transcend his fate.

Merari was the palaverian who delayed our foolish outbursts long enough to transform them into self-mockeries and in-bursts that enriched our often colorless lives.

Merari was the daredevil who woke up early in the morning with a gong in his hands and used words as bullets in his flute-mouth, piping away at kings and queens who shat into our village streams and thought they could get away with it because we had forgotten the fundamentals of talk-back. And he made us share in the collective joy of laughing at the caricatured fools.

Merari was a lot other things to us. We must know because he was one of us, was born among us and grew among us. We lived with him and saw him mount the stage under the village tree times without number to do the dance of our several selves.

For a man like that, and here we must dare the gods themselves and commit hubris if needs be, for a man like that, why must a time like this be imposed as the period of exit into a world whose accountability to us the living still  lies unresolved?

Perhaps heaven has lost all sense of humour, and to placate the gaping needs of Divinities for laughter, somebody went and recommended our village treasure our Sikaman laugh-yarn king.

Our loss, then, becomes a monumental gain for those beyond. And while that is little consolation, we will remember the man whose brief passage on the stage of life expanded our spirits so much and taught us to fall in love with ourselves again and again. 

Maybe we made a mistake in the process by falling in love with him too; people like Merari are the tantalizing gifts of the gods who must go back to the Givers sooner than we are willing to let them go.

He now belongs where he first came from. He belongs to the Ancestors.  Merari now belongs to the Ages. I say Merari's spirit has now properly married the Stars.

And suddenly, the world robbed of him seems to be a place for midgets. But at least we can look up to where he's gone  while we take pride in the living words he left behind.

Big Brother Merari, I am finally going to do the search for the source of your name although I am sorry to say, comrade, I won't be able to report my findings to you over at the New Times Corporation.

Meanwhile, blewuuuuuuuuuu. Efoga blewuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!

Rudimental Ruminations Against Rumours of Ruination

I sang a sonorous sorrow song for snivelling Solo.  And then breathed the lilt of life into his cancer-ed bones...

Shall I then not drag your private fear into the public gaze?
Shall I then not lift veils off your  fears of the dying of the day?
Shall I not break through the cordons of conventional proprieties
And cry your familiar pain into the complacent noise of the vulgar market place?

Trainee, I got your heart-beat soul-thirst spirit-zeal letter today
And in it I  also read your multiple doubts in streaks of multiple red signals
I read of the dread of myriad moons casting dreary shadows on your day-dreams
I read of the perpetual feel of the underdog lid on top of your  reluctant head

I read/felt it all because it is what we all know in the insistent ardour of this kill-dreams space. What we all must wake up to on Monday Morning and go to sleep with on Sunday Sundown. The booming blasts of the muezzins of impossible-lore. The cacophonous melange of die-quick prophesies from  prophets of doom who  have given up on life and embraced death-wish as their only salvation from challenges that the human spirit must rise to must loft on must transcend finally...

Familiar strains Trainee familiar strains of the debilitating masterpieces of darkrooms of fear/doubt/death
Familiar strains oh Trainee familiar strains because I too have heard them before I too hear them everyday I too will hear them tomorrow
Familiar strains Trainee familiar strains because they seek to kill the primal songs daemonic songs destiny songs that we must sing
Familiar songs Trainee familar songs because they are ubiquitous roadblocks that insist we carry the burdens of our yes-we-cans into the eerie silences of sinister cemeteries...

But Trainee oh my Trainee of the Nights that rock the hope-boat
It is not true it is not true what they say about underdogs whose villained voices must stray away from the mellifluent rhymes of greatness
It is not true it is not true what they say about of all of us being lost generations whose voices scatter untracked like lost planets lost from the Milky Way
It is not true Trainee it is not true in spite of all that a thousand naysayers in their hallowed follies pronounce

So go out there and sing and dance and fly and touch your skies
You go out there and dream of days of drudgery and nights of passion and victories that must follow
Go out and shout over and over I know in my heart I can do it I know in my heart I can do it...
Benevolences of our universe will echo you we know in our hearts you can do it...you can do it...do it...
And then you will do it you will do it you will surely against all the odds do it do it do it


I wrote this for you, Trainee, because I too believe in my heart that you can do it/you will do it.