I stopped watching TV. I stopped listening to my radio and gave it out. I lost contact with the world. I couldn’t find myself in the world. I would probably be copying someone or something. I wanted my originality to surge from within; the purest of sources. I didn’t want to owe the man that I’ve become even to my mentors. If you can’t relate to this or understand this, then this is where you get down from this train.
I used to sing in the choir and never fully enrolled. I like to think of life as a journey around a mountain on a staircase and my mother will always be my the staff I walk with because sometimes it’s good to have that third leg to support you; my father is the banister that will never see me fall off the cliff and brothers and close friends whom I will forever love are the candle that used to brighten the way.
ABRAHAM
Life is like climbing a staircase around a mountain
We all have our mountains to climb around
And our separate staircases to step on
Fathers are our banisters as we climb and mothers, the light
There’s no heaven on earth, save in the comfort of these two
When you’re down, you go round in big circles but it doesn’t seem you’re getting there
The thick base is experience; always remember that
Sometimes, the hen hops on one leg to see what walking, albeit hopping on one leg is like
So when the time comes and it escapes with only a leg, it will be prepared
To our fathers and persons – the Abrahams who ensure we never had to hop
Thank you
Happy Fathers’ Day
Singing in the choir coincided with my writing. As much as I love singing, each time we read a hymn, as a young writer, I was confused whenever I considered borrowing rhymes and lines. I draw inspiration easily from anything and each day at choir practice, my mind would wonder to a choir session turning into a hit movie like fighting temptations or some high school musical group competition and I would just miss the notes of the words that were being sung. Choir practice made me realise there was more to writing than just words and rhyme. When it comes to style, there’s rhythm and relevance and there are unrigged paths along which literature moves. I decided to try poetry as a way to portray these new things that I had learned.
Everywhere I’ve gone to, I realise is a square hole and I’m too round to fit in. I remember being moved from alto (which I was assigned because of the few number of the segment when I joined) to tenor and when I messed a note in a song too many times, I was moved to bass.
I felt more at home at bass because everyone there, I could really sing and their number was good so now I could just open my mouth and not that I was pretending to sing but just release whatever came out of my mouth and not feel wrong because as much as I shouted the wrong notes, not even I could hear myself- everybody could use a place like that or a moment where you could do all the wrong things and commit a lot of foolery and not be or feel judged. I totally lost the cause and slowly, I put my attendance to a halt. I miss it and I miss that feeling. I don’t even get that when I go on Sundays. Maybe it’s because it’s a ‘full house’ then or because I don’t go often I feel eyes on me and even create imaginary murmurs.
MY IMAGINATION
It’s my zone
A place of dreams
Like a traveller’s home
It’s a way of life
The only thing I can’t share totally with my wife
My imagination puts a smile on my face when all is gloomy
It takes me to another land when my legs are weary
I can’t share and you can’t have
It’s not like a visa
It’s mine
It’s like a passport because only I can have it
Copyright (c) Aubrey Aidoo 2009
I love to hear the choir sing and I love to be a part of the group that sings praises and sometimes when I’m singing a song, I forget it’s praise and I just feel the words; like the person who wrote it some 200 years ago wrote them for me. Then I realise that someone, outside of this church on this Monday evening, has no access to this hymn and the language and style would was inconsumable by him, what if my gift was to reach out to him? I’m a deep thinker and I get into very pensive moods every now and then and in my thoughts, I believe my gift can touch people that I might never come close to touching in person. If I can relate to a 200 yr old hymn, then someone should be able to relate to my poems of only 6 yrs old.
In my 25 yrs of life, I’ve experienced some ounces of success, failure, love, heartbreak, friendship, betrayal, adoration, family life, discontent, self-doubt, anger, forgiveness and the rest of a never ending list.
Discovering my gift was easy and hard because it was always there but I failed to see it. I think my parents saw it and nurtured me to develop it but not even they knew what exactly it was. I’m not sure I can say it’s poetry or writing generally, it’s expressing myself. After I found what I could do, I linked it to what I saw in my mother and her mother (my nanny). My nanny always has a way with words of wisdom and never used a cliché in the general sense that we know them to be abused. For example, she told my mother on days when my mother was upsetting her that of the all the houses, all the fine houses, on your way, why did you come to this ‘hut’ again? There’s a difference between a fine house and a home and is where you belong. This has proved to be a timeless saying and when you come to terms with the meaning of this, you will probably remember Maame Hannah for that.
My mother always said no situation is permanent and in times of boredom(these days) and suppression and uncertainties, I just remember that and I think of what next, the situation that will follow and even embrace it with no anxiety for that too won’t last forever.
With that, I moulded my sunshine in a bucket theory where I carry an imaginary bucket all the time full of sunshine and I just swing it around me through the rain, so to speak figuratively. The point is, locking moments and the sweetest memories and ideas in your mind and remembering them whenever things are rough. This bucket can never short sunshine and lately, I feel it might hit supernova and melt the bucket because of some sweet change of times and events that I’ve been through, there’s plenty smile about through the rain.
PLACES IN TIMES
Some experiences are like places
So are memories - bitter and sweet ones
Things we cannot forget, we think are places lost in time
We don't call them 'When's' and 'Then's' but rather 'Where's' and 'There's'
For golden moments, we say "at the........" and not "on that"
Instead of "during", we say "in"
So when I say "I’m going to marriage",
Don’t ask me "when", ask me "where"
For I will go in a carriage
The carriage of a place in time
Copyright (c) Aubrey Aidoo 2004
I was in a fatal accident when I was 4 and sat by the only person who died in the car my mum was driving and was pushed by a friend when I was 6 onto a busy road and got run over by a car which was on its way to my house so I had a phobia for driving but I channelled that fear into learning to drive because I realised, even fear required so much energy and I couldn’t waste any more on that and if I’m going to die in an accident, I’d rather be the driver.
My life has been eventful from childhood and still is and the sayings with the surreal dreams and visions that I ‘inherited’ from my mother, it’s no wonder I just had to be a talker because I’m concentrated with a lot of ‘words’.
It’s probably fate that these things happened to me so I could liberate the broken hearted, despaired and suppressed with a poem or two.
I AM A MAP
I am a map
My life is a journey
Take a picture of me right now and you’ll find a smile
A smile on my face is like an oasis on the desert
You should know this is a rare moment for me then
A good laugh always escapes me when I near it like a mirage
Ask me a story if you need to go somewhere
Don’t ask me for directions
Life is like walking in the desert
There’s no map of certainty
There are no coordinates
No beginning, no end
Just walk in circles till you know you way around
I am only a map
My life is a journey
Even if smiles and frowns were places
And I told you how it happened
You wouldn’t know where to find your happiness
A map can only lead you to one destination
This map can only lead you to my destination
My smile, my worry; my cry
Not your smile, your worry. Just try
I am a map
My life is a journey
And I didn’t come prepared
My image in the mirrors just shows it
A world of racism
I’m judged by my looks at the office
There’s a limit to who I can call soul mate – physical standards make me an obstacle
The people that buy expensive perfumes and leather
Pay huge sums for destruction of forest auguring terrible weather
The ones that can afford the surgeries
Change black to white and albino to black
The ones that are able
Have made us the Cains
I am only a map
My life is a journey
Even if I came prepared
As a rich handsome young man
I still couldn’t change this cold world
The warmth of a mother’s love couldn’t
How much more a map?
I am a map
My life is a journey
I was cut out of hard cardboard paper
My edges are rough and jagged
Because I broke away from the Pangea
So I stand alone
And still I achieve
There are wonderful sites in my eye and my heart
If my mouth remains a harbour for truth
And my ears a hangar for you lies
For truth sails slowly and lies are always in flight
My hands are paths in bushes and the heath
Then the roads you will see are my feet
And the wonderful sites in my eyes and heart are the rivers that are my veins the waterfalls that are my tears
And me as you see me
I am a map
My life is a journey
Even if you found your way around me
You still wouldn’t reach my treasure
My talent
When this started, it felt like I was living in the house that symbolised the Outkast’s relationship with Ms Jackson’s daughter where the house was leaking and there were cups and pots to collect the rain water. It was nothing bright; it was humid and cold with all the darkness that come when you go a bit off track to fetch something your heart desires as if the colour of the people didn’t absorb enough light already.
We’re all Stevie Wonders sometimes, blinded by the environment but able to see into the future and our dreams. We each have a star up there that we don’t look up to; that probably explains why the sun just scorches us here in Africa during the day saying if you can’t see that small light up there in the dark, and have hope and belief, when will you realise what you can do with it like we are with www.iwritegh.org
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