Five Poems by Kofi Fosu Forson

 

Murder the Sun

 

When white rooms free of black boys, they make a sound called white noise

Not tall boys they break open, bottle-necked, metal capped, American brew

Teeth, edge of table or with knife - tilt to chug, explode against graffitied wall

Method to this mayhem, decades before, a threat, blue-jeaned, white tank top

Black boots, wired, human lasso, white boy-herd, chasing shadows under light

In humid mist, summer weather, they scatter; wolves on a hunt, blood-thirsty

 

Pre-metamorphic, black percentage given a need, cause, revolt from white rule

Marched, walked into war, where police and dogs stressed their blood boil

Carted off to prisons, identified as numbers without blessed good names

Children born, fathered by men, mothered as gifts; world which rejected them

Body without head, cardboard boxes for skulls, bomb ticking time out of mind

All for that Virginia night; white nationalists with torches, terrorized, raised hell

 

My "Coming to America" dream, hijacked - whitened conscience, now diseased

White beauty; what were Ghanaian girls, imagined as white girls posing for art

Black male libido intellectualized, rape fear, domination, gangsta become nerd

This was beginning – indeed it began with the “down low”, queer, homosexual

What price to pay – if not in a book, then dime bag, convicted, occupy jail cells

He would have taken from us, made us love his kind – quietly murder the sun

 

 

Black Vampires of Cell Block 8

 

In the underground the black literati get drunk, do drugs, kill time telling stories about Amiri Baraka. Who is your favorite black revolutionary? Is crack your cure or do you drain blood from potential victims?

 

Vampiro Negra. He blows kisses at the soft boys. They hustle kitchen knives and cotton balls. Come Casey Jones. Place your pubescent head on my chest. Let me tell you stories about Cell Block 8. Shake, Rattle and Hide when they close in for a killing. Lock arms with your battle-whipped boys. Build a wall that'll keep the goons from getting skin.

 

Letter to WASP. Keep it real. This ain't my deal. When I'm done I'll break out, walk into your world a stronger man, catch thieves with my bare hands. Stone cold rassling. Ripped in my jeans, cut at the sides, I flex. Steroids and barbed wire. Pumping iron to the sounds of Rastas spitting rhymes.

 

In the heat of the day when the guards go stomping. I rise. I rise. Atilla. Nominated as 'Un. Mobbing the hard wood. Hammer and nails I build you a cupboard. We move merchandise, collect books on numerology. Your cult or mine? Cuss the great divide. We are animals among men. Make this into a covenant.

 

We worked the wars from Hosanna til Good Friday. Called up the gangs and woke the name Jesus. Resurrected ghosts from these walls. All God's men numbered from one to the end. No shepherds walk these halls. The no name wolves make murder of the minds of those who refuse to sleep with their eyes closed.

 

Awaken. Awaken to the sounds of death. There's a new line a'coming. Fresh faces from fortunate lives having gotten a dangerous deal. We are all innocent then. Who's to tell me these hands are mine? It has folded bed sheets. Hung colorful shirts on a clothes line. How then could it suffocate, bludgeon, beat down the bones of a ne'er-do-well? I have worn gloves then, left no imprints as I do, made minced meat of the haves and have-nots.

 

Wise men know enough to keep away from here. If for some God-forsaken reason you find yourself among the incarcerated give up the weapons with which you fight. Let the Lord handle your pistol grip pump. Pull at the wounded souls with your eyes. Learn to watch and heal. Hold each moment as if it were a lesson, a way into life walking backwards. But with your eyes closed you can see. You can breathe breath into this, this dark world of broken souls.

 

 

Building a Perfect Disposable Beast

 

They will take you, make you into the man you had always wanted to be

Then they will hate you, for being that man, someone they never imagined

But feared existed, somewhere in the backwoods of their controlling minds

 

So you became free or so you thought, free to think like them, be like them

They looked at you, lovingly, made you think you were equal, willing and able

Much as the people they called friends, you could sit with them, eat with them

 

Fair is fair, when in a world we are born of flesh, skin and bone, blood; color red

Who are we to think mother is universal concept; love your own, love the world

We know better don’t we; reason colorlessness of water is white in eyes of some

 

See-through, entering a world, transparent, all that you are, faux, exactable fake

You change your name; make use of your birth name, so they could then fear you

Say you became origin of man, monster, animal, educated beast: fucked in French

 

What they could kill they did, like sea swallowing up what it once shed, shamed

One day you will rise; sea creature come up from the bottom, make love to sky

You were once animal, you’ll become animal, numb the animal pain, animal hurt

 

You would've changed; called back histories of forefathers imagined them as kings

What you are king named Kong; fairest girl, blue-eyed, crying for you, making you

Thought in minds of some unimaginable men, building a perfect disposable beast

 

 

Day Fela Died

 

At Central Park’s Summer Stage we had gathered for an Afrobeat concert

Band like many others brought in white entourages from places near afar

Open sea of whiteness, weathered by sun, among which were black souls

Seasoned Africans came for juju, blister their hips, stomp on green grass

Sundays spent at The Abyssinian, given grace, honored his Supremeness

This afternoon greying while we waited was sacrifice for gods of otherness

Musicians who captured light, transcended themselves, rhythm, melodies

Most favorable method, ability to make us dance, rock our hearts’ jubilee

And so it began, no wind, no rain, electric fire conjured up on stage’s deck

 

Together we will rein in conspirator’s evil, wash them ashore in blood

There’s governance for wrong-doing, those who miscarriage justice

Our eyes will weep when we rid ourselves of hatred, shame, disgust

These streets will be weighed down with feet, mighty throng’s trudge

Together we will rein in conspirator’s ill-will, make him pay for wrong

Together we will defeat the enemy, send him off to live place like hell

Together we will greet God’s kingdom, we will greet God’s kingdom

 

Celebration indeed, made do with politics, polarizing of the disenfranchised

Music is riches for our poverty, food we put into our stomach, warm our hearts

On a day so rarified, purified, assembled were tomorrow’s people of fortune

Those knowing of a future of commonality, peace, love for those black, bruised

Those knowing of a future of commonality, peace, love for those black, bruised

 

It was moments later after the concert when a voice uttered on PA system:

 

“It is with much regret and sadness that we have been informed, Fela has died”.

 

 

At the Nude Beach Sunbathers Spoke French

 

Do I take my shoes off at the beach, let sand gather at my feet

Rest these eyes on the shore, where women and men adore

Settled sea, warmed by the sun, sky's blue imagery overcome

Birds that form pattern, become silhouetted farther from land

 

What words I understand, made familiar; memories of Truffaut

They sputter into the air, spin circularly, like a ballerina bear

The men predict an undertow come swallow those particularly

Black-skinned, muscle-bound, gingerly, standing on their hands

Kofi Fosu Forson is originally from Ghana. He has written and directed plays for Riant Theater. His play Alligator Pass was nominated for Arnold Weissberger Award. His collaborations include Gender, Space, Art and Architecture, a video project with Transvoyeur, Liverpool, England and Dismember the Night, thread poetry and photography project at Tribes Gallery with NYC Artist, Dianne Bowen. Among his published works are Three Rooms Press’ NYC 1 and NYC 2 and Maintenant 10, Great Weather for Media’s Understanding Between Foxes and Light, Anti-Heroin Chic, Full of Crow Press and Flapperhouse. His poetry manuscript “Ghost of Brother Blackburn” was shortlisted and his other poetry manuscript “Concerto for End Days” was long listed, both by Broken Sleep Press.