Oppong Clifford Benjamin: 2 Poems
planting again.
can flowers grow here
when we have left?
at what colour do humans
call love loamy soil?
i want to imagine
how survival will look like
when the petals are no longer red
when winds no longer carry birds to heights
and when your pictures become bitter memories
i'm learning names again
i'm now choosing colours for love
i'm pretending boys are girls now
and touching butts in colourful pants
kissing thick lips in honesty
and nursing my flowers again
they will learn to live this time
and blossom into places where
every way is the right way to
rainbow loamy soils
balloons in a saturday afternoon’s sky
i have been running for far too long
if you are going to break my legs
do it gracefully, please be merciful
because no one knows
unless he is living the situation.
it is funny how humans sleep
my cousins sleep with their legs on each other
my sisters like my mum, flat on their belly
and the rest of the world sleeps on me every night
they come for my voice
they rob me of my colours
and command me to smile
they select alphabets for me
when love is the word to spell
i’ve arrived.
i’m calling love rainbow
and flying balloons in a saturday’s sky
kicking dust to rise from the ground to freedom.
if you’re going to stop me, do it gently
break my legs, my soul but my magic will fly to where it belongs.
Oppong Clifford Benjamin is an award-winning Ghanaian writer and civil engineer. Clifford's debut poetry collection titled 'Collecting Stars From A Night's Sky' was published by Poetic Justice Books in Florida, USA and won him third place in the Prof. Atukwei Okai Poetry Prize. Clifford's poems have appeared in literary journals and magazines across the world. He has been invited to read his poems in Ghana, Nigeria, Liberia, Rwanda, South Africa, Germany, Russia, and Norway. Clifford has also been invited to teach poetry writing in high schools and universities in Nigeria and Ghana. His Facebook name is 'Oppong Clifford Benjamin', Instagram: @oppcliffben and twitter handle is @glencliffben.