Accra

Accra cries in the morning light
Before she rides wrapped lovingly in cloth
On her mother's back. She is watched over
By white-breasted crows that circle
Above the wise and wrinkled Neem trees.
She wears skin dark and even as a charcoal stove
And with a personality as effervescent as
Palm wine in the sweltering midday heat.
She cares for the white hen that leads
Her timorous chicks through shallow green gutters.
She tolerates the bleating of the parade of taxis
That crawl slowly round her curves,
And she sometimes puts a coin in the clingy hands
Of curly-haired children walked
In all the way from Chad.
Accra can be read in the palms of craftsmen
Selling masks like their faces by side of the road,
And in the sweat of the unknown genius
Sculpting masterpieces on the beach.
Accra is serenaded in the quiet soliloquy
Of the naked vagrant sitting underneath an ATM
And she sits smiling beneath colorful umbrellas
Selling pay-as-you go phone cards
That connect millions and make some millions.
Accra is a song that school children squeal
Clothed in the warm love of high noon.
Accra is fertile, unapologetically voluptuous
With bountiful breasts and an impractical shapely butt.
She is beautiful though scarred with tribal marks.
She has a dollop of a nose, round cheeks
And a ready smile revealing pearly whites.
Accra is athletic, hard as chiseled ebony and with
Skin stretched tight over abs like cupcake crowns.
Today, she is the sexiest thing on the planet
And she knows it in her very bones.
Accra is old-world chivalry
And libidos undiminished by modernity
Where fathers teach their sons how to be men
And women haven't forgotten how to control them,
And political correctness stays political.
Accra walks like royalty,
Easy, upright, swaggering and bold,
And dances with abandon like the court fool
With sharp rhythm that shakes off the dust
Of struggle and the weight of the world.
She is painfully self-conscious and soft-spoken.
Accra washes twice a day and wears her best clothes
Especially to church on Sundays and holidays
And whenever the spirit moves her
Or her pastor says that we are in the end days.
Accra rains down rarely but she beats down hard
When she does and she wipes the streets clean
And bathes masticating goats waiting to die.
Accra is the imbecile that defenestrates plastic waste
And closes up shop five minutes too early--
And stands too closely behind you in queues--
The drunken mathematician that forecasts the lotto.
Accra is the feeling of guilt that raps at your
Rolled-up window waiting at a traffic light--
The sorry sight of the young leading the blind.
Accra can be friendly and helpful to the needful.
She yells like hell and curses but never strikes.
The city is thick as smoke from burning garbage
And thin as the policeman hiding behind a stop sign.
Accra is free as the soldier urinating on your wall.
Accra is bitter-sweet and must be swallowed whole
As a bolus partially submerged in deliciously oily soup
With drowned meat as prizes.
She can be found watching straight men
Hold hands as they walk down the street,
And she remembers the more than curious school boys
Who grew up to be homophobes.
She can be found walking through doors opened for her.
Accra is the plump prostitute that winks at your husband
And gives next-to-free jerks to your son and his friends
After they've been out smoking hookah
At a lebanese bar where they are bitten
By skinny mosquitoes and go broke buying rich girls' drinks.
Accra can be seen sitting on plastic chairs
With company looking positively morose
At an poorly lit outdoor bar
Listening to those hits from the 90s.
Accra is a spiritual place--
Where talismans worn can bring you wealth
And ghosts and dwarves lurk on tree branches
On the periphery of your field of vision.
Where an invisible owl hoots danger
And a senile grandmother becomes a witch
And a cheating wife's vagina gets sealed shut
And an absentee father will have his penis shrivel up--
Where the rich must have sacrificed their own children
And the poor are atoning for the sins of another life--
Where demons wait just outside your door
And Satan recruits naive politicians
Who forgot to bathe in holy blood of the lamb
That you can buy from the monday commute preacher,
Along with bundles of panacean herbs for
Everything from impotence to back pains.
Accra is a universe unto itself
Where a shoe-shiner has become a millionaire
Where children of privilege have lost everything
Where hotels may grow like trees
And the sun exposes its nut-sack and tans Accra's skin
Where stars are everlasting unchanging diamonds
Where billboards announce that Aids is in fact real
Where dignity accrues with age
Where a gulf vast as the Atlantic separates generations
Where vagabonds get high in cemeteries
Where you can feel your soul gyrate
To the non-stop thump-thump of drums
Fading ancestors continue to beat beneath your very feet.