By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr.

Your drunk disciples
and dope fiends
have hung laurels
you never earned
around your neck...
but for your
insatiable ego,
I never really thought
you needed
such junk,
like the tick-infested
family dog
needing constant
petting
on your pate...
hung laurels
you never earned
around your neck,
your swallow's neck,
your giraffe's neck
that pried
into affairs
you had no business
to be involved -
Kwame Red,
I know you didn't
like it very much
or did you,
the letter to Padmore
in which James wrote
you were as dull
as a pencil's lead
in need of
a sugical blade
to make whole
and passably
smart...
in James' book,
it appeared
smartness and
genius
had eluded you
at birth
which you meant
to repair
with the life
of a spiev;
precisely
what you did
with the jack-knife
you used
to slice and
lobotomize
those with brains
the size of
the sun
to your bean-sized
nuts
the commies
were so glad
to pretentiously
indulge...
of course,
you did
your mighty best
to secure
those make-belief
turrets at
Kwabenya...
some slobbering
oaf recently
wrote some maudlin
praise-songs
you are almost
certain
to disdain
and rip
with a match,
called you
a maven
of the dark science
of sytematic torture
of foes and
former
benefactors
in the Hitlerite
reformatory
you built
at Nsawam,
on the edge
of the creek
I share
with my
Akuapem kin
on the way
to the land
of thousand ants
my forebears
once ruled -
Kwame Red,
how are
the would-be
mighty fallen,
faux-pharaoh
of self-mangled
stale dreams...
of course,
the blind too
can dream
and see clearly
in the dark with
Chineese- and
Russian-made
lanterns and
lamps,
sickle and hammer
on a cockerel's
neck -
Kulungugu was
only a suicide
attempt,
not a cold
calculated
road-kill,
if you stop
to calmly ponder
who were really
involved...
but then again,
why hadn't your
KGB Kankan-Nyame
stopped them
in their tracks,
Kwame Red,
or it was just
that the Pentagon Boys
were simply
too strong
and slick
for you?
Kwame Red -

2/15/15