POETRY CORNER: SHARIF SHEARS & ADE DARAMY

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Ingredients for Beauty

BY SHARIF SHEARS @REEFATHEFUNK · FEBRUARY 10, 2016

By Sharif Shears ©2009

Ingredients you will need to create beauty:

3 buckets of water,

.7grams of sulfur, hydrogen, carbon, phosphorus, nitrogen, potassium, sodium chlorine, magnesium and iron.

.345 grams of gallium, tellurium, silver, arsenic, indium, zirconium, molybdenum and cobalt. .22 grams of thorium, beryllium, samarium, antimony, niobium, mercury, lead, germanium, cesium and zinc.

.1799 grams of strontium, iodine, bromine, fluorine, silicon, nickel and aluminum. With a constant supply of oxygen, H20 and Love.

Creating the perfect concoction was never easy for anyone. It took the SUNS and daughters of loved ones to create, everyone.

The undying allegiance of a baby to its mother is the greatest bond shared from one person to another a perfect gift given from a sister to a brother which brings me to remember my late, great, grandmother. 

If you ask me what beauty is, I will tell you……..
I used to sit
Sit on the cold firm couch decorated with a brilliance of plain black
Black so intense it screamed out the calls only the divineness of the universe could utter
Uttering beauty
Beauty
As I sat I would patiently watch
Watch this figure across the room and admire
Admire both its complexities and intricacies and limitless simplicities
Simplicity like no other, just a figure in the room depicting pulchritude, I saw but didn’t know
Knowing now that the figure was the purest form of beauty
Beauty
Creak, creak, creak
A noise that would almost cradle me as a child
A child overwhelmed by the sound, sending me into a deep state of subconsciousness
Subconsciousness controlled by this creak
Creak, creak, creak
This lady’s chair was the culprit, the accused, the tried
Tried in the court of an infantile mind and proven guilty by a jury of imaginary creatures
Creatures that proved simplicity to be the purest form of expression
Express was what this lady’s chair did and its aura was that of boundless beauty
Beauty
My fondest memory of the lady was not her fluffy blue carpet or her 70s style drapes
Drapes that bled
Bled colors that told me stories of the old world and what I missed
I had missed the revolution of souls through the vortex of hate on a count of being born late
Late enough to briefly know this lady and her throne, and her drapes of beauty
Beauty
My greatest memory was not her kitchen
A kitchen that would comfort the most corrupt souls with ease
Ease that suggested that this kitchen had borne the most divine dishes ever prepared
Prepared with souls of ancestors
Ancestors of kings and queens from a dark, unknown continent flourishing with life and beauty
Beauty
My most loved memory of this lady, was HER
Her and her apples
Apples that spilled succulent juices and unparalleled visual paradoxes of beauty
Beauty
This lady would sit in her rocking chair of creaks and cut these apples before me
Me, just a child of minor existence to the world but of everlasting importance to this lady
This lady and her chair of creaks
Creaks that drowned out the trivial reality of dilemmas I face now as a man
A man who misses his Grandmother and her throne of Beauty
Beauty
My grandmother would cut those apples for me
Me, watching and waiting, anticipating the satisfaction of the apples she cut for me
Me, the boy who always became disappointed when that satisfaction never came to me
Me, a child that did not know then but know now that the love I felt from simply witnessing my grandmother cut those apples
Oh what I would do just to see you one last time, sitting in your rocking chair of creaks on your fluffy blue carpet beside your bleeding drapes, next to your kitchen of ancestry. What I would do to witness the curl of your upper lip as you cut those juicy apples as only you can, grandma, because if a single soul were ever to ask me what beauty is, my only answer could and would be, my grandma…..

My grandma is beauty

Beauty

Beauty

Beauty

So, the beauty in her will live on in these ingredients forever and the existence of one person will whisper in comparison to the countless people like my grandmother who all share the qualities of
3 buckets of water,

.7grams of sulfur, hydrogen, carbon, phosphorus, nitrogen, potassium, sodium chlorine, magnesium and iron.

.345 grams of gallium, tellurium, silver, arsenic, indium, zirconium, molybdenum and cobalt. .22 grams of thorium, beryllium, samarium, antimony, niobium, mercury, lead, germanium, cesium and zinc.

.1799 grams of strontium, iodine, bromine, fluorine, silicon, nickel and aluminum. With a constant supply of oxygen, H20 and Love.

But to me these are the ingredients of a very special human being

THIS POEM IS IN MEMORY OF MY GRANDMA, EUGENIA AYODELE DARAMY

In Memory of a Grandmother on her birthday 10th February.

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Of Africa and Africans

BY ADE DARAMY · FEBRUARY 10 10, 2016

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• Of Africa and Africans

  
  

Friends, Comrades, Africans, put away your fears

Give me a few moments to wipe away your tears

Come a little closer and give me your hand

Join me on a journey across the motherland

The time is ripe for us to show

The Africa that you and I know

We’ll take this chance to share our views

That there’s more to Africa than you see on the news

No, not that Africa of famine, disease, coup d’etats and wars

That’s not my only Africa and I’m sure it’s not yours

We know there are ills for which we have no cure

But we know that is not what we came here for

Let me dispel some of the myths and rumours

Let me rip them from your mind like a bad brain tumour

One man asked me, if I spoke African; all I could do was grin

I said, “Where EXACTLY do you want me to begin?”

I was sorely tempted to reel of a long list

But I tried my hardest to resist

I said, “We have more languages across these lands,

Than you can scoop up grains of sand in your hand”

I don’t speak Amharic and I’m just getting to grips with Arabic

I don’t speak, Twi, Gan or Akan and I’m not a Yoruba, Ibo or Hausa man

And, no, I don’t speak Wolof or Swahili

Neither do I speak Mandinka nor Somali

Africa is as much about the Sahara

As it is about the Masai Mara

We’ve got the Gold, the Ivory and the Barbary Coasts

And, the Mosquito Coast is the one I like the most

You can ascend to the snows of Kilimanjaro

And you can also discover the birthplace of the Pharaohs

If you really know Africa

You’ll know that the Left Coast (that’s the West Coast)

Is as different from the right, as chalk is from cheese

Or as day is from night

But we’re striving to be part of one whole

Like parts of the body each has its own role

So: Nigeria is not Algeria and Omar Bongo is not the President of the Congo

Uganda is not the same as Rwanda and Ethiopia is definitely NOT Eritrea

Neither is Mauritius the same as Mauritania

And Libya is nothing at all like Liberia

Now that I’ve told you a little about the land

Let me take time to tell you what it means to be an African

In all parts of the continent East, West, North and South

We speak as much with our hands as we do with our mouths

And, I know some sisters who can say more with their hips

Than you or I can ever say with our lips

Have you seen Africans travellin’ back home?

Sometimes we each need a plane of our own

We take so many shoes, clothes and ‘provisions’ for our kin

It looks as if we’ve just had a lottery win

Sometimes I’m shocked by the things that we take

Has Africa really run out of Kellogg’s cornflakes??

I recall one day my plane was grounded

When I found out why, I was astounded

Outside, the weather was just turning freezin’

And the captain finally announced the reason

“Ladies and gentlemen, it seems

We’re weighed down by too many cans of Heinz baked beans”

My own idea of airport success

Is to get away without paying excess

Yes, when it comes to luggage, we know how to pack

Oh, and when we come here on holiday, we sometimes forget to go back

We come in all shapes, colours and sizes

In this continent that’s full of surprises

Just as we have different regions and time zones

So we have many and varied hair and skin tones

In sport of course, football is king, I reckon

Whatever’s the next best is a distant second

And all of us have the same crazy dream

To see the World Cup lifted by an African team

When it comes to music no one loves it like us

You’ll hear it in homes, cars on the street and on the bus

It seems like it’s almost everywhere; sometimes it seems it’s even in the air

From Sweet Mother and Mutchana; remember ‘Vul’ Indlela by Brenda

What about ‘Pata Pata’ and ‘Malaika’, ‘You’re My Sweetie, My Sugar’,

And one day we’ll all be singing ‘Nkosi Sikelli Afrika’

Permit me to ask you just one thing, please,

If I were born in China, would you call me Chinese?

Well, It’s nearly time for me to go

And I hope you know a little of the Africa that I know

If you’ve never been there, I hope you’ve made up your mind

Come and be surprised and delighted by what you’ll find

And if you really want to know

I always have a piece of Africa with me wherever I go

Just to remind me of the things I really miss

I wear this silver band upon my wrist

Yes, I know I’m standing right here

But Allah knows, I’d rather be there

I hope that by now you’ve been able to see

You can take me out of Africa

but you can’t take the African out of me

Ade Daramy