Aliens Must Go

Legitimacy and exile
Aliens must go

Papers and passports
Inspection of identity

Stamp of approval
Proof of residency

Overstayed welcome
Fairweather friends

Fiasco
Exigency

Scapegoats
Contingency

Indefinite leave to remain
There's a price to be paid

Fraught deadlines
Tight timetable

Hasty evacuations
Explicit threats

Swift deportation
Fractured boundaries

Unkind labels
Verbal taunts

Herd of illegals
Circling touts

Overnight precarity
Status in doubt

Expulsion orders
Border crossings

Crowded ports
Land checkpoints

Dispersed families
Rushed upheaval

Overstuffed bags
Hurry

Tension, loss
Worry

Official decisions
Informal penalties

Enforcement actions
Emboldened gatekeepers

Entry permits
Mournful exits

Brethren
Neighbors

Rivals
Strangers

State of emergency
Failure of diplomacy

Ancestral memory
Histories of dislocation

Politics of closures
Season of migration

Internally displaced
Traditional evacuees

Modern travelers
Sudden refugees

Aliens must go, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Gone baby, don't be long by Erykah Badu
• Uptown by Raphael Saadiq
  The plaintive refrain and coda is the sound of wist: "I'm leaving this town"
• I gotta get away by Gloria Barnes
• Pack'd my bags by Rufus ft Chaka Khan
• Leavin' by Tony Toni Tone
• I gotta go by Lizz Fields
• Don't talk to strangers by Prince
• Gone baby, don't be long by José James
• Don't talk to strangers by Chaka Khan

Bonus beats: Don't leave me this way by Thelma Houston


See previously Bags and Stamps (Ghana must go) and Expulsion orders

...

Postscript (June 3, 2025)

My current publishing schedule means that what you read above today was written three years ago (Indeed, if I don't pick up the pace, the trifle I wrote today will only see the light in 2038, 12 1/2 years from now). That being said, I am struck that the above musings on displacement, forced and otherwise, that I wrote in 2022 still seem timely.

I was then in the process of digitizing the Talking Drums archive and taking in the reverberations of arbitrariness and the reign of strongmen in khaki in what I read in those pages. The ripple effects continue over the surface of our regional politics.

My friend Senam had just published her dissertation and was sharing some of the stories that she'd unearthed in her excavation of this, our signal topic. Ghana must go has a very tangible legacy beyond Nigeria and Ghana. It is a living history, disclosed often by artful omission and subject to the opacity of our elders. It a family history and, in its sweep, marks its bearers.

More recently, I've been thinking about the exodus from Sudan and what that country has suffered in the past two years, the reign of locusts, if you will. You don't hear much about the strain on the surrounding countries and the fodder for resentment that any old demagogue could harness if they chose to do their worst. I've been thinking of the smaller but no less disruptive waves in the Sahel region where many leaders are indeed inclined to do their worst for fear of losing their positions. Displacement seems to be the rule and many of our neighbors' houses are on fire.

This is a time of brutes.

And here, again, I welcome the US to the Third World. The Stephen Miller incited and Trump led assault on everything is hitting many near and dear to me. Things have long moved far beyond rhetoric. Livelihoods and personal safety are affected, even moreso than usual for those darker than blue. Unspoken threats now explicitly verbalized. And horizons have contracted. Many now adopt a fetal pose to shield from the incoming blows heeding the warning: protect yourselves at all times.

This is a time of precarity.

And exhaustion. Take, say, immigration for example. Many of my cousins are on student or other immigrant visas in the US, and are currently weighing the calculus of just being themselves versus adopting a studied pose of neutrality and normalcy.

No sudden moves is the refrain, don't become a target etc. It looms, that culture of silence. It's present, the retreat to that mask of civility that we wear all too well.

This is a time of erasures.

People disappear, sometimes literally pulled off the streets, bodies are snatched with glee. But worse is the eclipse of the soul. Pieces of identity are being erased. The spark and joie de vivre in many is being extinguished, curtailed by cruelty and disembodied by vindictiveness. I can't recognize so many folk.

Sidenote: one of my cousins was recently accepted by Harvard, all his hard work paying off. After the initial celebrations, however, everyone in the family has been holding their breath as we watch that institution and others being targeted. The saving grace is that he was born in the USA and so is somewhat shielded from the trials of non-citizens. (I'm still somewhat curious about whether the currenly stymied attack on birthright citizenship would notionally affect him, or if that strange interpretation would only affect births going forward). I don't envy him. He gets to wear multiple mantles as a living embodiment of Stephen Miller's worst fears, a foreign student but also an American-African and that's before he even opens his mouth. I really don't envy him. What paradise have we lost?

Anyway... Perhaps, this is all background noise, and, as I'm often reminded, the virus sets the timeline. The ongoing pandemic can make all this turmoil in the world moot, a sideshow at best, in very short order.

Aliens must go. I too will make my accommodations. I continue to focus on small things and move to my own tune. The present collection of toli, being doled out every week, bears a title that is all I aspire to: A Comfortable Unease.


File under: Ghana, Nigeria, culture, immigration, displacement, exile, memory, Africa, history, politics, dictator, coup, loss, observation, perception, refugee, Things Fall Apart, Ghana must go, poetry, toli

Writing log: September 6, 2022

Palliative Relief

Past remedies for a double heart:
Chocolate ice cream, or better yet, butter pecan
Revenge affairs and crying, nay, sobbing at the betrayal
Screaming into a pillow (loudly)
Screaming into the air (silently)
Disturbing tranquility and causing a scene
Do note that cackling with maniacal laughter is no catharsis
Consult your physician before dispensing these treatments
In many cases they only provide palliative relief

Past remedies for a broken heart:
Staring forlorn into space for hours on end
Mum's comfort soup and a long cry
Kleenex (two-pack), and apathy
Dark rooms and music (blues preferably)
Curating a heartbreak playlist
Revising the heartbreak playlist
A book in times past, a poetic trifle is recommended
A b-movie - suitably mindless, you can't get too invested
Social media these days - fashions change, gossip is cleansing
Long walks, solitude, communing with nature
Short runs, working out, lots of company
Copious amounts of alcohol - religion permitting
Wistful perusal of letters and photos (moderate quantities for greater effectiveness)
Inventory of digital artifacts featuring the loved one
Making lists, revising lists, tearing them up and starting again
A night out with old friends or siblings
Revisiting old haunts, macabre and weighted with meaning
Rebound flings in extremis, calling up exes
Booty calls and, if necessary, meaningless sex
(Always practice safe sex in such circumstances
Caveat emptor, you do not want to add to your predicament)
Truth in advertising notice, the label is indeed accurate:
Meaningless, and only providing palliative relief

Past remedies for a grieving heart:
There are none, pursuant to the laws of grief
Experiments confirm the lack of even a placebo effect
Patient advisory on sorrow: there is only palliative relief



After: And wilt though leave me thus? by Sir Thomas Wyatt

Heartbreak, a playlist

I have curated many a heartbreak playlist in my time, I am built that way - my go-to of late is Meshell NdegeOcello's Bitter album, or parts of Portishead's Dummy album if I want to be cinematic, or anything by Cesária Évora. Still, for the purposes of devising a soundtrack to this note, here's a literal heartbreak playlist, your mileage might vary (spotify version)

• You're Breaking my heart by Otis Rush
• Heartbreak Hotel by The Jacksons
• Tuesday Heartbreak by Stevie Wonder
• Heartbreaker by Dionne Warwick
• How can you mend a broken heart by Al Green
• Unbreak my Heart by Toni Braxton
• Heartbreaker by Alice Russell
• I'll never let you break my heart by Lyn Collins
• Heartbreaker by Ray Charles
• N.E. Heartbreak by New Edition
• Don't break my heart by UB40
• Somewhat Loved (There you go breakin' my heart) by Jam & Lewis and Mariah Carey
• Breakin' my Heart by Mint Condition
• Don't Go Breaking my Heart by Sergio Mendes
• Heart breaking Decision by Meli'sa Morgan
• A Broken Heart Can Mend by Alexander O'Neal
  Ever the optimist, Alex believes there is more than palliative relief

File under: humour, life, culture, observation, loss, perception, grief, betrayal, poetry, toli

Writing log: September 9, 2022

Expulsion Orders

For some, this was the second go-round, a reprise of the upheaval
The scenes at the ports, palpable despair, teeming, almost primeval
When the land borders briefly opened, a brave few chose that route
A long, dangerous journey with opportunist predators to boot

You would think there would be sympathy for these returning wretched
Yet the provisional government called them "recalcitrant and hollow-headed"
You see, earlier on, most had simply voted with their feet
Foregoing chaos, they'd packed their bags and left the country

Now, exiled souls twice removed, this was their homecoming
Leaving in a hurry, running away with just what they could carry
Tough love from the authorities on both ends, no tears for aliens
And extra scrutiny at the border, "non-Ghanaians are not welcome"

Ghana must go is how the trauma is recorded in folk memory
The damage was done and, worse, it was all so unnecessary
But such is the fraught and bitter legacy of the expulsion orders
As goes the proverb, try not to die when you are surrounded by vultures

Anybody could have told the authorities in Lagos that is is impossible to evacuate 700,000 (their own estimated figure) under their own imposed stringent conditions, within the period of one week that they opened the land borders

— Talking Drums May 1985

Talking Drums, May 20, 1985

Expulsion Orders, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify)

• Exodus by Bob Marley & the Wailers
• We trying to stay alive by Wyclef Jean
• Refugee Rolling by Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars
• The Exodus has Begun by Prince & the New Power Generation
• Get out of Town by Ella Fitzgerald
• Refugees by Gerard Musgrave
• Go Home by Gerry Mulligan & Ben Webster
• Pitche Mi by Youssou Ndour & Super Etoile de Dakar
  stately and mournful from the excellent contemporaneous album, Immigrés

Bonus beats: Shame on me by Alexander O'Neal

See previously Bags and Stamps

File under: Ghana, Nigeria, culture, immigration, displacement, exile, memory, Africa, history, politics, dictator, coup, loss, observation, perception, refugee, Things Fall Apart, Ghana must go, poetry, toli

Writing log: August 17, 2022

Shards of Solace

Shards of solace
The aftermath of heartbreak
Putting it back together

The comfort of a touch
Lingering on what had been
The afterglow of the memories

A spell was broken
So many lessons were learned
And in their wake, regret

Welcome to changes
Gather yourself, my friend, caution now
Pride and vanity have no place here

It's long past tallying
the missed opportunities
There'll be time enough to pick up the pieces

Shards of Solace, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Lessons by Eric Roberson
  To be a soul man in this era is almost anachronistic, the temptations, and distractions, are many so it's always refreshing to have a musician commit to the form. All this to say that Eric Roberson's Lessons album is the what I need this year.
• I Loved And I Lost by The Impressions
• Why Have I Lost You by Cameo
• How Can You Mend A Broken Heart by Al Green
• Lessons by Eric Roberson (ft. Anthony Hamilton, Raheem DeVaughn & Kevin Ross)

File under: culture, loss, love, observation, perception, life, poetry, toli

Writing log. April 21, 2022

Solemnity Premiums

Buried on Ash Wednesday, the reading was from Revelations
"Come", said the preacher, the message was an invitation
But to the funeral goers, the reference to Lent was no consolation
When in the throes of grief, there's only frustration
We sang Abide With Me, but there was no returning
For the loss was so keenly felt, it was all consuming

The tributes were read, brief and poignant
She'd trained us well, we were considerate
No one lost composure, the mask didn't slip
This was in Bristol, after all, stiff upper lip
Thousands of miles from home, with a virtual audience to boot
All of us dressed tidily in the most sober of black suits

Something was missing, however, it was the sounds of cries
If we were back in Ghana, clearly not a single eye would be dry
Imagine! The queen of Makola market,
   a woman so redoubtable
We were duty bound to celebrate her life
   by causing good trouble
To make a scene, bassa bassa,
   to weep uncontrollably on the side
For when your heart is so rendered,
   there is no keeping the soul quiet

Solemnity Premiums, a playlist

A stiff upper lip soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Please Don't Make Me Cry by UB40
• Keep it Inside by Cherrelle
• One Last Cry by Brian McKnight
• All Cried Out by Alison Moyet
• Warriors Don't Cry by Beres Hammond

See previously: Another Zoom Funeral

After Auntie Naa Abia Mary Mould

This note is part of a series: In a covidious time

File under: grief, funeral, culture, observation, perception, displacement, mourning, family, loss, Ghana, Africa, poetry, covidious, toli

Writing log: March 10, 2022

Prone

Trained officers
A tough job, we all know,
Policing

Jogging
Uppity
A stare
Traffic stop
Or sometimes just reaching

One wrong move
And your life slips away,
Your chest is heaving

Pleading for God and your mother
Or simply lying there
Bleeding

After the killing of Daunte Wright.

Soundtrack for this note

• Breakfast at Denny's by Buckshot Lefonque
• For Trayvon by Jose James

...

Timing is everything
Observers are worried

See previously: Goody Two Shoes

File under: outrage, murder, violence, guns, USA, police, death, grief, race, displacement, rage, culture, observation, perception, loss, waste, poetry, The Rough Beast, Observers are worried, toli

Writing log: April 13, 2021

Incalculable Loss

A year of incalculable loss
In part from predictable forces
And fragile economies

A suggestion of disarray
Warning residents to brace for
An alarming turn for the worse

The grim daily tallies
Another thorny challenge
Threatening the progress made

Damage, well beyond its borders,
Tears through the social fabric
The worst two weeks of our lives



After Covid Takes a Frightful Turn in South America
(New York Times, April 30, 2021)

Soundtrack for this note

Something In The Water (Does Not Compute) by Prince

See previously:

• Duty of Care
• Message From Our Leader

This note is part of a series: In a covidious time.

File under: language, poetry, culture, observation, perception, loss, Latin America, coronavirus, disaster, pandemic, journalism, Observers are worried, The Rough Beast, covidious, toli

Writing log: May 1, 2021

Gee

Under the frangipani tree
Next to indestructible yellow Fiat
We sat akimbo on the white chairs
The plants and flowers resplendent
My childhood garden of Eden
And every day we talked properly

After the earlier hours of yard work
Under her close supervision
And the carefree play and homework
On our return from Auntie Becky's
Fortified with kelewele and ground nuts
The ginger drinks, her secret recipe
Go get me a beer, then we can talk properly

And so we talked, we talked properly
We traded stories, we talked constantly
We laughed, oh how we laughed, she teased mercilessly
Loud, no one could ignore her, we argued frantically
Yet no grudges could be borne, we fought messily
There was only her warmth, she loved easily
The plants, the warmth, the talk, we talked properly

I was the one who named her plain old Gee
In response, she would call out my name repeatedly
Savor it as she brought out the family history
The lore that we celebrated, and the mysteries
Those fragments and markers that made up our identity
The bitter roots were never shirked, they were part of the lessons
In Gee's house we probed, for there were no unanswered questions
This is what lingers apart from the faded photos and the memories
Her warmth, the plants, the talk, we talked properly


In memoriam: Goody Okyne

Songs for Gee

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• 4 Noble Truths by Jose James
• Fairytales by Anita Baker
• Never too much by Luther Vandross
• Naam by Christy Azuma and Uppers International

Four stanzas is the least I could do. Let's place this under the banner of Social Living

File under: poetry, grief, obituary, culture, appreciation, loss, Ghana, family, personal, Africa, observation, memory, Social Living, Small Things, toli

Writing log: March 13, 2021

A Shadow's Burden

The soul's weight descends on the bearer in a blanket of worry
For something so insubstantial yet tethered to a foreign body,
There's a frightening power, a Newtonian attraction to its pull
The eclipse of the heart appears suddenly in the blink of a lifetime

Dark matters apply their weight handily on the human chest
The entire mass, the full pressure, a mountain of silhouettes
Fragments of grief, scarcity, and all manner of precarity
Step right on, send me your troubles care of the soul's sanctuary

As a boy I would run freely for hours and hide from my own shadow
Try as I could, God knows I tried, it was never out of my reach
As a parent, I've found that the toughest lesson I've had to teach
To my children, without a doubt, is that no one is promised tomorrow

A shadow's burden chases the notion of whimsy away
The upheaval leaves in its wake a patchwork of dismay
Heavy on the mind, the heart aches in search of a cure for the perceived defect
The body seeks solace, but only time can supply the blanket of neglect

A Shadow's Burden, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note. (spotify version)

• Mountain of When by Amel Larrieux
• Who's Gonna Take The Weight Kool & the Gang
• The Weight by Staples Singers
• Heavy On My Mind by Club Nouveau
• Hanging Heavy On My Mind by Doris Allen
• Beast of Burden by Donald Byrd
• The Weight by Aretha Franklin
• Step Right On by Young Disciples

See previously: The Laws of Grief and Rhythm of Loss

This internal displacement is part of a series: In a covidious time

File under: worry, life, concern, culture, observation, loss, perception, dread, grief, pressure, pressure, poetry, covidious, toli

Writing log: March 15, 2021

Restructuring Activities

The blue bags were the detail that lingered and that you first noticed
As the security guards escorted the unfortunate souls out of the building
The royal blue of our corporate logo, not quite Ikea blue or Big Blue
Lovely plastic bags filled with personal belongings, photos, wages due

The rumours had been spreading for weeks, it was hard to get any work done
We'd all started to worry about bank balances and the lack of emergency funds
The sword of the corporate Damocles loomed large over our heads
Water cooler conversation circled uneasily around the shape of dread

Some started polishing LinkedIn profiles and resumes
Replying to the recruiters' emails, the curriculum vitae
Truth be told, it could have been you that day, it was a roll of the dice
You'd been on the other side previously, the experience wasn't very nice

A day later, in Skype a number of avatars had "Presence unknown" as their status
Next to the grey offline dot, that naming designation was appropriately callous
The faces of the wounded members of your tribe forcibly ejected into the unknown
The rest of you counted your blessings and continued working in the torrid zone

The corporate communications were full of inspired euphemisms
Uneasy phrases that outlined the process behind these resource actions
The passive voice reigned supreme, in this agitation there were no actors
The dry prose never assigned clear responsibility, only fudge factors

The actions were ongoing, the separations were involuntary
This opacity about the recent events and their inevitability
It was all about "the changes that we've made", those were mandatory
"The decisions we've had to make", on the other hand, were necessary

Tough love was in our future, there could be no promises about tomorrow
Indeed we were to understand that management was tinged with sorrow
And the logistics were tricky, it takes weeks to layoff thousands
When you wanted to present a human face you had to make allowances

Give them a couple of weeks severance, and explain their options
The bottom line was, we had to put this behind us, it was time to move on
A wilful erasure of the cheeriness and all the previous certainties
The stage was set, we'd simply have to endure these restructuring activities

In the aftermath of this round of layoffs, I don't quite know what possessed me
To raise my hand, and indeed, my voice at the all hands meeting with my query
I simply asked the smiling executives if they could give us any guarantees
That those who had so grossly misallocated capital in stock buybacks
Had now adopted the right strategy to put The Company on the right track

There was a stunned silence at my impertinence, who knew?
"That's a very interesting question, you're not holding back, are you?
What was your name again?", he chuckled, that's all she wrote
Uh oh, you and your big mouth, I guess they were taking notes

In the event, the answer he gave was as expected:
"Piffle, paffle, wiffle, waffle"
Said with enough empathy to leave everyone baffled
In the land of concern, we wouldn't feel neglected

"Does that answer your question?"
"Indeed, thank you sir, I've learned a great lesson"
Woe is me, I should have kept my mouth shut
My future prospects had just received a haircut

Come to think of it, I never got a raise after that outburst
Luckily they weren't vindictive, they didn't do their worst
I've had years to recover, I make a good living, I can't say that I'm bitter
These days I keep my rather mild critiques of modern day shell games to Twitter

Restructuring Activities, a playlist

A soundtrack for this pink slip, I must admit I found it difficult to get beyond Gil Scott-Heron who captured this mournful moment with uncanny accuracy. Pieces of a man collected in blue bags. (spotify version)

• Pieces of a Man by Gil Scott-Heron
• Please Don't Make Me Cry by UB40
• C'est La Vie by Robbie Nevil
• In Between Jobs by Lynden David Hall
• I Go To Work by Kool Moe Dee

...

Timing is everything
Observers are worried

File under: work, life, culture, observation, perception, capitalism, office, job, culture, irony, waste, poetry, humour, USA, language, loss, The Rough Beast, Observers are worried, toli

Writing log. Concept: November 15 2018; March 25, 2021

What Paradise Have We Lost? (Song and Dance Edition)

I woke up to music just the other morning and I can safely say
That the most exhilarating nine minutes of recent memory
Was when The Seven Year Old and I took out our white handkerchief
And comfort blanket, respectively, and got down to our song and dance circle
Call it the musical antidote to the previous day's zoom funeral
Even as I was paying penance in this ongoing season of grief
Borborbor dances and other Abutia clan traditions soothe as remedies
Then I recalled the moment after we had lost Daa, when my Auntie
Briefly sublimated her pain and sorrow and lost herself in the dance
A few seconds of pleasure in fond remembrance of her mother
In a covidious time we live with the fear of the superspreader
The web gave a glimpse of African ceremonies of yore
This was the music of the Gods, what paradise have we lost?

...

Gee kindly Doctor Fauci
As a boy, I used to enjoy choir practice
That is, until my voice cracked
And hormones made my intentions mixed
These days, however, the danger is stacked
Singing in mixed choirs has been decidedly nixed
Until this pandemic's ended, we are well and truly stuck

A Debt Foretold, a playlist

See previously:

• What Paradise Have We Lost?
• The Laws of Grief

This grace note is part of a series: In a covidious time.

File under: life, coronavirus, pandemic, culture, observation, perception, music, dance, loss, change, tradition, grief, social, communities, covidious, poetry, Ghana, family, Africa, toli

Writing log: March 20, 2021

What Paradise Have We Lost?

The boy picked up a dandelion
Carefree as was his wont
But when it came to blowing it out
He was stymied by the face mask
No matter how hard that he huffed and he puffed
The fabric mesh that covered his mouth held fast

The mask against aerosols and other viral vectors
Did its duty of protection against childhood leisure
Thus whimsy was victimized by material culture
Revealing the extent of the plague's infrastructure
We were getting a truer measure of the pandemic's cost
Even as we asked, what paradise have we lost?

...

We passed our neighbor on our daily walk
But where we would usually stop and talk
We contented ourselves with a head nod and gave her a wide berth
Such are the rituals that are disappearing from this earth
Now alienation becomes common courtesy and a duty of care
The temporarary inconvenience of distancing as social welfare

That the breath of life carries tainted droplets is another irony
Anecdotal testimony abounds of the myriad covidious casualties
Biology imposes penalties and we weigh its shadow's burden
Deprived of touch and community, so many are truly hurting
This new normalcy, fraught and enforced, only exhausts
We are left pondering, what paradise have we lost?

Paradise Lost, a playlist

An upbeat soundtrack for this note, a tour of a world forlorn. (spotify version)

• Paradise by Sade
• Pastime Paradise by Stevie Wonder
• Fool's Paradise by Melisa Morgan
• Paradise Circus by Massive Attack
• The Sloganeer - Paradise by Meshell NdegeOcello

This internal displacement is part of a series: In a covidious time.

File under: life, coronavirus, pandemic, culture, observation, perception, loss, change, youth, tradition, social, communities, isolation, covidious, poetry, Small Things, toli

Writing log: March 13, 2021

Grief House

There's a house that I know very well, rebuilt over the years
That has now revealed that its skeletal frame is made out of tears
Ducts of worry, sorrow at the joints, and meshed in places by weary tissue
Many of these features were undetected at the initial walk through

The insulation is suspect, for the early builders were optimists
But later additions of redundancy came from the school of realists
Located in the torrid zone, there's always a struggle for ventilation
Thankfully, the last architect made sure there was no need for air conditioning

In that house in just a short period of time, the inhabitants
Have lost their siblings, nephew, and many friends and confidants
They've lost the light, there's no mirth or relief
Rather, they are paying tribute to the laws of grief

True, they have each other to turn to, to share the pain
A paradox, they are surrounded by absences all the same
Straining to recall the earlier moments of tenderness and laughter
That all is not lost, that they can still write new chapters

At the start of last year, they had readied one of the bedrooms
In advance of the summer visit from their son and family that loomed
Freshened and revamped for their grandchildren,
   blue and orange paint was procured
And applied with care but these last would have to make do with a virtual tour

There was also a new study and a flurry of other projects started
But they were all upended by the pandemic, which pulled out the rug
This covidious change of plans, the absence of touch, not even a hug
To lose the joy of a granddaughter running up to you unprompted

No company in the kitchen, to try out the secret recipe,
   no eager food taster
No unending questions asked about everything, no mischief maker
No one to sit in the lap, to tease, and fuss over their hair and apply lotion
Some lessons can only be taught in person, there is no remote option

No one to ask how this retirement home
   came to be surrounded by skyscrapers
Despite the noise,
   the young ones would have surely enjoyed studying the excavators
The Turkish contractors building next door fleeing Erdogan
   were students of Gülen
Who would now have to make their fortunes in exile in Ghana,
   it was only prudent

The Chinese crew who were busy putting up the other hotel
   had a few rocky moments
When the neighborhood learned these developers
   had just returned from Wuhan province
For a few months it seemed as if the tide would turn against these scapegoat Galamsey
But China recovered, and, with mask diplomacy and more,
   now leads the way

But back to the inhabitants of this house now in isolation
And eerie silence from those who normally brought conversation
Like most of the world, life has made them fretful prisoners
In the past year, it seems as if death was the only visitor

There is neither time nor space to list, so much loss, such an abundance
They've again tasted the essence of solitude
   and the quality of numbness
At a remove across an ocean,
   I've been confronted by the same grief surfeit
Oh to spend even a day in person with this wounded parental unit

It's a selfish concern, I know, but I miss their counsel
Thoroughly unsatisfactory to see them reduced to digital pixels
Of course, I realize that it's plainly the safe choice
But I'm now left with hearing their disembodied voices
Even without network lag, it feels as though there's always a mediator
Thwarted, again and again, by the attack of the viral interloper

Perhaps we'll all eventually get vaccinated
And one day procure the required travel certificates
I envision three generations together again, if life allows
I'd dearly love to enliven the setting of that grief house

Missing You, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note. (spotify version)

• Missing You by Soul II Soul ft Kym Mazelle
• I Miss You by Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes
• Missin' You by The Tony Rich Project
• Missin' You by Joi ft Raphael Saadiq

See previously: The Laws of Grief

This note is part of a series: In a covidious time.

File under: poetry, grief, personal, family, Ghana, wist, loss, longing, coronavirus, pandemic, culture, Africa, observation, perception, covidious, toli

Writing log: March 9, 2021

Rhythm of Loss

The unraveling of the self plays out with its own time signature
Breaking the compact constraints of traditional measure
While the blue notes of despair are the first to come across,
There is no transcribing the spirit's rhythm of loss

Some label the composition's cadence as a diminuendo
Eccentric, the induced fugue state gives rise to sudden shifts in tempo
A music of dissonance, compression and anarchy
Moaning accents and counterpoint, discord in a minor key

The blows of grief are known to assail with idiosyncrasy
Their percussive patterns jab the listener with frantic immediacy
Leaving the pressured victim untethered and seeking relief
Breath marks play their part in the soul's symphony of deceit

The dynamics of worry quaver in half steps without resolution
For agitation, furioso, doesn't bear internal modulation
Some virtuoso singers can get to the coda in nine bars of melody
But the fraught interval for all others merely leads to disharmony

The scale of the problem repeats in staccato transposition
The syncopated theme crosses the ledger line of dislocation
Tranquillo, the whole rest is always four beats
The timbre of the montage obeys the laws of grief

Rhythm of Loss, a playlist

A soundtrack to contrast from the foregoing intonation. (spotify version)

• Diminuendo And Crescendo In Blue by Duke Ellington
  Paul Gonsalves's ecstatic solo in my antidote. At each listen I marvel at the way it threatens to unravel and yet coheres in exuberance; thrilling, it demands to be danced.
• Circus in Rhythm by Count Basie
  Lester Young is really the feature here, this is the swagger of Kansas City swing
• Rhythm of Love by Anita Baker
  The 90's found my favorite soul diva in contemplation. Smoothed out, she remained caught up in the rapture.
• At a Loss by Brad Mehldau
  Liquid and limpid, the art of the trio
• Fascinating Rhythm by Ella Fitzgerald
  Impeccable as always, has anyone in history ever objected to Ella Fitzgerald?
• Rhythm-A-Ning by Thelonious Monk
  Monk's angular musicianship always reminds one that the piano is a percussive instrument, rhythm is king.
• Ride The Rhythm by Kool & the Gang
• Rhythm Daughter by Julie Dexter
  Some conscious soul and an irresitible groove from a highly underrated new moon daughter
• You've Got to Have Rhythm by John Ellison
• Circus in Rhythm by Lester Young
• Listen To The Rhythm by Sweet Honey In The Rock
• Rockin' In Rhythm by Duke Ellington
  It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.
• Night Rhythms by Lee Ritenour
• Rhythm Music Rides Again by Charlie Hunter
• Let The Rhythm Hit 'Em by Eric B. & Rakim
• He Ain't Got Rhythm by Lester Young
• Rhythm of Love by Marlena Shaw
• Fascinating Rhythm by Dianne Reeves
• Different Rhythms Different People by Us3
• The Rhythm by Kwame

And for a reprise, we can return to Julie Dexter's chorus, behold a rhythm daughter in full flow who moves to her own tune. Look who's got your back

I hear beats around me
Harmony that's soothing

See previously: The Laws of Grief

This internal displacement is part of a series: In a covidious time.

File under: loss, grief, poetry, metaphor, language, culture, observation, perception, humour, whimsy, Observers are worried, covidious, toli

Writing log: February 27, 2021

Taste

Of the senses that cruel nature can decide to deny
Taste is apparently the ugly stepchild
Likely to be easily dismissed without a thought
Or simply sacrificed as in a pact with Faust

Its function can even be subsumed by its siblings
Harken to the ancients of the Epicurean tribe
Who claimed that we eat first with our eyes
For even as visual appetites can be further whetted
By the alluring smells of culinary anticipation
I'm minded that even the sounds of food preparation
Can occasionally climb to the most flavorful heights

The hunger for touch and tangible connection
The music of comfort suites and aural pleasures
The sight of delightful contours elicit recognition
The familiar smell of home remains a welcome perception

True, there are magical feasts in fairy tales
And secret recipes are oft highlighted
The storytellers of yore emphasized poisonous potions
But far more of their plot points hinge on glorious visions
Suffice to say that the gustatory is underrated

The plague announces itself with the theft of taste
A sensual covidious casualty even before smell
Superfluous perhaps, this robbery, for food is fuel
But the pandemic's effect on the tongue means all is gruel

What a life, to be resigned to the bitterness of disappointment
To no longer know the meaning of a grain of salt
Or that the sweetness of a smile could be lost in appreciation
And sour moods could remain mere shadows rather than viscerally appall

No more folktales, what about the princess and the brown sugar?
What is the spice of life when everything now requires a food taster?
You can have all the riches in the world, all that money
But without comfort food, would the prince still savor the honey?

What circle of hell is this, with no easy excuses to forgo your broccoli?
Sustenance perhaps, but might as well go for feeding tubes really
Everything is pap, utter undifferentiated banality
This poisoned chalice that has become your new normalcy

A paradox, the sensory organ continues to exist
Still soft, warm and lush, this vestigial proboscis
This invisible disability remains a dark matter
Even as you sit ruing the loss of your taste receptors

The body compensates, they say, and refines the other textures
Enhanced smell might give you an entrée
   as a great nose in the perfume industry
But it's no consolation when you can no longer detect
   a wine that's merely ordinary
A subprime foreclosure on your mooted career as a fine wine buyer

We've been reading the tale of the lost stories
Narratives of control; this paradise from which we’ve been severed
Social distancing with so many unable to walk in glory
Pity the survivor however, at a remove from a taste of heaven

The heart leaps at the mention of Auntie Becky's kelewele
Roadside excellence, the comfort food of Labone childhood reveries
The intense longing, an almost physical vibration
Synesthesia, I can picture the plantain with such acuity
But to have these flavors foregone would be agony
To be left with only the color of memory
Would a kiss of life even be extraordinary?
Taste, a lack of sensation, to no longer be at ease
It is said that nostalgia can be a fatal disease

After learning of my sister's covidious condition and a friend stuck in Texas trying to summon the memory of the taste of plantain

Taste, a Playlist

A tasty soundtrack for this grace note. (spotify version)

• A Taste of Honey by Lizz Wright
  It melts on your tongue
• Just a Taste of Lovin' by Al B Sure
  It's all you need
• Your Love - So Good I Can Taste It by Barry White
  He takes his time but once he gets going, well...

  "You ever hear a three-hundred-pound black man with sweat dripping out of his process get so overcome by the goodness of his woman's "love" that he stops forming actual syllables and instead just goes to rolling his tongue around and making "brrrrrr" sounds like a baby? Welcome to Barryland."

• 65 Bars and a Taste of Soul by Charles Wright & The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band
• A Little Taste by Cannonball Adderley
• A Little Taste of Soul by Sugar Pie DeSanto
• Taste Your Love by Horace Brown
• Mr Pitiful by Big Daddy Kane
  The album is titled Taste of Chocolate after all
• Kiss of Life by Sade
  Wist and extraordinary comfort are to be found here.

See previously: Touch

This sensory process is part of a series: In a covidious time

File under: poetry, taste, sensory, culture, observation, perception, loss, coronavirus, pandemic, disease, nostalgia, food, covidious, Observers are worried, toli

Writing log: February 12, 2021

Early to Despair

I guess I was early to despair; don't call it prescience for, as I've noted, I'd rather be wrong.

They say misery loves company but I'd rather not have fellow travelers of gloom, it only accentuates the impotence and, indeed, the outrage.

I retired my coronavirus superspreading event timeline months ago, noting that the die was cast, that public health notions were being roundly ignored. If anything, there has been a quickening of dismay since then. While friends continue to send links of doom, there's been no joy in this repetition.

The Sturgis motorcycle rally, the White House clusters, the Swiss yodeling concert catastrophes, the Redding megachurch, the Sweet Sixteen superspreader session, the schools and universities high on their wishful thinking, the Gators, the Yale men's hockey team, and so forth.

Worse still, the continued refusal to address the meatpacking plant and food production pipeline and protect farm and other workers. I'm no Upton Sinclair, but Mr Surgeon General, Mr CDC Director et. al, you have plainly failed. Titans of failure, ship stewards of the Titanic, do you sleep at night?

I suppose if "they" won't even take simple steps to protect themselves, it was always going to be an uphill struggle for them to protect the needy, yet essential, Others.

Social living is a bridge too far for these rulers' psyches, it's the antithesis of the conqueror's catechism.

At the outset it was a parlor game, speculating on which outrage or dereliction would be the most catastrophic in the ongoing shambles. There were many candidates and, sadly, all have done their worst.

Soundtrack: Do your worst by Jaguar Wright

It gave me no pleasure to note that Ghana had managed things better than the US, UK and even France. It would be a strange kind of pride to think of celebrating that we were less inept. Dancing, as it were, on the graves of strangers. Human lives lost unnecessarily anywhere is an affront to one and all.

The notion of a Center for Disease Control is essentially a modern American invention. How many times in recent decades have American or Western logistics and expertise rolled in to save the day around the world? The modern language of public health has long followed the American script. It is confounding to watch the inaction and rank paralysis. Like students watching teachers flail, one starts to second guess all previous lessons.

And now we'll probably want to quarantine any American help. Their navy vessels are suspect viral vectors, Tyson's frozen chicken could well have RNA droplet coating; they have so little concern for their workers safety. Secretary Scalia in any case would have gutted any OSHA enforcement actions. The guys in the white hats died with their boots on.

The big asterisk of skepticism now looms over all things American.

The Brits have had longer to deal with decline and the fall from grace, and have the long history and attendant coping mechanisms to disarm the potency of perceived incompetence, if not impotence. Decades ago, the Suez imbroglio opened eyes and forced a reassessment of their stature. Still the notion that Mr Johnson's entanglements and dithering cost tens of thousands of lives ought to be hard to take.

Rude awakenings galore are in prospect in short. There will be a reckoning for "excess mortality" no matter how couched.

The saving grace culturally is the lack of reflection in America life, especially when coupled with this curious affinity for selective amnesia, mythmaking and nostalgia. Bunk and hokum at once, and the stab in the back routines have been readied to distract. The Murdoch press is well practiced.

There will be scapegoats for the shambles. It will be the usual suspects that will be said to be the blame, no matter how improbable; the stakes are simply too high for the culpable to admit responsibilty.

Still, if all you have is marketing prowess and the hard sell but fail plainly at operational excellence and execution, the world will pick and choose your wares at their leisure.

Goodwill and reputations are hard to win but easily squandered. You have to fall back to the tropes of disaster recovery once your brand in the toilet. Tough crowds abound. The downsides of a grievous decline in stature are all too severe.

I know all too well about lost decades. Ghanaians are still living down visions of Ghana must go and our basket case interludes. Reputation scrubbing is an all-consuming endeavor, if not a generational struggle.

Still, the parade of dubious decisions made, even in the face of months of increasingly dire warnings, is hard to take. You can't say that we don't know how to protect, or where transmission is likely to occur. The timeline made it obvious.

I was incandescent with rage in April that my uncle's rehab facility in Boris Johnson's austerity-ravaged NHS became his grave rather than his sanctuary. The notion that, months later, countless others are having to face this same fate, that other families are going through this unbounded grief is scandalous.

That nursing homes are still daily death traps is beyond disgrace. For shame.

Shame

Pandemic fatigue might be a thing, indeed epidemiologists incorporate it in their models, but it only really matters because so much goodwill and time has been squandered. There was no mobilization to secure equipment and resources or ramp up testing capacity.

Beyond ignorance and wishful thinking, there is the fact that people clearly assess risk and value life differently. Fine, I hear you say, it is what it is. Opinions differ, yada yada...

I would counter that, again, this is something epidemiologists model. It's the human factor: for any plan, there will be non-compliance. This is the challenge of any public health intervention. During this pandemic we may all be amateur epidemiologists, but, surely, the best practices are well known by now.

Rules and regulations should be simple and explained plainly. Most importantly, rules should be enforced, shared sacrifice demands no less. If we are all in this together, there can be no impunity, no trips to Barnard Castle.

Clear consistent communication is of the essence. Mixed metaphors are perilous and sow confusion.

The active disinformation and the weaponization of ignorance that we have seen is nigh genocidal, most certainly sociopathic, and, arguably, criminal.

I would say disgraceful if I wasn't so sure that shame was an impossibility with Trump and company.

And yet. And yet.

I'm minded that I've been writing my Things Fall Apart series for years now and should be no stranger to things indeed falling apart. I have my coping mechanisms against incipient despair; I mint playlists, I bury myself in writing and reading. I find joy in small things and optimism even in daily absurdity.

As Theodore Roethke put it in his celebrated poem:

In a dark time, the eye begins to see

Robert Lifton, writing in an atomic age, expanded on this notion and tried to achieve the psychological effect of an emetic through the juxtaposition of carefully chosen words; it's an approach I've come to embrace as an antidote to despair.

...

Years ago, I came across some paintings by Edward Munch at Harvard's Fogg art museum. It wasn't quite The Scream but they seemed in the same vein. 2020 has been a year of primal screams all around. A juxtaposition suggested itself naturally when I came across Kodjo Crobsen's satirical works which have had pride of place in my pandemic reading. The illustration of the angel that he would publish periodically in his columns, as Ghana seemed happy to go from worse to worse during our lost decades, was especially poignant. The angel's message was always the same and it was fitting:

At this point, subsequent horrific events are still reversible...

So yes, early to despair yet resilient and hopeful for a reversal of fortune. Things can be salvaged and the point of the daily struggle daily is the knowledge that there will be better days ahead.

Nor can you long be, what you now are, called fair,
Do what you may do, what, do what you may,
And wisdom is early to despair:
Be beginning; since, no, nothing can be done
To keep at bay
Age and age’s evils, hoar hair

The Leaden Echo - Gerard Manley Hopkins

Optimistic, a playlist

• Optimistic by Sounds of Blackness
• Better Days Ahead by Gil Scott Heron

This note is part of a series: In a covidious time

File under: despair, culture, observation, perception, grief, loss, waste, coronavirus, pandemic, covidious, outrage, public health, Observers are worried, toli