Dear Daughter

Dear Daughter I have never loved myself enough To laugh through the rough times I have seen different colors Fading in the beauty of the flowers I have woken up to different nightmares Only to calm down through the power of a Prayer I know of those days when I needed someone beside me to…

For the blues

It’s 4am and you’re awake like your body’s been paged. You’re wondering if it will be worth it to sleep for 30 more minutes before starting your day. They’re playing a senseless song on the radio and it feels like such a waste of airplay. So you tuck yourself in to rest your brain. You’re…

Poetra Ama Asantewa Diaka

Poetra Ama Asantewa Diaka is as a young and combative Ghanaian artist, living between the African country and the US. She doesn’t want to be boxed into the definition of “poet” or “writer” – she rather describes herself as a “storyteller“, since the term “encompasses all the ways she can tell a story” – as…

The Searching Cheats

Whirl of the wind Sing decades of familiar tunes Encroaching voices of old whispering stories untold Cold the breeze our bodies Freeze The Misplaced Birds they say they wail “We have lost our way” We are to show them their way We? We point They screech “Where?!” We point again And again Then we tell…

Alright with me

Following the piper, Of smiles and laughter, Acknowledged, once the clutter Packed on your mind falters. By words of truth, Manifestations from Youth, An allegiance to trust in Freedom It’s the chime of love bells, On the highest altar. Link to the Italian version

I Am Black

You look at me and see: Black African Evil. You turn up your nose and like a pig you snort… Or is it a sneer? Or maybe… just maybe… as you scurry away like a cockroach do you wonder what I am? I am Black I am African A child of the continent you once…

Let Me Enjoy Me

I Am Human Female Coloured Black Breathing bits of my sensibilities Let. Me. Be. Let Me feel Me and breathe Me And sip my beautiful self Taste my mind intoxicated by My thoughts Let Me enjoy Me And know how beautiful I can be The brown of my skin… a rainbow of brown Red yellow…

The Honey Pot

Amina soaps up her breasts, her thighs and her derriere Amina squats and washes her honey pot it doesn’t produce much honey these days Amina washes the suds from her hair and skin She has used the expensive rose-scented bath oil that Fiifi gave to her on her birthday He likes it Amina dries herself…

She Seas

She will carry me away If I stare long And hard enough A wise old woman once whispered in my ear If I danced long and hard enough for the Sea She would dance into her waves laugh me into her warm endless depths that big, roaring laughter that shook the earth to its very…

About Development

They tripped over that strange opaque place Lunged, twisted, and nearly fell on their face Gained ground on a rebound and then Fled from the potential site of their fall from grace This is the pattern repeated often, Never explained but should not be forgotten Not by those who witness the chasm Between the have’s…