Two Visual Poems by Jacob Kobina Ayiah Mensah

Underlings

Jacob Ayiah Kobina Mensah

I falter, 

I imbibe, 

I repel. 

The choice of harshness I’ve made from a marble is
an equitable judgment like meretricious sunbeam.
I shift its shadow with an abruptness of yours
& catch myself for something else instead. I draw
a long breath from where the fever is sustained.
I’m tired of its announcement & that attraction.
Those hills that don’t make up maths. Get your
menfolk in order & I’m getting mine in check.
I retweet this when the scrap dealer returns with
a huge wheelbarrow. I carry echoes along a dotted line
you’ve left behind in my life. These waste memories,
parts burned, or rusted, or mothed. I hang my pins
on Pinterest. I sip hot coffee & stand elsewhere
still watching. I wrestle every vein &
artery in the soil, so still in my gentle gesture.
I imagine commuters descending in a dream.
I follow your gaslight in the wet night, wrapped
with rainclouds in the direction of the copse.
I think the scrap dealer is whispering
in the Rift Valley, telling me to return home.
Change of names in this public pulpit doesn’t change the grass entangling
with our shadows. That’s why you won’t cover
up that indecency. But the whole game is mixed
up in my imagination. I justify in your own
mind. A distant spectator in the future
engineers your arrival at the scene. I sheep
my thoughts from the collectors of black people.
I stop by your gargoyle. His garish face remains
in a mirror behind me. I carry his slip that gives
buyers more information about your life
to decorate old pottery I posit for positivism.
Here I struggle to hear those who practise charity,
generosity, or kindness. Here I vision a place beyond 

my skin. Here I go beyond this. I glue my vision
with questions. Why am I here? Why am I doing
the work I do? Have I failed for looking elsewhere? I’m flogged
with the past. I feel the barbed ends. That’s why in Alberto Giacometti’s
hands, I unlock massive shadows that seem to puzzle what I decide
around the hoary gleam I endeavor to catch in a course. My shadow is a span,
I chatter about who’s indifferent to pain or pleasure & that seems too good
for a common purpose against a year of communicating across the seas.
I find out myself by second sight, still leaning back against
the red sofa, I add an eye I’ve gotten over the stile without making
the room for myself to cross in silence with an impulse holding me fast.
I’m half wild with delight when I’m heading for the railway
station. I follow the signs. I cross many places. I’m hit on
my windscreen an extraordinary sun, a slap on the whole
model. I’m sweating from the unexpected heat. I study the map
& search the time from this metronome during the convulsion.
I can see the small town among the convolvuluses by a muddy
bank. I sum up the promises, & nothing is left in the hands
of a security officer, who’s standing behind his life & your
winch. I guess my photographs in the conversation you’ve
recorded & that aren’t for exhibition or distribution. I open my eyes
very wide to see the future beyond the boundary we build & cross. 

Redemption

Jacob Kobina Ayiah Mensah

#1-#7 (click on pictures to scroll)

#8

T h i n k

3 pounds

of the next body

the door out

of yourself is straight ahead showing

a black plate you are the moment

build ing oragami about halftone places

w i t h

no rules & well cut out

or in open recognition

this gra dation

from light

to shade re mains

a distance

be tween

m o o n s

#9

This is

morning

t h is is

your moment

&

t h i s

due for sale

or

this is

something ahead

this is

home

to be

lessened again

#10

I t is even

harder

to be

a second-hand s h i r t from a distant pole

#11

s
t
i
l
l
h
a
n
g
i
n
g

from
a pole
waiting
for a prize
of retirement

#12

hawkers hurrying

along the pavement

calling

whistling

dropping things

someone turns your lamp out & come inside

I am halfway down the stairs

#13

the last question burns as swirling darkness & I recross the street

I step into the next shop the bell tinkles on

the door & you look at my establishment

every Saturday at this time you serve me tea & swapped smiles with commuters

#14

appetite languished in that exhibition

#15

suddenly silences rise from the vibration of the night

Author’s Commentary: I believe that art must emerge from issues of clash that spring from a moment between a tragic and a ridiculous. This art is the central part of every work I create. However, for this work, it concerns the fragmentation of the modern life associated with antagonism among races, competition between nations, the battle between men and women, the conflicts of a divided psyche, and the dualistic thinking that sets them against us. 

Jacob Kobina Ayiah Mensah, an algebraist and artist, works in mixed media.  His poems have appeared in numerous journals. He lives in the southern part of Ghana, in Spain, and the Turtle Mountains, North Dakota.