Henry Akuete: My Poems and some

I refuse to die Even when I was a product of a leaking condom Or a manifestation of a failed contraceptive alternative I refused to die In a race against thousands of my sperm-celled kin Most of who would have become better men than I am today I refused to die From a childhood of adversity and malnutrition Hunger and tears with my catarrh for staple food Driven from school for lack of cheap tuition When the government should fund my very education I refused to die As a teenager with none but the streets for a father And the motherhood of women of questionable character On the streets where boys became fiends and drugs addicts And the same streets where girls became ‘nyashes’ I refused to die Though I was an outcast ‘smelling Jew’ Among peers of colored-flag cult fraternities A ‘konji’ infested teenage virgin In a world where sex is lower than a handshake I refused to die Now I persevere a stubborn grown adult In a world where I’m not

Give me coveted ethanol Give me liquor aged and cured Give me craved alcohol Give me the elixir of gods Wash my mind dark and cloudy Take away pain and drown sorrow Let me sink into the deep a while Into silence in a world of noise Oh give me warm gin Burn my throat and light my eyes A shot or two for the road To see clear in haze and cloudy mist Alas I'm overwhelmed Pressed by unfriendly life within Weighed down the deep Where all is death and tears So give me ethanol If a friend to me you remain Hand me a glass And so take this bitter weight For in a glass do I find life Where all hope is but strangled In a glass I find quiet respite Sleeping awake from a real nightmare