Henry Akuete: My Poems and some

the shadow, the perpetual shadow standing tall above my dome silently creeping behind me walking on my dark foot prints in the dark it only remains darker in the rain it still towers over me it must not be my own shadow my shadow wouldn't be over me but still it persists in the brightest day in my dreams its casts a dark figure tall when all bows to the howling wind i am scared to turn about me now for what i see will tear my soul out so i walk on with my chin to my chest eyes closed to all around me now chastised by the silent sound behind behind and above it is absent ahead anchor to my forward movement if i fail where i now must go then it is for my fright for the shadow the shadow, the shadow, the shadow

I see no meaning in this even harder when i ask i was born and i will die a flame bright to smoulder where is the scale's center the balance we call truth men are not equal in the sun dwarves run among giants the coin chooses who to love what she sees i do not know falling in the arms of ogres better men die alone and cold i wish she will smile at me when we cross paths at the market but i am invisible to her i think she stays faithful to death while i covert another man's wife why won't she love me women can love more than one

Our women are gone we are married to ghosts we stay all night weeping for them weeping for glory days past when our women were dark and proud walking tall in the noonday sun we would beat our chest loudly that is my woman in the marketplace until they sent us a vile disease to wipe out our women and leave us this disease that first made them mad mad so much as to hate their skin this skin which made them envied by white women in the western halls in madness they peeled their skin in pain we watched them turn white poisoned by their own hands we saw now they walk among us pale shadows grey ghosts in our own cold beds our children know them no more for the mothers of black Africa are no longer black.