Things you bring to the sea

You
Your thoughts
A lover’s scar
A cup of coffee
The weight on your shoulders
The hope in your eyes
Your ancestors’ courage
The weakness in your knee
The many tragic endings
The forever that lasted in a day
The sore stares of strangers
on the subway
You

——–

The forces who claim they love us level our lives to crust

The century-wide dance
of swapped shackles for democracy
Their batons and exchanges thrown
at our whole lives
Demanding for us to cooperate
To save who? You and me?
Our graves lie separate
Our paths never cross

I open a book to a naked page where nothing
clatters my heart
What head lied to us?
What teeth taught us not to cringe?

We hear their songs every day
Some choose to swallow it
It’s in their blood, their head, their bellies and their legs
Making it difficult to take a step
To fight the monster that comes to us at daybreak.

But I choose not to sing along
Their letters and songs just dig graves that soon bury us
And I do not want to be part of the heaped hate lying in front of my door.
——–

Poems (c) Richard Asamoah
Photo by Khalil Yamoun on Unsplash (modifed)