Faces; the door to
beauty, bold, ugly and bad
I have the face of a
model, a madman, a prostitute, a doctor…
…a Zulu man, a
contractor, in fact, the face of a faceless face
You see your face in
mine because I see my face in your face
No wonder the face of
the world is in phases of faces
They call them
hominid, erectus and sapien
Yet I don’t talk
about the faces of these phases
Because this poem
itself has no face but a phase
I talk about the
faces of my phase, our phase not …
…the faces of their
phase
The faces of their
phase were green, blue, white, black…
…orange, brown and
others faceless
The faces of our
phase is one, a single generation from the same calabash
Drinking from the
same phase of milk
Yet, our face is just
a phase: it has an end!
So, tell Yaa, Akos,
Ama, tell that Asian women,
Those in the Americas
and Europe, they are beautiful!
But the beauty behind
their beautiful faces is their phase
My face is mine and
your face is yours
We have one face
because of our phase
If we have to remember
our faces,
We have to make our
phase a better one
Faceless faces of
dignity and patriotism make a better phase
Never shall our phase
be defaced by our faces
Because a phase
without a face is phase-less
Atawura Philip
Academy of Young
Writers – Ghana
Creative Writers and
Orators Club
Miraster2@live.com
0267 514131
