An Ode Celebrating Koforidua Flowers

By Kwesi Atta Sakyi

19th October 2012

(This poem is dedicated to all the beautiful Ghanaian women in Ghana and everywhere)

In sophomoric braggadocio gentlemen dare,

With effrontery and audacity of a cockroach,

Everywhere they survey, flowers to stare

At the hornets nest, trouble to stir

To their lewd and livid mind they give no rest,

They parade their folly on their bare chest,

Aiming to cajole Koforidua flowers, they invest,

In time and money, the iroko trees of nondescript

Genre prevaricate,

Are these gentlemen of the jury ready for the test,

Jejune, they want to appraise blossoming

Nubile neophytes,

Advantaged by their vantage position on the social tower

In plenitude stand multitudes of innocent flowers,

Koforidua flowers abound everywhere,

In Accra, Takoradi, Cape Coast, Swedru, Ho,

Tamale, Tema and Oseikrom,

You name it around the world

First grafted and sprouted by the Creator,

From the first iroko tree that towered

At the centre of the garden of creation,

Transplanted and spread to all corners of the globe

The harder you look at Koforidua flowers,

The less and less you know their character,

But if you look hard enough,

Enigmatic Koforidua flowers come in diverse

hues, shapes and sizes,

Even though of the same mother stock,

Yet inscrutable and indecipherable they

Are to their male iroko trees who bore them

Some dudes and dandies prefer them thin and tall,

Others, ebony black with immaculate

White gapped teeth, thick and tall,

Some sport surplus succulent teats,

Others, bushy eyebrows and thick oily lips,

There are those bumpy and lumpy sideways swinging hips

Swaying to and fro like a merchant ship,

Or like a crab doing a swinging dance on the seashore,

Yet others trail heavy duty behinds,

Otublohun bums of this world,

Or would you have slender giraffe necks or ostriches’,

What of cassava sticks and duiker legs,

Contrast heavy elephantine timber limbs,

Yes, flowers of diverse hues, shapes and sizes,

Can confuse and confound many an ogling

Gangling male conquistador,

Take care; you can be gored like a matador,

At the flowery butchery, a massacre in a watery grave.

With your massive mower in one hand,

A hammer and a scythe in the other,

You perceive the grass green to graze,

Alas, scythe in hand ready to harvest,

Hammer in hand ready to strike or spike,

You suppress and oppress, using brain and brawn,

Yet these bling bling bevies are up to the wiles,

They may be far ahead in miles of your wiles

Your mower blade could splutter on first impact,

and break up in shards and smithreens,

Soft woman power may disarm rude

Herculean homos,

A thing of beauty, like a rose,

Has its hidden catch of a spike

For no apparent reason,

Commit acts of misprision of treason

By your fanciful flights of fancy conceive,

And jump on flowers in their season,

Odious oddities cause atrocities, so reason,

Evil dispassionate passion ends up in rapes,

Yet, see how gorgeous the flowers are draped,

It is not for you to take advantage to rape

Nope. Each entity to be consummated

In blossom by a bloke for life on the altar

Turn you not into butterfly or peripatetic philanderer,

Sucking nectar from flower to flower,

Then in old age, your prostate gland to

flower,

Atoning for your irresponsible youthful ambuscades

And amorous adventures and misadventures

In a fell swoop, don’t swoon

and fall into a reverie of unprintable trance,

With hallucinations of masturbations galore,

For, a gentleman to tick, not in

phantasmagoria,

Don’t forget the golden rule –

Don’t lick the chick with your dick

Nor will your willy to act the penal prick

For, that will be far beside the trick

Unless she is your pick for life,

Chastity, chastity, chastity,

Else you make me sick

Click not your joy stick

And stick by your single chick,

Else you get stuck in sticky blues

Don’t boast your bestial prowess

Nor underestimate Koforidua flowers

They have hidden soft powers

They can make you droop and cower,

Aphrodisiac, Viagra and boosters

Notwithstanding,

You can brood when you malfunction

In their hen’s coop, you may face your first coup

When you boob and droop

Unless you do a Fela or Rasputin,

You will be encapsulated and disarmed

Like a novice Ecomog soldier.

You will be enticed into a flowery watery grave,

Before you know, you are a raving knave

Go shave your hair in Samson’s cave,

For, a Delilah awaits Casanova in her lair,

By her silky ways, she is fair,

If you’ve game, pay your fare

And fall comatose into a snare,

That was made from your ribs spare

Will you have one or two or several

Yet only one is meant for you from your spare rib

Like the fish eagle, stick by your lady for life

All others are booby traps

Waiting to snap and eat you up,

Beware, Koforidua flowers scare,

Can you eat hairy meat,

Or fish with lambent eyes?

Blimey. Spare me a Medusa act

That may gorgonise and petrify you.

By Kwesi Atta Sakyi

Contact: kwesiattasakyi449@gmail.com

NOTES

1. Iroko is a giant tropical hardwood. In Ghana, we have the odium equivalent. Iroko is a Yoruba word from Nigeria.

2. Otublohun is a nickname or slang in Ghana, used by guys to describe the big bums of some ladies. The term originally refers to a suburb of Accra.

3. Kokoridua is the regional capital of the Eastern Region in Ghana. Ghana is a unitary state which is divided into 10 regions. Koforidua is a place of scenic beauty as it is surrounded by mountains and lush tropical rain forest. Koforidua flowers figuratively refer to the beautiful ladies who abound in Koforidua.

4. Ecomog refers to the regional peacekeepers who were deployed for peacekeeping operations in Liberia and Sierra Leone by the regional economic bloc, ECOWAS, during the civil wars.

5. Non-Christians have to familiarize themselves with the biblical account of creation as well as the tragic story of Samson and Delilah.

6. Readers should refer to my earlier poem, An Ode Celebrating Manhood, which was published on Ghanaweb on 9th October 2012, Article No 252468. This poem is sequel to that one.

7. Rasputin (1865-1916) was a Russian monk who was said to possess excessive male genitalia. So was it also alleged of Fela Anikulapo Kuti (1938-1997), he music maestro who married about a dozen wives. Rasputin’s real name was Grigory Yefimovich Novykh. He was said to have had mystic powers and had exercised insidious and perfidious influence on the tsarist monarchy.

8. Oseikrom is the name residents of Kumasi in the Ashanti Region of Ghana give to their city. It was named after their founder King Osei Kofi Tutu I, who was killed in a war with the Akims while crossing the River Pra around 1717. Osei Tutu I was helped by Okomfo Anokye, a Guan from Akwamu and Awukugua. He helped Osai Tutu I to defeat their hegemon, Denkyira’s Boa Amponsem and he eloped with the King’s niece, Abena Bensua.Okomfo Anokye conjured the Golden Stool, believed to have descended from the sky. Others believe that the stool was spirited away from Bono in present day Brong Ahafo, which is to the immediate north of the Ashanti Region, which became the hunting grounds of Shanti Kings such as Obiri Yeboah. Okomfo Anokye instituted the Odwira Festival for the Ashantis as an annual festival to celebrate their unity. Because the golden stool was conjured on a Friday, it was nicknamed Sikagua Kofi (Golden son to Manu Kotosii who was niice of Oti Akenten and sister to Obiri Yeboah, his father was Owusu Panyin. Okomfo Anokye was an Akwanu from Berekyso, under Ansa Sasraku, where we had the fetish called suman Otutu. Osai Tutu’s love affair in Denyira produced King Ntim Goyakan, who was later defeated by Shanti to end Denkyira hegemony.

(Sources – Wikipedia-Daily Graphic 2006; Baafuor Osei Akoto)

9. Medusa was a beautiful Greek girl who was suffering from self-love or narcissism. In the temple of Athena on the Acropolis, Medusa derided the statue of Athena. Athena cursed her and she was turned into a pillar of stone with her hair turned into hissing snakes. She was banned from society and exiled to the land of the gorgon sisters at the end of the world. Anyone who looked on the statue of Medusa was said instantly petrified or turned into stone. So goes Greek mythology. (Contrast biblical account of Lot’s wife who looked back on the burning cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and she was instantly turned into a pillar of salt.)

10. Is it true that Ghanaian women or Koforidua flowers are the most unfaithful in the world?

By Kwesi Atta Sakyi

Contact: kwesiattasakyi449@gmail.com