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Kisses of a Chameleon: A Collection of Poems

  • Jacob Deladem Elikem
  • 633-673
  • Jun 11, 2024
  • Education

Kisses of a Chameleon: A Collection of Poems

Jacob Deladem Elikem

St. Francis College of Education (Administrative Assistant), University of Education, Winneba- Hohoe Study Centre (Assistant Lecturer)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.51244/IJRSI.2024.1105041

Received: 25 April 2024; Revised: 08 May 2024; Accepted: 13 May 2024; Published: 11 June 2024

ABSTRACT

The events of life unfold. Many of the life’s issues are outside the scope of man’s ability to control while others are controllable. In all situations, one thing remains common- how the stories are told. Storytelling, songs, drama are but a few ways to carry the issues of a generation to the other. Kisses of a chameleon: a collection of poems is a rich outpour of original poems written to portray general life issues. These poems are a reflection of the writer’s environment and seeks to carry the reader on a journey across the ‘oceans of life’.Though a marketing professional, the writer is blessed with a natural talent of writing poems, oratory, Kente weaving, among others. Reading through these poems will take your mind to the writer’s African setting while speaking to some issues on the global seen in poetic language.

Keywords: Poetry. Love. Father. Africa.

INTRODUCTION

  1. Topic: Songs of The Night Bird

Cogitations of heavy Kilograms,

Insomnia from dawn to dust.

Few decades of life’s torture.

A friend to share, a microphone to public.

How do I carry ‘me’ through the next decades!

I want to share a part of me.

They call me too introverted

They say, share to free your mind

They advise that it’s unhealthy to be silent

They show me stats of the insane

But who made me who I am?

Who shut me in my shells?

I want to share a part of me.

The judgement of the ‘righteous’

The ridicule of the ‘smart’

The blame game of ‘my kind’

The street signage of my past shared stories…

Like walls of stones

Shut me in my shell,

No matter how much

I want to share a part of me.

  1. Topic: Efforts and Choices

Before dawn, I read You

By noon I need You.

Seems I can’t have enough of You

My world revolves around a planet called You

I kill myself, just so I can have You

But my efforts and your choices.

I want to pull the strings

And test your stay

I want to sting your skin

And try your tears

It seems like a one-way traffic

Because your choices defy my efforts.

I stay long hours, longing your efforts

Praying You’ll choose Me

But my wait awaits forever

Your wings take you far away

Your paths parallel mine

My efforts, though all I can give

Never seem to win your choices.

If forever never comes

It is your choices against my efforts.

  1. Topic: Irony of love

I only wanted you to be happy

I wanted us to experience a deep part of each other…

I didn’t realize I was giving away a part of me I will never get back

I didn’t know the sour cream on the cake tasted bitter

I didn’t understand love hurts.

I thought it was all juice from the sweetest source.

May I curse the day I gave out that part of me?

May I hold on to the pain and hurt and regret?

May I keep it in memory and speak to Kudzo, my son about it?

That I gave a precious jewel to a pig…

That I placed a gold chain around the neck of a swine that trampled it under feet…

That I gave the right part of me, with the purest intentions, to the wrong person…

Love is hurt.

  1. Topic: Adam’s Eve

I know her

I know she is not perfect

I understand she will disappoint me at some point

She is a ‘weaker’ man with a womb

I seek no perfection!

The creator made her ‘help mate’

Not much she can carry

I know her…

The generation has messed up many

Loud ignorant ‘mentors’ corrupted her thinking

Her innocence was abused by my kind

She walks, a wounded lamb…

I know her.

No doubt about her ability

She is brave and intelligent

Give her the oil

She is born with an inner strength to ‘anoint’ her home

The builder! The reformer! The iron that sharpens.

I seek her

Sometimes in the wrong bodies

I desire her

Many a time at the wrong places

I search for her, at times, with the wrong motives

But I need her

The best nature can give me

I long for an anointing

Only her love can give.

  1. Topic: The Burnt Pages

I hid me

In the ‘dusts’ of duty

Under the shades of ‘busy-ness’

I cover me with religious rituals.

The true me,

A page I wish was never written.

The real me, is a scene I pray is ‘deletable’.

Society disdains my kind

Religion writes off my type

I hate a part of me

My left hand, unwilling to touch the right hand

My cruel dirty yesterday,

Soils my tomorrow, today.

At dawn I smile to the world

At dust I soil my pillows

So yes!

I shut me in

I cover up

I hid me….

So the burnt pages are never read.

  1. Topic: The Puzzled Lizard

I’m puzzled

But not perplexed

Wondering…

Why life swings on a wheel

With so much shifts of shits.

Why days of love

Have many deals of lies.

I’m lost in thoughts

Why a language of the gods

Is abused yet ‘revengeless’?

Ego, frustration, selfishness and ingratitude,

Are but few of the lots

In the busket of ‘love’.

I chose a pearl…

Broke it, dusted it with sand

I pushed it away

It goes to refine itself

I want it back.

Cruel me…!

May the gods purge my hands.

May the east wind, blow me wisdom.

But roses indeed have thorns

They appeal to the eyes of the blind

But prick with no mercy.

The ancestors may have called it rose

And not love…

It’s fragile beyond the care of the careless.

  1. Topic: The Later Glory!

She is like a flower

The favor

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