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Cherbo Geeplay Poem
By Cherbo Geeplay
It rains so much in Monrovia that a
day is like the bloated dough on a
grey earthly May, washing over October.
My love, the sun, hides in her bright den
refusing to be seen. Life comes to a slow
twiggy motion; the forest is breathing
with moisture, like a hut puffing smoke as
a pipe. While the creeks bridged their ledges,
there is a seismic run-down Waterside!
Enough, no more, the sewage can take!
She is in my arms, listening to the music
pounding the roof. Still, calm, reading
Ebony Dust, though, with lightning bolts
yelling to be heard.
The clatter is like
a rumble---tumbling falling rockets.
The sorry corrugated zinc holds her
seams, the bed is dry, but the room
is a puddle.
The city is
cramp and damp, like a soaked
sponge dripping with water. The
hustling contested old city in an
evening fog, the Mesurado in
a bulge, taking Fanti fishermen
to and fro,
to the edge of Westpoint.
To love in the midst of mists,
of raging thunder under your ears
and an air filled with blithering vermin,
is to drink a linctus in anger, cooped in
wretched penury. So when the wait,
cannot wait to be over, you my love
must endure, waiting to part with the
wrath the rains imposed, much needed
however, to calm the California wildfires,
gifted on these shores, for
free. Now: you
understand, then,
the irony of nature!
_____
Copyright 2018, Adelaide Literary Magazine, New York
Copyright © Cherbo Geeplay | Year Posted 2017
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Cherbo Geeplay Poem
by c. geeplay
The passionate winds blow among
the branches on the plains, while the
river flows among the ravines and
cliffs. The feisty embrace of the
moon's shadow blooms on the horizon,
moving in leaping steps upon
the night’s longing swells,
crusted with the honeyed songs
of birds flapping their wings to
the rustle of the river’s waves.
The hope in the yearning voices
on the shore refuses to vanish
into thin air, as the moon shows
her face, shining quietly in the
evening sky. The leaps of the
hunter is uninterrupted by
the dew that mists the
plants and thorns of the wild
shrubs and flowers, and I stand
there and marvel, as an
evanescent
morning
swoops in.
Copyright © Cherbo Geeplay | Year Posted 2024
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Cherbo Geeplay Poem
By Cherbo Geeplay
You woke me up when I was dead,
teaching the night stars wantonly
to obey the Atlantic; then slashed
my arteries in flight to Lake Piso,
humbling its boundaries, before
fusing them calmly to a gel.
When the elders speak in parables,
it is a mix of pepper soup which the
fufu welcomes and surrounds. As
the deer is trapped in the undergrowth,
so does it wait to be strapped. —These
are the open arms to the farms, mucking
the deserted mansions decked in chocolate
nuts, covered in honey; the lost spectacles
of yesterday is now over. Once gowned with
cluttered cow-webs and peppered with
shrubs, this, before the revival of the
grimy walls, serenade and greened
with lilies whose aroma calls from
a hundred miles to the carpenter
—the tool man and his bride waiting
to be announced as the sun swell
the hilltops, smiling to the boats
sailing on smooth tides.
ll
Moving quietly to fair waves,
the clouds crushed, hovers,
washing the mud away,
freeing her from the rocks,
bathing the earth and taking
away the dust disguised as
chaffs. the yacht’s inviting voice
is heard throttling along—between
hearty murmurs, chuckling to the
weaving currents, curving the
Atlantic surf, dancing fervidly,
where the fires meet the pits of
burning woods. The hearth in a
melody on the placid shores of Sinkor,
intimately as Monrovia grins to the Atlantic.
lll
Bewitched, racing to the beaches
is a sweetening of the surf stones.
The shells humbled under the rocks.
In trance, the turtles are running
with the whales, the currents,
silvery, the smell of saltwater
overpowering, yet elegant. Your
slender sailing finger rubbing
my rough ankles bring comfort.
—You woke me up when
I was dead, teaching
the night stars wantonly
to obey the Atlantic Bay,
like seashells humbled under the rocks.
Copyright 2018, Adelaide Literary, NY
Copyright © Cherbo Geeplay | Year Posted 2024
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Cherbo Geeplay Poem
A vicious rehearsal
has forked out. It is a flame that
bothers but borders on the
essence of life—the
survival of a community
searching for answers
after the quake and
the flood. I gather
these rhymes like
firewood
as I piece together the lines
only legible to the living.
These metaphors speak
to me, dressing my wounds,
unveiling my
valleys, as my rivers
flow downstream, before
emptying into the Atlantic.
Copyright © Cherbo Geeplay | Year Posted 2025
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Cherbo Geeplay Poem
Let our clear eyes gaze
at the rising moon on the
shores of the Sahara, let
the evening stars shine,
holding the skies in their
cosmic magnet, let the
tides cease their aggression
within the ocean, like the
brutish pain we feel as
we welcome and embrace
the oases of our longing
faiths, our kisses
flirting on the shores
of the ocean’s lips,
resolute in our struggle.
We are sandwiched between
the blades and mortars of
these plains, bludgeoned on
the banks and rivers of
these burning forests,
our peace stolen by
hate, so we spend
these silver years in
agony, asking the same
questions our ancestors
asked: shall our hopes be
burnished and taken away on
the lost bays of these curving
currents determined to throw
us into the pits of the boiling
gutters, or shall our longing
faiths, like stones, outlast
the flames of the forest fires?
Copyright © Cherbo Geeplay | Year Posted 2025
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