Serving As A Bridegroom Poem by Jacob Kobina Ayiah Mensah

They came back
in black suits and gloves,
and a big smile, shared,
on the faces,

without your brother.
Your pals came back, risibly
looking for your photos,
mama sent for you

but you were nowhere.
We were told
brother was deep down
in the ground,

the sacred place,
where they had
locked him
and now serving

as a bridegroom
in a bed
to the goddess
of peace.

Will brother come
back, you ask,
I cannot tell.
But I know

his head was
sent to the nearby
museum as plantasm,
to warm the tourists.

The ganjas came back
because Spring
was near;
and wanting to usurp

more brothers
with long and multiple
erections, they set
a trap;

and I was the first
to fall
into the vat
they seared

and warned, recessing
me not to come
to the game
because I was

too young to sift
through my blood to bed
with her; this was
thousand years away.

From where you hid
you saw the rag-and-bone
men by the faces
they gored him

he gnawed at them
you wanted to stop
the gang rape
but who were happy

descending down
their paean, shouts,
could not make
you hear across

the platform,
you remained silence,
ever since, listening
to the salacious

in the saleroom,
and I, feeling
no mope, or moonlit,
I watched them.

December is near
they arrive in banners
to tug
more brothers

whose eyes fixed
on the large nipples,
the burning scented powder
aid them

as catalepsy, or semen,
they sink ritzyly, down
and down, the voices
cannot be heard again.