Bedtime Story Poem by Jacob Kobina Ayiah Mensah

No Stalins. No Mussolinis. No Marxist heads,
or Nietzsche's heads, or Luther's heads.
No masks. No fancy dressing.
No placards. No banners. No graffiti.
It's just a little world in your bed to ride on!
Its streets are bare and open to guesswork!
Its streets are glued with superheroes' footprints.
Tuesday night in the house of a latter-day Noah.
Wet breeze.

Human head, a complete world to be cut loosen.
No time, no voice to be titled.
But its citizens for example,
Superman, Spiderman and Batman,
have sent countless listeners to sleep who're not ready.
Because, you simply enjoy superheroes' madness.
You enjoy superheroes who've missed the future.
Your eyes ride upon their hearts full of adversities and setbacks.
Still, you push them to press forward.
You want them to trip in the streets, then stagger and lose their momentum.
Then, you push them more to stumble and fall
and certainly help get them up many times.

Don't trap your brain,
you warn, when it's busy solving a riddle of pain.
You tell yourself to stay calm a second.
Because in this silent night,
you draw them a thought to strive to resume
a course of loyal service to your world.
Thus, with a fiery flame of heart and mind
yes, you aid them a view everything in proper perspective and live beyond it.
Now, tell me, are those who listening to your superheroes
are not themselves superheroes?
Because they point to the contents of your body.
Here, you draft north or south,
when the chocolate in your mouth is almost finished,
everything becomes a symbolic footracer,
not a mere joy with frequent idle moments.
You give them loyalty cars to carry about.
No plaudit. Those are self-imposed angels hooked to hooliganism.
Who've become wounded angels, kept in Dr Tulp's clinic as prisoners.
You rephrase yourself again and again.
This is how you colour the edges of your life.
How these edges juxtapose that makes your choice.
I concoct. Good night!