What if? by Kofi Mensah

Samuel Dalle/Joe Pollitt | The Conductor, 2016

What if?

And what if we were to make Earl Grey Tea an illegal substance, banned all smelly cheeses, boycotted the humble bagel whilst outlawing all crisps, French Champagne and barring all sugars. What then?

What if we were to legalized drugs and allowed only black shopkeepers to sell them; gave every child matoki from Uganda in Primary Schools and fed the poor with free cassava, okra, sweet potatoes from Nigeria, yams from the cancer tree from South Africa and plantain fufu from Ghana. What then?

Human rights, equality for all, FREE TRADE, don't make me laugh. There is a Prohibition on all black people in the USA, Europe and Africa (if they don't own it, you can't have it.) 

#Blacklivesmatter

Kofi Mensah 30/09/2016

Poetry for #Blacklivesmatter

Black Lives Matter | Kofi Mensah

ARTWORK | JOE POLLITT

BLACK LIVES MATTER

This Movement is extremely important. Not just about police brutality in America but black lives across the globe. Here is a poem Kofi wrote that takes on an African beat and plays with the syllables of Black (1) Lives (1) Matter (2) - the poem starts off with 4 syllables and then is reduced to 3 and ends up back with the initial 4 syllables. This is to show how talent, opportunities and lives are squeezed in the middle and then return to normal in the end. Every line is read as a single entity fragmented but also as a whole, as a story told so simply. Not wanting to sound like a singer, a front-man but more like a bass. Not wanting to create a complete band-sound or an orchestra, no, just a bass note of syllables on every line that make up the 4/3/4 style poem. Kofi's intention is to sound like a lost bow-less cello. Saying something as simply as possible, like a jab from a boxer rather than an uppercut or a killer blow.

Black Lives Matter
We cannot stop
Our lives matter
So-We can see
You cannot stop
You will all-ways

Hold us back
We can never
Rise too high
You will cut
Our bite down
Just to say

We made you great
Dreaming the dream
Sight for sore-eyes
That we exist
Going nowhere
So-say no more
#Blacklivesmatter.

Kofi Mensah | 26/09/2016