Alien..

             The alien…

   As a little boy then

I would inflate my balloon...

In the moonlight

Hoping some ether within its wall

Would propel it to the moon....

   In excitement, i watched it ascend the sky

Suddenly it jerked up and down...

It dropped like a bird being made to bleed

By virtue of a stretched catapult

   Then, I couldn’t write nor read

…To suggest freefall as the cause 

    I dashed into the hut in tears

When I saw an aircraft glide skyward

As if its wheels wouldn’t touch the ground again

   All grown up now...

Mother Africa perseveres on

The foreign media still defines

Her territory third world

  At each flicker of an eyebrow

And beat of and eardrum

Another unpleasant report breaks some statistic…:

Aids; poverty; illiteracy; underdevelopment

Sickle cell: black mans disease!

  My feeble hands tighten its grasp on literacy

For sustaining the dream of being an African scientist:

…that would straighten up the twisted logic

And unwind the strands of fate lined across the DNA

 ...coding a brighter day for Africa:

A famous equation by same perhaps;

 Or his profile leaving an indelible trace

In the science textbook

Being read out in a classroom

Up there in the western world  

   My ambition veers further:

An alternative axiom

Faster in its approach toward the stars

And efficient in power 

To enable man hitch his wagon anywhere in space

  It has been projected by some

That Africa is as far from her target

As NASA is, from andromeda

  Their noises dampen out on reaching my ears;

Their argument loses its heat

On contact with my skin

  In a daydream

Scenes of my childhood days are replayed.

…I was chasing a wild goose

Before my feet got stuck to the ground_

 My fellow man had gone extraterrestrial from the same spot!

I swore never to forgive myself:

By chance I end up a victim of the false notion

…hide anything from a Blackman; hide it in a book  

  Watson and crick once quoted the inferiority of the Black race

Yet it is ironical

The tropical forests

Tilted her canopies

To shield their hall of fame status

Like the ozone…

  I would never forget the genocide in Darfur:

Rebel militia wiping out the black population…

Like humans exterminating alien invaders.

  Spoils of war tower above their land beds…

As another territory embarks on a space mission simultaneously:

A manned shuttle in search of extraterrestrial beings_

The whole world watching as it engages blastoff_

In an instant, many sighted an object glowing like a burning charcoal

On its approach toward lightening speed...

   The mission failed

Engines exploded and the capsules sailed…

Nevertheless lives were being bailed

Though the altitude pronounced a death sentence

On the astronauts...

   Meanwhile a space saucer spun across the sky…

Cameras captured a shot of holographic projection;

While satellites transmitted the extraordinary scene

All the way to my TV screen:

The earths probe toward the intelligent side of space

Is bound to fail…

Absolute conquest takes a tug of war

In this case the human race will never win…

Whereas Africa is down there hurting.