I DON’T WANT A 9-5
Warm golden light filters through fishnet curtains
Settling on my skin like gold dust
Turned pomade.
My metal rectangle window takes me on many trips,
Stories of gods and
the sons of mortal women
Fighting over life
Across the night sky
Dance atop my eyelids
Like little rain drops
Do,
Settling inside one’s ears.
with the
pitter-patter of a world
only gentle in its most obscure corners.
The late-afternoon sun is a white-hot brand I long for
Floating lethargic against a light gray sky
As I,
glide lethargic through the
Dull white office walls
Where life is always a losing game.
Freedom is only born at the end of a setting sun
At the point where the sun
Has just begun
To decree that Accra ‘s traffic
slow down
Seducing us with her most beautiful dress
Woven of light and warm color,
painting
The earth below with unimaginable radiance.
We long for what lies outside the borders of our holding pens
Watch as we trickle out the
mouth of the hope swallower
Into the river of cars and bodies
Walking home.
But only when the sun is too far away to touch.
Mother’s home is
another prison on a new moon.
The late-afternoon sun stands,
Waiting to mock us
Domesticated animals
as we crawl home.
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Poem © Jedidiah Henaku-Budu
Image: lee daxin on Unsplash remixed