Author: Pete Aki'i

For Madame Abomah but missed the weight of her will. There are those who measured her inches They saw six-foot-ten inches of spectacle and none of the woman still. They named her Abomah, like fable plucked from Dahomey flame. Crowned her ‘Queen of the Giants’, yet they never asked her name. . Take this stand, […]

THE BEAUTIFUL VIOLENCE OF BECOMING!Two separate poems, but, as I’ve today realised belong together as a ‘diptych’. ‘Standing Out’ is the assault, the shaping pressure of malice.‘Still Standing’ shows how the internal alchemy of risk, gratitude and defiant life follows. I. STANDING OUT They spat hatred at himtwisted, savage cursesshaped to wound.Still, inside,he knew he […]

There’s nothing in the caterpillar to hint at what’s to come, that it will unfurl into a butterfly beneath the hush of summer sun. The humble, drifting butterfly, a small embodiment of joy, raises little more than a smile yet, can stir your pulse into the sky. . They say its silent wing beats can […]

Maybe now is the time to give yourself time to crouch behind the hillock until the wind forgets your name. Endure what you can as the scouring pad of despair scrapes the mind’s soft interior, paring your dreams to dust, to near-nothing. This is when and precisely why you must remain hopeful. Why your quiet […]

He falls again, and still his country waits for the thud but – there is no thud when a man has carved away the floor beneath him. There is only faster, deeper, falling. On a day meant for thanks and grace he opens the sewer of his heart and plunges in, hurling slurs built from […]

There are those who guard gates like coffins, others, plant seeds in the soil. Politicos do the former, polishing padlocks with fear, selling the chain as a gift to the loyal. He names ‘illegal’ as if holy scripture, tattoos deport on the nation’s tongue. His tweets march in formation detain, return, remove the vocabulary of […]

This I can tell you: a word is rarely harmless. It can strike like a match in dry grass, or, it can steady your shaking hand in the dark. It can build a bridge or load a gun. . Socrates said it plain, misuse a word and you bend your own soul. Twist language into […]

In the west, across the wracked Atlantic, a sickness rises like steam from a slaughterhouse, and I, an insignificant man from a small green country, watches as a giant stumbles, piss-drunk on its own lies. I know corruption, indeed, all nations have kissed that serpent. But what festers now in the White House isn’t scandal, […]

I once believed I’d poured my deepest love and faith, into the four lives I helped bring forth. But life replete with its trickster grace  has given me six reasons more. Each grandchild, a mirror, a wonder, a mystery, a new dawn breaking – on an old, old shore. . Not replacements. Not echoes. But […]