Time machine

And it seems to me you lived your life // Like a candle in the wind // Never knowing who to cling to // When the rain set in —Elton John (Candle in the Wind)

Here’s a poem that starts with a lie & ends with the truth—
The year is 2019 & two young black kids living close to the refuse dump in their neighborhood have made a time machine from scraps, from the refuse dump. Everyone is proud of them, not just because of what they’ve done but also because we wouldn’t need to look for ways to properly dispose these scraps. Also, because all humans can go back to before the oceans were filled with so much plastic & no one complained of climate change. Before whales, turtles & other sea creatures choked on plastic to death.

These kids are my friends, my ​bluds, ​I claim this kinship, wherever I be, trust me. I get to time travel back to 1982, surprise, in 1982, I’m an old man who reads the newspapers everyday with my lenses slightly tilting towards the broadness of my nose. On the TV, three Judges are gone.

The year is 1982. When the year began, there were judges & there were three judges. The year ends & there are no three judges. But there are judges. Gone with the wind. Three judges gone. Not gone—killed but death is responsible for their death. Everyone knows someone pushed the hands of death to take their lives. It wasn’t their time to go. Someone showed them the way to go too early. Justices—Poku Sarkodie, Cecelia Koranteng-Addow and Kwadwo Adjei Agyepong—all gone. ​News headline: Witness accuses ex-Ghanaian president of killing judges.