I would like to speak a history; I would like to speak to the present. I would like to

tell the story of a crushing movement from sand / to compact / to

towers / to abodes. I am speaking in such gibberish because I reside in the Tower of Babel. I

have learnt to move between the bricks. I have learnt that if we listen slowly, we

can hear so much power from this building. We forget that the Tower was imbued

with divine power, and here I want to tell the story of its use.

I want to speak of the virus that is the interpreter, the linguist of murky origins, the

insidious overthrower of nativism. I am one of the so-called diaspora, they call me

soft, they call me ‘da UK has ruined this child’. But my friend, this tower of

multiplicity, this interdisciplinary monolith, moves through me. I want to speak of

its influence on me and on the rest of my kin, my folk, my bilingual brothers and

sisters, who all interpret another culture within this cauldron.

I have spoken and now I shall sing.

Sing with me.

I am but a humble building, and language is my creator. In this rigid form, I have

always been the progenitor of knowledge, but people took me to be con forming /

fusing. How do you expect there to be a single story in this multi-storeyed body of

mine? I have lounged around, listening to the slow crooning of a Kenyan mother,

whispering her baby to sleep in Swahili. If I ask that whisper to be heard by an

Iranian construction worker, in his hard hat, in the hard heat, would he feel some

tenderness? Try a little for me please. Try to listen to the differences in tone, so

that they might soothe or excite you.

I have noticed a certain people who mould to the differences in every song I throw

their way. They absorb it and wear it on themselves with pride, like a tie dye

t-shirts walking colourfully and loudly. Slowly, they contaminate everyone.

My viral children, my linguists, my interpreters of language, my poets of culture, my

epidemic of artists. I must ask you to excuse my drifts into sentimentality. For too

long I have watched the confused people who traverse my halls, looking for that

singular voice. Now, in a surprise event, there are those hopping from song to song

- oh fill my cup to the brim and please let me celebrate this!

I ask that we see all the dust that existed here before everything. I ask that our

voices carry through the rafters of this church that we have excoriated of its single

purpose, it is here for all of us, to listen to all the voices sing.

I see the one who, seeking comfort, walks six times around the pulpit and bows to

the names on the altar. These saints shall no longer just belong to him, they shall

bless the languid who seek excitement, bless the precious who seek pain, bless the

hurting who fall outside the door of salvation. They will bless them always because

this is what it means to be a babble. It’s a noise that swoons in the ear of someone

who knows that a building of many voices cannot provide comfort for one.

I am looking at the many monuments of angels high up, perched on my spires,

with their stiff nonhuman faces. They can sing no songs. This austere blankness

makes me want to transmute them into gargoyles so at least ugly: they will feel. I

shall change their lyrics into untuned electric guitars that play with such

discordance, that the building will vibrate, and they will threaten to fall on every

visitor. I shall make their concentric elegant wings a scaly mess with pointy bones. I

shall make these wings furl and unfurl in the dawn, these stone movements shall

sing.

I am a church that haunts all the green spaces with a soothing voice and haunts

every courtyard with bells and haunts every holiday with voices raised to sing.

Which language do you sing in? I haunt even when I’m in the dust, even when I’m

fine.

I am singing / signing / sounding / soothing / suddenly / what is it we hear in the

eye of the noise / oh my children / please let me praise you / please let me uphold

/ your stains / your grime / your beauteous mark on the cleanliness of the world

/rage against the chaste / the clean / the spotless / this blight of mundane / this

antiseptic plague / we want to always hear your songs.

Sing, I said Sing.

I am a man walking to a pilgrimage. There are movements that shock the earth and

break the leather straps of my sandals. Is this not Biblical? Show me the money /

show me the water / show me the earth that swallows up all our sicknesses into a

ferocious heart.

Sing, I said Sing.

I am a man walking through town, they call me a flaneur, but I see nothing but

ghosts haunting all the green spaces of my city. I see all the poems trickle down

from the sheer glass of the shard, jagged and beautiful. Don't be mechanical when

you can be dirty.

Sing, I said Sing.

I am a garden in the middle of a city. I grow over the Thames but still am unable

to reach the water. Why am I so close to the sky? I am blossoming some evil

tulips, some black roses, some peaches that leave a taste so sweet that I refuse to

kiss my loved one.

Sing, I said Sing.I hear in this madness only a constant study of my spirit. You, my

children, can

never leave the holiness that sits on the apex of my being. I cannot grow but the

divine spirit always runs through the veins of clay and cement, iron rod and red

brick. I am here in all my confusion.

I have sung, now I shall praise.

Praise these exalted high walls, these coloured glass windows that rise too high for

you to see. Haven’t you turned too quickly from a long gaze at the sunset and

found the grass burnished in a glowing blue haze with fireflies flickering from it in

the daylight? Don’t sleep in the sun, come and play in the fields that surround me.

Praise these words. Good things come to those that wait. Pallbearers dance up the

staircase to my rooftops because the language of the dead can only be heard from

on high.

Praise for the drink addled brain, praise for the hugs and slobbering kisses on every

midnight pub walk home, praise for the unintelligible declarations of love, praise

for the maybe-loves, that couldn’t speak, but danced together in a pollution of

bodies, praise for the scent of her sweat on your shirt, praise for the lipstick stains,

praise for the strawberry Vaseline left on your lips, praise for every unintentional

compliment and uplifting word that leaves your mouth, that makes someone light

up in a glare and wish you a dream. Praise.

I watch the leaves that turn brown in the autumn. I hope that they are mistletoe for

someone. I hope that a brother and sister embrace under a shower of golden

leaves, their hearts so entwined that they beat in a discordant tune that only they

can sing to.

I watch my children make music. I watch them curse in songs and get brought up

before courts. I watch women burn their hair because the world doesn’t like curls.

Come here and let me rub your scalp in shea butter and comb your hair so it

stands so high.

I like bad grammar, I like the vernacular, I like the rough roasting of friends, I like

seeing my boy ashy in the elbows and just scream ‘boy, look at those ashy elbows’ I

like holding Vaseline for my brothers, I like holding combs for my sisters, I like

people guessing whether I am homeless. I like shaving and being young, I like

beards, I like all of it.

Sing, please sing, these songs of madness, these poems of corrupted beauty. I

speak in many languages, all but my own.

Sing, please sing.

I am everywhere, starlight, sunkissed young boy, returning to the dreary cold

I turned up one day with the dirt of English on me. I missed the freedom of Twi,

of Ghana. I wanted that dance and scream as I entered the tower and thought of

my indescribable misplacement. I was put here by circumstance. Now, I sit quite

comfortably in this undefinable category, knowing that my skin is a token, my

speech is exotica.

Everything is contaminated. Contamination is the natural state of being.