Sun, 08 Nov 2009 Feature Article

The Obama Serenades – Part XXIII

[Well-done, Mr. President! On the landmark passage of the comprehensive Health-Insurance Reform Package by the United States' House of Representatives – 11/7/09]

Greedy parasites
sit on the gray margins
of history
tight-fisted
with sullen faces
brazenly
feasting on
public dole,
waging countless
and pointless
wars
in the name
of peace and
liberty….

Dropping
pestilential
payloads of
death and
misery
on those who
must answer
for the bloody
misdeeds
of desperate
clansmen and
kinswomen
provoked
to mayhem
by blind and
insensate
wealth….

A blight of
inexorable
greed palls
the land,
like locusts
ere sheaves
are hauled –
the well-heeled
and jackbooted
are armed
with flypaper
even as
they rue
and
curse
their chance
kinship
with the woefully
deprived….

Still,
the dawn
of a new era
of friendship
and fellow-feeling
is heavily
upon us,
the triumph
of humanity
over
abject
depravity….

11/8/09

Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr.

Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD, taught Print Journalism at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City, for more than 20 years. He is also a former Book Review Editor of The New York Amsterdam News.. More He holds Bachelor of Arts (Summa Cum Laude) in English, Communications and Africana Studies from The City College of New York of The City University of New York, where he was named a Ford Foundation Undergraduate Fellow and the first recipient of the John J. Reyne Artistic Achievement Award in English Poetry (Creative Writing) in 1988.

The author was part of the "socially revolutionary" team of undergraduate journalists at City College of New York (CCNY) of the City University of New York (CUNY), who won First-Prize certificates for Best Community Reporting from the Columbia University School of Journalism, for three consecutive years, from 1988 to 1990.

Born April 8, 1963, in Ghana; naturalized U.S. citizen; son of Kwame (an educator) and Dorothy (maiden name, Sintim) Okoampa-Ahoofe; children: Abena Aninwaa, Kwame III. Ethnicity: "African." Education: City College of the City University of New York, B.A. (summa cum laude), 1990; Temple University, M.A., 1993, Ph.D., 1998. Politics: Independent. Religion: "Christian—Ecumenist." Hobbies and other interests: Political philosophy.

CAREER: Ghana National Cultural Center, Kumasi, poet, 1979–84; Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, worked as instructor in English; Technical Career Institutes, New York, NY, instructor in English, 1991–94; Indiana State University, Terre Haute, instructor in history, 1994–95; Nassau Community College, Garden City, NY, member of English faculty. Participant in World Bank African "Brain-Gain" pilot project.

MEMBER: Modern Language Association of America, National Council of Teachers of English, African Studies Association, Community College Humanities Association.

AWARDS, HONORS: Essay award, Nassau Review, 1999.Column: Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

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The Obama Serenades – Part XXIII

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