Poetry: A Grave Interest!
We hate who we are.
Immersing our culture in dust,
Full of anything bright and colourless.
Swallowing controlled lies about our heritage
While history run to fantasies.
So we seek refuge
In second versions and imitations;
Limiting our glory to mere tint-
Scrubbing our soul to denial
Till it rejects our bodies.
We stink of hypocrisy-
Booing ours that delight in our birthright.
Cutting the ladders of liberation.
Cursing the universe
For our refusal to be ourselves.
Two or three generations,
Then the curse will fade.
We did it for our children,
They will be grateful.
The gloom is lost forever!
I beseech our minds to yearn healing,
Puke the blasphemy against our kind.
Charm our hearts to worship our inheritance.
Our children will be more grateful
If we relish who we are.
Omolola Onigbinde
============================
On the last day of the end
he sat down like the king;
The king he was.
Staring into the core of the loners,
It’s true they had a stomach
which schooled home but with a choice.
Feeding was a fasting on words;
eating the weight of sins,
buried in the amazing arrangements as alphabets.
Silence quivering in the shadows
and becoming the light upon faces.
Let us believe their judgement
is around the burning sun,
or in the sparkle of the night skies-
a virgin close to stars.
Everything they had knew even blue
was through it and how they eat.
Air, Wind, Fire and now they would know Earth.
Finally there was a reason why they were alone
in the homily of the unsung
chanting inaudible forms of sadness.
What fire quenches their heat
in the drops of a thirsty rain?
Hope they hop and stop
think through the time
life had led them here as it left.
They would know the grave
only after they lived in death.
Ruddapoet
===========================
This box is an abandoned shelf
Where titles are colored in dust
And inside the sleepy pages are rewritten stories
Told by blowflies, flesh flies and beetles,
Holding conferences with skeletons
Asking that every missing chapter be explained.
Like, how did we lose our flesh?
Like, what is the color of honesty?
Did forgiveness ever speak to you?
Is society buried under her greed?
Like, how empty is a skeleton
When the brain’s rent expires?
Like, how sad is melancholy
In the face of a forgotten dream?
This gathering of familiar strangers
Is held without cameras hissing
No ushers making robots of humans
No loud applause…
Only silence sits, taking notes…
Of questions piled in this box
Sealed and hidden underground
And forgotten like an abandoned shelf
Where the only curtain blinding wisdom is dust
…To which we assume.
And the hope of light is lit
when a tired nail falls off in slumber from its point of duty
Leon
=================================
Some days fall apart like breasts in cleavages.
Some days, less sense is made out of situations.
Some days, love songs are not in love.
Some days, same jokes don’t crack up your ribs.
Some days, it’s either too hot or too cold, no in between.
Some days, you are what you are.
Some days, the desire to know thyself more is rekindled.
While other days there’s a contentment of not being accomplished.
There are days the fire dies.
There are days the soul feels tired.
Few of those days see pain as intense-
Creation that were unfinished.
Blindfolds in aspiration to a view of truth.
Mindless unselfish greed.
Truthful lies in open hearts.
Secret places, hidden faces.
Saving grace like Christ to the church.
Corrections on degrees.
Tabloids with naked encryption.
Written in a language for kings and slaves.
Joker and the fool.
Diamond, hearts, spade, lay your cards.
Stick, nails, tooth and bones.
Digging deeper than they can lay.
The end leaving each grave uncovered.
Dusted.
Hypermind
==================================
‘Rocket science’
If ex decides on why
You should sit next to her
And he is willing,
He will move ten spaces down
And eventually land somewhere outside the alphabetical table.
This machine is ‘out of order’
Whether or not you have a token to tender
This machine is ‘out of order’
E F G H X Y U
This machine is ‘out of order’
You desired something grave
Double times you waved in numbers
This machine is ‘out of order’
Just like prime numbers
Skipping letters is the new rave
This machine is ‘out of order’
Keen interest to skip kindred
Landed your existence in a grave
This machine is ‘out of order’
When you find another,
Make sure to stand in accordance to what you stand for
Whether or not there’s a machine
Or an-other
You are most needed to be in order
Hybrid
===============================
I wandered off earth’s clime
On my last nickel and dime
In search of what may cure this ail
Soon after the hail had set
I found a stone without its tomb
It belonged to a wealthy man
Who had died bereft of life’s worth
No money, no treasures
Only a map stamped to his back
Without eyes at his back
He lived to point others to wealth
While sweating for a morsel of bread
His lady was the fairest of all
She lived gazing upon this soul
Who kept wishing he could give her the world
But all of her world could not contain this life’s worth
Though she lived daily reminding him
A thousand tongues couldn’t break this bone
Until the day she ran off with James
The king of the castle
Who spoke in a lot of parables.
Yet the tale couldn’t be told
How poor James died
Of a heart swelling from pride
When all the hail had set
I found a root and a stomp by a grave
My interest piqued
At the divers untold ways of men
Jennifer Dafwat
====================================
Time
a grave interest
without whom
no interest will be paid to the grave
Souls of men
Before and after I knew them
are wonders
crowding my nighttime hours
Thoughts of men
before and after they are trapped in time
are plagues bedeviling those who cannot but care.
Deeds of men
Before and after they discover God
are miracles, only the dead may know
Death
interests not just the grave,
but those to whom
They’ve offered the knowledge of life.
Children
When they become men
Refusing the counsel of age
and birthing anew, superstitions of old
are matters only gods can fathom.
Love
a fleeting mirage, a faithless lover
whom we must pursue
For heaven’s sake.
OracLe
===============================
Standing before the critiques I beg to see the queen.
“My Queen, it is with pain and Joy I report this incidence to you.
A certain day my art was not appreciated,I thought I bought the lot with my skills to spice words.
Can I tell you how I made the crowd cheer?
Their hands roused a thunderous sound I almost fell for their scam.
This bit my fragile heart. I felt the wealthy lords will take me to paradise today, this day was just a dream.
How can I put so much intellectual nouns and verbs in sentences that will not be a phrase but a clause? So stop paying me meager! This is what I sleep with. Yes the pen is my companion, a Companion that pays the bills.
My Queen, after the art gave them a picture of their teens, this grey audience refused to decorate my David’s hands.
I might sound like an angry bee who would pest the peaceful wind, but my interest is not paving the way.
Rather they applaud and say thanks for coming as if coming was not peak enough of it all.
My Queen Let’s seal a deal: A million dollars won’t do. Just buy my coo. Sell my words and realize my ironies aren’t threats-they are grave. With much interest I take a bow.
The stage wants a good tour…”
Rachel Charles
=========================================
Alone with my four corners
I need a company
To keep my cold flesh warm
I will pray to the heavens
For the fall of man
Dressed in a coffin
To bow before me
Accompanied by voices
Of grieved hearts
With tears on my feet
Dropping like Christ
and the prostitute
I will name my feelings
Rejoice,and welcome
the presence of the one
Who is absent.
For with his presence
We will wine and dine
On discussions and
Good time of quality
Product with themes
Of skeletons and worms
Flies and insects in different
Dresses searching for
The flesh that isn’t there
My interest I will hang round
The neck of the death.
Bangwan.
=================================
A place exists
As close as here
Where the egos of men
Are clone to humility
And bodies once wrapped in flesh
Are feasted upon by worms
Till they bleach to carcasses.
In the place no master nor slave
Subject nor king
Landlord nor serf
All are the same enclosed beneath
The shadows of death.
So i often wonder
If the fate of now is later
And the beauty of beginning is end
Why do humanity fear death?
Why does there feet quiver
As he pass their door steps?
Then I hear myself speak
Through the veins of its fears:
‘It’s not death we fear
Or the grip of its wrath
But the fear of the unknown
After all is gone
Which humanity is yet to know”
Bamvi
================================
At home amidst the shrubs and trees
A serenade filled with calm and ease
I poke lizards, steal their eggs and tease
In sync with the birds
I wave my hands
A flag of white my fingers meet
Across the sky away from me
They glide and slide to journey far
I think of nature, earth, death
The road we all must take one day
I view the blood and rotten flesh
Earth’s favorite meal
Used to feed its shiny fangs
The missing corpses no one sees
The buried bones beneath its eyes
Invisible graves looming tall
Both plants and animals meet their fate
The ground is a pit for the dead
Draining the life from the Sun
The narrow way we sometimes escape
From its morbid tentacles
We are born to live and die
We live not knowing when or how
We must despite this fact
Leave impressions with lasting mark.
Vera