Best Laboured Poems
T’was flair from the cobbles that drove the loom
with forced hardy sweat they laboured till eve
a family tradition from the womb
with threaded shuttle and reed hook they weave.
The warp the weft that nurtured the blending
the clatter the din the need of lip sync
a marriage of yarns a pattern pending
the huff and the puff with no time to blink.
This place the cornerstone belonged one’s life
town mill chimneys stretching into the clouds
the smog the fog to cut through with a knife
one pence to pay if late due to the crowds.
While in the countryside the manor house
no longer ‘His Grace’ but master with nous.
© Harry J Horsman 2018
INTERCEPTION
Shadows waning distorted fading
Teasing tempting, a psychotic hack
Scheming concealing cerebral deceiving
Sun retreating behind shades of black
Memoirs succumbing, alpha notes strumming
Hope dwindling midst each laboured breath
Dusky-eyed wretchedness, reflective reminiscence
Sporadic spirits predicting sinister death
Powerless to quell the oppressor within
Oh, desolation! The thief with the sinister grin
The day bleeds, no conveyed clarifications
Nightfall brings its own demonic demons
Moodswings of crazy with judgements so hazy
Interceptive apathy through feelings of lethargy
Music evokes emotions with resilient duress
Though once familiar titles slide back in regress.
Living within her own fluid transparency
The piteous empathy, does she even discern?
Is she to become a fading frequency?
Or… ungenial ashes in a decorative urn?
As the soft rose shades of twilight transcends
In the quietude of peace – a hushed calm descends
One last recall remains in her artistic archive
Where the Star of the Show still dazzles and thrives.
Maria Williams © 2023
I know this will be a sensitive topic, especially at Christmas with people caring for or visiting their loved ones afflicted with Dementia or Alzheimer's—such a sad condition. Apparently, the worst thing to possibly do is try to jog the patient's memory, as it causes more stress.
Instead, why not give them your time and play their favourite music?
Music memories often remain as others disappear.
This is because brain regions involved in musical memory and processing (e.g., the cerebellum) are not as affected by Alzheimer's or dementia until much later in the disease course.
Please watch the video; it is so beautiful and touching. Marta Gonzalez was a professional ballet dancer who developed Alzheimer's. One thing she never forgot was her Swan Lake routine She passed in 2019.
Just One Last Night – The Last Goodbye - A Musical Mini-Movie Duet
Sometimes, love lingers long after the last goodbye. We think we’re letting go—but in truth, we’re holding on.
Not just to memories, but to the soul that once stayed beside us.
The Ballad and mini-movie is about love and loss, about the quiet ache that never quite fades.
It asks:
Can love become a tether?
When all it ever wanted was to be free?
“Just One Last Night” explores that space between presence and release—
Where devotion becomes a quiet chain, and one heart’s longing might keep another from crossing into the light.
Note: The poem below qualifies the Lyrics of the Ballad in the movie which are not included here so as not to give away the story.
Click on CC on the video itself to follow the song lyrics.
Tip: best listened to with headphones.
A flame in the dark I lit
blind to the shadow it cast
Love, a thread spun of moonlight,
I thought forever would last
I built a shrine from memories
not caring I’d sealed his soul.
Lingering on ~ his reluctant spirit
Between enduring torn.
The path ahead for me was dim
The fault all mine – he couldn’t soar
Reluctantly, with laboured breath,
I released and let my true love go
I lost his Soul with poignant grace
With soulful sorrow upon my face.
I invite you to click on and watch my video now to appreciate the impact of this poem.
If the video and lyrics touches you in any way please share on your social media or to friends, It could give solace to or bring just one person from that deep dark place and the production has done it's job. Thank you. Hugs xoxoxo
MAMA AFRICA
My driver to the earth
No crush,No regret
Tales of a black mother
Mother that mother the
mother's tongue of mothrer's land.
When you waft my infant?
The love you show me is
that of God to Adam
Your beam enrich my soul
Your tender kiss sparkles my dream.
Your generous hug goes through my vein and overcome my flaws
Indeed you are a blessing,
A blessing to the Universe
and a blessing to Africa.
All hail the mama of Africa
You back me through the dreadful sea to enshrine me in the land of
sucess
The world u give,keep me going on
Overcoming every obstacles of life
Indeed you are my skirt,My Lover,
most precious being and my Gold.
For you not being a termagent
What shall i say to thank you?
What shall i pendown to
Show gratitude?
Let thousands of blessing descend
on your tender soul till eternity.
The fruit you laboured,
You shall reap
© Adedamola Quadri Adeniyi
All Right Reserved 2016
Young, gentle and in bondage
This innocent bird flew towards the promised land
Her frame petite yet powerful
Her eggs beautifully nested when transported from Calcutta
The sight of the new turf welcoming
A dream of hope and fair go brewing deep within
Day and night she laboured for payments equating to peanuts
The breadth of whips ploughed her like a bull in the harsh fields of Nadi
Her eggs now fertile
A pretentious malnourished glow adorning her face
No snug mattress at night
No baby shower
The scorching sun and the liberal rain
Her only companions to clad her in celebration
Cooked, then drenched, then burnt…
She finally delivers a dead bundle of tears
Her tragedy apparently not so sensational
Urging her overseer to order her back to the fields in four days
The memories of the dead child
Not at all dead in her head
Cold and depressed she refuses to present herself
Maternity leave a term alien on the ‘girmit’ fields
Gathering courage from ‘Durga’, she dares to speak of rights
Perhaps the very last time she spoke
The overseer, insulted and beats her near death
Lying in the fields with broken limbs and essence
Her veil the only bandage
To cover her wounds.
QUESTIONS OF BALANCE: A JEREMIAD
Why is it at 70 politicians are still underage
To assume political offices
And at 30 youths are overage to begin a professional career?
What divine strength hath a leader at 75
When a mandatory retirement awaits civil servants at 65?
Why should the government empowers the youths with $75 in 2 years
And expects them all to have own businesses
But civil servants who earn over $300 per month in 30 years
Are finding it difficult to own a garden or a store?
How is it our politicians could expend billions
To defect, campaign and give kickbacks
But would wait until the World Bank borrows them some millions
To provide a borewell drinking water?
How can they say the national treasury has collapsed to employment
Yet billions are looted and millions wasted on foreign fantasies?
Why should the achievement of our political endorsement
Be signed to MOUs as though we lack understanding?
Why should our lawmakers make laws that hound the masses
And not against their own chronic excesses and excuses?
Why should the wealthy politician vote a project for the poor
Assigned the execution of the project to himself and loot the funds?
Why do our lawmakers never make laws to free the masses
From poverty and political swindlers?
Why should the agency that fights corruption be corrupt?
Why should gluttons preside over the meager meals of the masses?
Why should the leader not serve today and the servant lead tomorrow?
Why should professional bandits be our bankers?
Why should 5% of public servants consume 60% of the nation’s wealth?
Why should a politician be a party leader, counsellor, chairman, governor, senator… still desperate to lead
And all behind his trails are poverty and anguish?
Why should a politician with obscene wealth hidden somewhere
Tell his people that their poverty and problem is Hausa, Igbo, Christian, Muslim, APC, PDP…?
And why is our nation over-laboured by multiplets of cultural, social
Political, religious questions awaiting caesarean responses?
The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind
The answer is blowing in the wind!
Botched Artwork Saves Town
Sometime last year, in late August 2015, something unusual went viral..
It was an ancient picture on the wall, vastly unlike its original art..
A piece of botched artwork, unfinished, and yet all over the world it enthralled..
People, the tourist kind, they made a quick bee line, to see for themselves..
Ecce Homo, a seemingly priceless ancient painting in a church , upon one of its wall..
Time has ravaged its brilliant colours , and its paintwork well flaked off the wall..
One artistic old lady of 83, she took it upon herself to try restore its beauty..
Painstakingly she laboured upon days on end, as expertly as she can..
She meant well, it hurts her artistic soul to see the priceless artwork fade..
She tried her best, but the colours, they ran and it was a difficult task..
She had to go away for a short while, she left behind a half restored art...
Someone in church, horrified no doubt, took a picture of it as a matter of fact..
The uploaded picture in the internet, it was shared and quickly it went viral..
Many found it amusing, there was so much scorn, it was soundly ridiculed..
The Ecce *****fresno, or Behold The Man, it now looks like a monkey or a porcupine…
A picture of a mournful Jesus is no more, in its place is an artwork that is one of its kind…
Poor Cecilia, a widow and amateur painter, she never had a chance to finish her effort..
Her failed restoration effort rocketed around the globe and then a miracle of sorts..
People started thronging to this church in Borja, Spain, it was a pilgrimage of some kind...
After the viral picture on the internet, people just had to see and view this new find…..
Now that 150,000 visitors have come and gone, Borja is a town rejuvenated and restored..
In this village of medieval palaces and winding lanes, this botched artwork has the town resurrected…
All the free publicity from a botched artpiece, it has been a breath of life to the local economy..
God works in mysterious ways, it explains the good fortunes that follows from the smudgy renderings..
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/15/world/a-town-if-not-a-painting-is-restored.html?_r=0
What is this resplendent thing that sparkles ahead,
Pacing faster than limbs of incapacity
Beyond the all-pervasive dakness of want?
Could my eyes be playing upon me some sly pervasity,
Seeing things untrue, askew and errant?
Or is it a reality that they will be resewn
The torn bonds that linked me to the world of bounty,
Where I may be returning soon?
I've had a glimpse of the future;
What a beautiful and gorgeous sight!
Streams of milk do freely flow,
And pots of honey glitter bright
Against the blinding rays of a rising sun.
This days of plenty seem set in the Promised Land,
For I see the fertile shoots of a germinating future
Guarded by an armed angelic band
Recruited from beyond the azure;
A fulfilment of a trashed prophecy.
And children of fate weakened by ages of plight
There do sing day and night;
Feeble frames malnourished for centuries
Enrich themselves from celestial treasuries,
Where the obedient minions of the sky
Gathered in response to their cry,
While they laboured on the red soils of Egypt
Before God heard their cries and His mercies leapt.
Who else can see this vision
Of relief from pandemics of fate
And the gaping gallows of death?
A time coming when sons of men
Shall storm this ogres den
And avenge the murderous terror
Inflicted upon their long gone kith and kin!
And the forbears long dead,
Shall be awakened by cries of war,
And with might reserved for decades
Shall avenge the pain inflicted before
By their wicked adversaries
Who maim parents and drink the blood
Of their offspring left behind.
I feel a searing chill in my bones
as they painfully turn to black ice
Under the weight of my loneliness
I fear there's an ultimate price
Will I witness my own demise
As cracks appear under this weight
The thought of an endless sadness
as I am doomed to a horrible fate
I look out to the red horizon
On the beach a pail made of plastic
I pray to find a similar strength
a soul that is much more elastic
With each and every laboured step
too numerous for me to number
Slowly the walk becomes easier
Perhaps I am turning to rubber
Feelings they bounce in my mind
and yes they do make me shake
although there's vibration in my soul
this elastic heart will never break!
Dedicated to Armand. The poem was inspired by a comment I left on his poem "Of Three States of Mind an intricate weave". Do read his poem it is masterfully written.
Spring speaks of promise beginning anew,
While winter winds whistle of being true.
Summer shouts like ferocious violins,
Buzzing warmth of Sun delivers up-chins.
Fall's voice is favoured, it's song's not of loss,
Her trust is heard as though hallowed glass-gloss,
Her breathing, laboured, is suggestion-filled.
Taste of her drink from the farmed rows, distilled,
Her season of the cultured cup, it brims,
And sounds of fingers circling wine glass rims,
For such delicate ring's language of choice,
It sings, it is Autumn's breathe given voice.
This house has been set ablaze; ashes rain like snow,
covering what has become my deathbed.
A weighted blanket of ruins lies heavy upon my chest.
Laboured breaths and the taste of soot coat the back of my throat,
stifling oxygen from reaching the whites of enervated eyes.
Blue-tinted lips incoherently whisper, flirting with my demons,
living in purgatorial gloaming
whilst my spirit hovers between diminishing light and shadows.
Reality blurs, amalgamating with hallucinations
where demons dance in a macabre ballet,
reenacting repressed sorrows,
torturing an undead heart to the brink of insanity.
With each twirl, each act, tales of desperation are etched onto flesh.
Riverlets of blood stain the sheets bright red,
as tourniquets are nowhere to be found.
There is no way to halt the flow;
emotional instability will be my bloodletting.
Every second ticks by a little quicker
until each heartbeat grows fainter.
A clenched jaw relents,
eyes roll backwards,
and a damaged soul is severed from its mortal coil,
yet its fate is left undetermined,
flailing in the in-between forevermore.
On thy breast I suck
On thy belly I walk
On thy hand I cluck
On thy nose I cock
On thy orders I talk
With your knuckles I knock
With your brain I fork
With your tears I shock
With your mouth I pork
In your warmth I rock
In your agony I sock
In your sweat I work
In your strength I pluck
Mama Africa I know you sleep not
Your sleeplessness has watered the African root
You have suffered for all that is black in colour
You have laboured for the Negritude race
You have toiled for the Black *******
You remain our source of inspiration
You remain our point of innovation
You remain our fountain of knowledge
Your innate unique creativity remains our pride
Even if today is stormy and stuffy
Yesterday bouncy and bumpy
Tomorrow will be juicy and yummy
Mama Africa,
Sprinkle on us ceaselessly the water of life.
I wait for you in the moonlight
In the quiet of the night
Within this room that holds
So many moments of your life
The dreams you've dreamed
Still linger here
Between these flower-papered walls
That look beyond the window
At the Autumn leaves that fall
A quilted robe lies draped across
A wicker rocking chair
That held you and rocked you
When grief
Was more than you could bear
A bassinet now empty
Where once a baby slept
Remains enshrined
Chained to a time
By the million tears you wept
A picture of a handsome man
With you there by his side
A bride and groom so in love
With stardust in their eyes
Stands behind a pane of glass
Within a gilded frame
Where your lip prints and
finger prints
On its surface..still remain
And now...
I hear your slippers
As they slide across the floor
And I hear...
Your laboured breathing
Outside this bedroom door
And I know that soon
I'll hold you
Here in this flower-papered room
And soothe your old
And frail body
In the light of a silver moon
I...your old companion
An antique Rosewood Bed
Let me hold you...Mary Beth
I..the best friend you've ever had
Let me hold you through the night
And bring you back...again
Sweet Mary Beth
Into the morning light.
Mommy, don't be upset
When they say how you should stand, sit and eat
While I munch on your blood and meat.
Just don't be upset
When they advise you on when I should be fed.
You alone know when my tummy needs bread
Mommy, don't be upset
When they say I was born lean or bulky, dark or fair
And force home remedies and weird aftercare
Just don't be upset
When they judge you for the cuts on your belly
Or the amount of milk generated by your body.
Don't be upset
When they rebuke you for keeping me on diapers
Or nag about your choices right from mittens to rompers.
I know how you guarded me for nine months
Every time I kicked from inside, your heart went nuts
When my poor latching has hurt your nipples,
I felt the wetness of your tears on my nerves.
We ate and slept together
We screamed and sang together
I was in your belly and you were in my blood
To meet each other, we worked as a team and laboured.
Now, who are they to make you feel low?
No, whatever they say doesn't help us grow.
Just don't be upset, Mommy.
We'll do only that, what is best for us!
Monah Kaur and Robert Kumar fled from London, came to ‘Hindustan’; tied the knot
The 'Singhs' stopped their songs and 'Kumars at no. 42' burnt their studio; this rebellion; they will forget not
A petite piece of land was gifted by Uncle Prem to mark their freedom
With much thought the newly wed called it Garden of Eden
They cleared the plot from crawling matters and built a woody farm house
Within a year, Monah gave birth to twins; Lisa died; Minnie who survived became quiet as a mouse
The air around still polluted in invasion and many cuffed in iron
The sun and moon fairer than in London but nothing seemed fine
The couple laboured and fostered peaches for Mr. Big Ben; returned home clad in blisters
Minnie cried; and cried; her parents had no time and she desired a couple of sisters
In financial distress the duo approached the heroic Farmer Bachan to assist his flock
Pleased with their dedication he gifted them a Peacock.
Minnie cried louder now, seeing this English present; she wasn’t a fan
Bachan who was fond of the child, sent her way, a young Indian Peahen
Minnie’s tears lost its way in the Ganges as the new birds found their click
Around Christmas added to the family was a cute hybrid Pea-chick
What adorable ‘chana’ like eyes had she!
Without delay, Minnie named her Chick pea
Eden now a 'Rangoli'; 'Ranisas' and 'Nawabs' soothed in ‘Masala’ tea
All engrossed in the lights and sweetness of Diwali; no attention paid to the growth of The Serpent on that Apple tree.
Those daffodils patented to Wordsworth, danced in the air
In its abode, the serpent watched Eden, what a scare!
One morning, Minnie fetched a Brown ladder to reach the tree which dazzled with rounds of juicy red
The ladder attacked and killed; the child returned home badly bitten, almost to eternal slumber she bled
Bachan’s sheep strayed to the road that was not to be taken, decreased from many to few
Eden cried for The Good Shepard; The Foreign Raj ruthlessly bottled native stew
Prayers were answered and on a Tiger came a Flying sheriff called ‘Shroff’
Bedecked in turfy ‘ceps’ and ‘pecs’; this essence fought in ‘huff & puoff’
Over time; in years almost equal to Tendulkar's century; the Serpent grew wicked miles
The gladiator fought till his last breath, excreting the treacherous reptile back to the British Isles