Best Merchants Poems
The Merchants:
It has been said that it takes a whole village
To raise a child; How does a merchant help
Families raise the children?
Merchants live in the village; and together,
Everyone helps raise the children.
How do they help?
The merchants in the village fill the stores.
Parents go there to buy food, clothes and more.
Young people have needs for many things:
Groceries, clothes, shoes, garden hoses, and string.
It’s not like the hunter-gatherer days.
When, the men hunted together to bring the food.
They knew how to help the children.
They taught them how to survive and stay alive.
The children watched and listened.
Today, men and women still help
Raise the village children.
The children watch as the merchants work.
They help by selling goods and setting examples.
Good or bad, the children watch wide eyed
And ears perked!
© Dane Ann Smith-Johnsen
March 19, 2010
Poetic form: Free Verse
Once, a poor man was walking through one of the richest markets in the continent. His clothes were rugged, his shoes torn apart. The merchants eyed him suspiciously and started talking about him with judging eyes. But the man walked like a king of untold wealth.
One of the daring merchants came towards this man and asked him, "What are you doing here walking like a king?! You don't belong here. This place is for the wealthy!"
The man smiles a warm smile and says "What is wealth?” A standing merchant scoffs "your weight in gold!” another, "your height in silk!" A third also said "your stench as perfume and soap!”
The man smiles back to them saying "I have unlimited gold! For as long as I look I see gold in front of me. I have never ending silk! For as long as I caress it does not grow weary. I have the loveliest scent! For as much as I smell I crave it more." The man saw the merchants’ eyes filled with perplexity and continued "I am the man who has fallen in love with a woman whose eyes are as the purest gold, her hair softer than any silk and her scent drugs my soul and drives me into dreams. I am the wealthiest man because the woman I love loves me back!"
As he said that with a faint smile and tired eyes, the merchants were dazzled, the women had tears, and the man ever walked more confident.
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Sami Helbaoui
6/8/2015
Villanelle : Merchants of the Word make Writers write for Prizes
Merchants of the Word make writers write for prizes
Does not the failed writer pose as house editor
Great treasures of the past were weaned without judges
Prized-writers in our midst make all kinds of noises
Matters little so long as till fills publisher
Merchants of the Word make writers write for prizes
Lope de Vega scorned long-suff'ring Cervantes
His plight mattered only to French Ambassador
Great treasures of the past were weaned without judges
Prized-writers need not fear e'en wise connaisseurs
Don't they write with flourish cocking-eye on reader
Merchants of the Word make writers write for prizes
Does the Nobel go to some who serve lost causes
Or to some who serve publishers like the Booker
Great treasures of the past were weaned without judges
True, ancient poets sang under patronages
Yet those we love most lived life under the jailor
Merchants of the Word make writers write for prizes
Great treasures of the past were weaned without judges
© T. Wignesan - Paris, May 4, 2018
Between the dawn of ends and time empires wept wealthy
where glints of pillars vanished beyond the grass,
alone quiet merchants beneath joined will and turned the gates of golden riches
where tombs set dust and shadows upon a lonely grief and bid a final silent
sunlight...farewell...
In the realm of deceit, some souls reside,
Gullible hearts, fertile grounds for evil to abide.
As they sit, concocting chaos, their minds astray,
Weaving webs of wickedness, night and day.
Their slumber's filled with visions of malevolence and spite,
Their waking hours, a pursuit of perpetual fight.
Peace, a distant memory, lost in the haze,
As they revel in the suffering of others, in endless daze.
Conflict and war, their cash cow, a source of delight,
Problem creation, their bread and butter, shining bright.
They shun the problem solvers, silencing their noble voice,
Ensuring their crafted chaos reigns, without a choice.
Even some spiritual leaders, tainted by this evil stain,
Participate in this nefarious dance, with steps of shame.
The inventors of software, viruses, and antiviral might,
A cycle of destruction, fueled by greed's insatiable light.
With humanitarian gestures, they blind the masses' sight,
While killing by proxy, in the darkness of endless night.
Nuclear weapons, a destructive force, aimed at humanity's heart,
Vaccines, a tool of oppression, targeting the African part.
Is there not a cause? A reckoning to come, a day of reckoning's might,
When posterity arises, to demand justice, shining with new light.
Why prioritize personal gain, above humanity's collective cry?
Consider the greater good, before the final goodbye.
They wrote laws
with cold ink
and dried blood in the margins.
They called it
the Black Code
the way one names a prison
with clean words
so as not to hear the screams.
In the harbors
the powdered gentlemen
counted bodies
the way one counts coins
barrels
harvests
sacks of coffee
livestock promised to the fields.
And man became
movable property.
Yes
movable property
like a chair
like a table
like a broken tool
replaced without a prayer.
The triangular trade
drew its salty routes
between oceans
and even the storms were sometimes ashamed
to carry those ships.
In the holds
a human cargo
breathed on its knees
inside the caulking of darkness
children pressed against silent mothers
old men chained together
men turned into captives
before being buried alive.
The shipowner calculated profits
without looking the sea in the eyes.
The slave trade
had accountants
shareholders
Sunday prayers
and well-dressed murderers.
They called it civilization.
Then the whip spoke
in a language of leather
a language that opened backs
the way one opens a field for plowing.
And the masters laughed.
There was servitude
from dawn until the stars
hunger tied to ankles
bodies sold
names erased
the slow dehumanization
that turned human beings
into obedient shadows
into numbers
into sweat.
And then the rape
always lurking behind a door
inside a room without a sky
where even the night itself
no longer dared to enter.
There was the hanging
raised like an evil tree
to teach fear
to those who still dreamed of freedom.
Enslavement
was not only a chain
it was a gigantic machine
an imperial mechanism
that devoured peoples
and spat out sugar
cotton
and silence.
But listen carefully.
Beneath the scars
something was still resisting.
A song.
A drum hidden inside the chest.
A memory stronger than iron.
For no Black Code
no whip
no hanging
no merchant of men
has ever truly managed
to completely kill
human dignity.