Best Tillers Poems
Sweltering and dripping sweat,
tillers of land prayed as they gazed
with frenzied hope and furrowed brows
up at a sun that glared relentlessly down
from a stubbornly cloudless sky.
Through August, the days limply crawled
into September.
The heat kept beating
and beating them down
until a few weeks later when
wind began to wail; trees trembled.
No lovelier shrouds were ever seen
than those gray shrouds of clouds
that delivered splattering droplets
which turned quickly
into sheets and sheets of rain.
It pounded ground
and soaked the thirsting fields,
and with the heavens,
the joyous farmers wept.
The roaring gun that knew no owners
The ghost incarnated in a metal
groaning in the Pearl of Africa
Terminating the blood f cattle keepers
Hurtling the flesh of land tillers
Tormenting landless hunters
Scaring away lions of Mburo
And leaving Mbarara homeless
Samba Samba
The gun of a dictator
The gun that killed Ugandans
The gun that liberated Ugandans
The gun that we know better
As close friend and closest enemy
The gun we still carry
I do not know
Whose excitement was the greater
My dad’s or mine
As we boarded the bus
To a long-lost dream
Of verdant fields
Rich with the fruit of native soil
Of crystal clear streams
Where laughing youth
Was spent in carefree
Abandonment.
My dad’s eyes gleamed
As they spoke of glowing hearths
Clustered around with pots and pans
With music of bubbling broth
And the sweet smell
Of meat
As the fat simmered and sizzled
Stirring the rumbles
Of those gathered around
Listening to great grandma tales.
Sweet were his words
As scenes of pastoral joy
Rolled off his tongue
With vividness imbued
With longing
For years gone past
These two score and ten.
Come, lad, he said
With wistful smile
And a soft ache in his heart
You’ll meet ole Gran
And Uncles and Aunts
And Cousins in droves.
The bus droned through the night
And at crack of dawn
We alighted
At a ramshackle stand
With nary a soul
But a lone
Wizened man
Who had seen better times.
With a quaver of despair
My dad fearfully asked
Of such-and-such
Great clans once there
Of streets and of temples
Of markets and yards
Of fields and their tillers
Only to be met with
Stony silent stare.
There was a rise in the wind
As dust-devils danced
The torpor was mounting
Till the man finally spake
The families you seek
Have moved on
To the beyond
Ten years or so
There was a quake and a storm
Now there only be ghosts.
Now we awaited
The bus
To take us back home
Saddened son
And a ghost of a dad.
~19 Jul 2016~
Semi-fictional
Contest: Long lost family
The Christian life is not robotic
The Kingdom of God is very organic.
It is not "do this and you will get that"
But a Seed of life on His welcome mat.
It's not "do good and you'll get good"
But feeding from Jesus the heavenly food.
It's not "do bad and you'll get bad"
But hearing the warnings from his red flags.
It's not by principles or law based keeping
but letting seed grow, while you are sleeping.
We're not asking God to create the external
For we already have what we need internal.
I's not a structure you build so well
but a tree that grows; cell by cell.
It's not that you know each chapter and verse
But an agreeing heart to His voice you've heard
It's not a formula that you can do
But agreement to the Life inside of you.
The Kingdom of God is not for mechanics
But tillers of soil who love organics.
The Kingdom of God is not cause and effect
But seed and harvest for God's elect.
Like a distant relative, the moon looks down
upon the face of its ravaged cousin, with
eyebrows arched and telling finger raised. All
the while giving thanks for its airless habitat
It watches the needless capture of bodies
and release of butchered souls. And explosive
judgements shaking the stable balance of the
horizon and the innocence of the earth
Where angry fear, quenched by a coctail of
incendiary pills, is shared equally among the
innocent. Whilst setting charges with the same
hands that feed a family, brings forth a rabid irony
And to blame a culture and caress a cause shall not
render their name prominent or their forced justice
supreme. For the tillers of our lands shall expand
their hearts even more, to accommodate this pain
Yet still you will rip away today that which our children
must replace tomorrow. And you that see with the eyes
of rage, plant only rage in the eyes of your children
and fear in the eyes of mine. Is your fear so strong and
your rage so great, not to let a gentle man befriend you?
And let him plant one seed of caring, in the soil of your
mind. To grow beyond the vision of holocaust you so desire
For all nations, let there be a rallying anthem. A tune for
every ear. A song without Religion. And a psalm without a God.
It is May Day, today.
A day in the month of May.
A day set aside for the illustrious
men and women of the world.
Dutiful and diligent fellows.
Individuals with thoughts of change
for the global village.
A global village we all inhabit.
Great inventors,living and gone.
Explorers, far and near.
Business moguls,high and low.
Tillers and seamen in the nooks and crannies.
Deep thinkers who set things on the move.
We all have this day!
This day for us all!
Thinkers,workers and achievers!
The great now,the great to be.
From Kenya came Kenyatta the great
One of Africa's greatest of all time
a land rich in nobility and heroism
yet greatly disliked by nature!
Situated in the scorching sun of Africa
and rarely visited by annual showers.
Four years on, nature has withheld its dews!
Not a day of rainfall to quench our thirst
and nature's fury. Kenya, a Somali ally
and sister in suffering is in pains and
needs healing and relief.
The echoes of your children lingers
and rent the earth. Their tears
sears my conscience, nay the
conscience of the world. They
cried and wept until
their straight failed them.
The cry of hunger, thirst and
hopelessness.
our neighbors, stingy as rain,
pity us not! Oh, wickedness!
For four years, the
blessing of rainfall cast away
by non-humans.
Our cattle daily die of starvation
the tillers of the ground lament
vehemently because of nature's
hostility.
Our frail skeleton buried six feet under
in humiliation.
keep us safe
from further decline and send
us rain in due season.
I weep hard to watch lovely
Kenya decline in value and substance
and to see her children tears
drop on my conscience.
Beethoven smashes one piano after another.
He shears through keyboards,
a peasant scything hay.
The composer's fingers don't grow deaf,
they become deeper, more blunted,
like mallets.
His apartment is disorderly,
tools and equipment
are hidden in Dresden figurines,
in elderly Delftware,
ball-peen hammers crammed
into the whittled stems of goose quills.
Augers, grinders and rotary tillers
are rendered into themes and motifs.
Wrecking crews hum and stamp,
tables thump out allegro dissonance.
Into this din and demolition
plows a heavy sonata
the hard-nosed 'Hammerklavier'
bulldozing its trenchant path
into the cramped streets;
where in the absence of safety barriers,
a defiant deconstruction
has begun.
Beethoven smashes one piano after another.
He shears through keyboards,
a peasant scything hay.
The composer's fingers don't grow deaf,
they become deeper, more blunted,
like mallets.
His apartment is disorderly,
tools and equipment
are hidden in Dresden figurines,
in elderly Delftware,
ball-peen hammers crammed
into the whittled stems of goose quills.
Augers, grinders and rotary tillers
are rendered into themes and motifs.
Wrecking crews hum and stamp,
tables thump out allegro dissonance.
Into this din and demolition
plows a heavy sonata
the hard-nosed 'Hammerklavier'
bulldozing its trenchant path
into the cramped streets;
where in the absence of safety barriers,
a defiant deconstruction
has begun.
A POET AS METAPHOR**********
I am a poet from the common ground,
From thIs blue planet’s distinctive character— of
Continental shifts and rockslides, from valleys to Mountain crowns — always toiling to reclaim itself.
I am a poet from the land and moil tread
Over by hooves; feet; farmers’ tillers; uncounted
Legions of warriors; and, too, raindrops blessing
My thirst: before a scorching sun depletes my plenty.
My roots scatter forth in every direction —
Of a lightless substrata and above over the surface
— Unalarmed by obstacles, they will simply
Course under, around, through or over
To the next stanza of life in modes questioning
God’s necessary work on his majestic tapestries
Comprised of inspirations and threads, instincts
Or the free-willed interactions of all his created.
My voice among all humanity, has seeded slowly,
While fertilized in aloneness; self-taught In youth
By the Romantics; and lately by wielding an adz
To stones til thunder struck forcefully out...
To now, drowning the body, unleashing all
The buried emphasis to sprout through: thus,
The young blades grow bending to this way
Then that in more harmonious breezes, gracefully
Brought on into verse, urging response. So rest,
My poet’s soul, for the solitude’s been peeled open,
Your pages teem with sister metaphors spiriting up
Their wings in turns around the great lakesides.
*****.....*****.....******.....*****.....******......******
FLOCK OF BOATS
Who hasn’t watched boats bobbing in the shallows
Restlessly pulling at their slack tethers in the softly breaking waves?
They are live things with souls that stretch out to the horizon,
And feel happiest with the splash of deep saltwater against their cheeks.
Their boards shrink with dry sun and shelter, paint peels,
For they need to swell their flesh in life-giving pitch and roll
And fill their sails with hopeful energy, their tillers leaning hard
Against the tide, and ropes taut as bowstrings, heading home,
Arrow-straight, as geese in a late autumn sky, before sunset.
Grey vapour sated clouds extend their chain
Of rainy bursts and torrents at a glance
The hoarse throat whine from canyons weren’t in vain
As green shoot tillers bow to circumstance
Rush petals weave a chain of svelte romance
On river banks where oak beam timbres fall
Coy sika deer among his peers may crawl
Beyond that wetland canvass oiled at birth
An embryonic chain encodes its wall
With nascent human trails to cosmic mirth
Tillers cost up to three hundred dollars
I don’t need one, I have a puppy
He digs a hole every day to bury his face in
All I have to do is stake him out like a goat on a chain
Wherever I want my garden
The noddy land
Reality is more than we see in an everyday happening
It stretches further into another dimension we call dreams
but are vital in living life.
What my ghostwriter tries to say is: dreams come true.
I was back in the valley where I used to live and was
greeted by old friends who only appear in dreams
asked me where I had been; if I told they would think
I was dreaming and looked alarmed; has he gone ga, ga.
Footwear is a must in the valley, which is free of cars
I had been the shoemaker making shoes for the ball
and clogs for everyday use when walking on streets
of cobblestone in the valley’s little town.
In this valley, only those who do practical work are
leaders, who get to vote, say, the tillers of the soil
and the men and women who make the food edible
distribute sustenance and feed the people soundly.
The people in my valley are peaceful and friendly
go to bed early, follow the pattern of the climate
this also makes them dull; when I’m well rested
return to the turbulence of earthly days and love.
The season the tillers earnestly await,
The thirsty and parched celebrate,
The dead are awakened,
The weak are strengthened,
An envelope of life and beauty permeate.
February 18, 2022