Anaemia
Who cares for her once glorious dreams
Utopia is the new reality
Dopamine-starved citizens gaze forlornly
As blood feverishly flows out
From her gaping wounds
Siamese twins of hunger and anger
Starving her of peace and progress
In a land of high Testosterone
Security gone AWOL
Citizens on their own
Slowly but steadily
Life ebbs out
Deprived of nutrients and water
Homeland turned fiefdom by renegades
Despising folks, they make foes
Pious laughter loosens frown
of frail freedom
Blood-sapping East wind
Turns grasslands into deserts
Bruised and beaten by the day
Body and soul in dread of dawn
Conquer battlefields of the mind
With riots of laughter
This Mephistophelian theatre
With broken social ligaments and
Ruptured moral tendons
Will one day get a transfusion of a new life
Or die slowly and solemnly
of Anaemia
Happy Birthday
Happy Birthday ?? my dear
Who says romance is the fiefdom of only the youth?
Even today, I drink from your eyes,
Your smile causes a ripple in my ?? heart
Your love ?? hides the secrets of my soul.
In every snowy flake of winter,
In the rain ??? drops of Summer
I see your face
In all my sorrows
In all my celebrations
You are my life.
In the tumultuous waves of life
Your the North Star ??, leading me to the shore.
You are the Divine candle ??? lighting up my path.
The beautiful rose ?? whose fragrance envelopes me
I am the drunken dervish whirling around you.
- Dr Fazal Faroqui
Not all cheers come but from cloud nine,
Nor every vintage is good wine,
Nor just in fools’ fiefdom
Fools are fonts of wisdom,
Beware of man’s nerve asinine.
_____________________________________
Tongue-in-cheek | 01.03.2023 | epigram/limerick
Live on Facebook
I post rubbish
To caress the spook
Who dares to finish
The sleep I lose
In the wee hours of nights
Disturbed by the booze
I swill in my fights
Against strictures
Society calls taboos
In lampoon literatures
That scorn the tattoos
Adorning my arms
My torso, my neck
Without the qualms
Society spots in a speck
Akin to a storm in the teacup
Society perceives in the freedom
I enjoy as new ideas snap
From disorders in the fiefdom
Where new generations see a future
Teeming with new technologies
New social media whose cogent culture
Defies archaic eulogies and their synergies.
Europe my realm and my prized possession
I instill in thee our novel ideals,
for your feudal laws our conquest repeals.
Our boisterous wind of emancipation
liberates Spain from draconian inquisition.
Of the proud Brits' stupendous earning power,
an Egyptian campaign would rest the case.
I have made subservient Austria to face
defeat and lasting capitulation.
By sheer divine providence I soar
above my Italian inheritance
bequeathed by Papal authority
and placed in custody of my viceroy.
By my might, I brought to subjugation,
the recalcitrant fiefdom of Russia,
and the resilient kingdom of Prussia.
Not even Portugal dared resistance,
with her weak army debased like a toy.
But in sudden flight and rare sobriety,
her sovereign lord bowed to abdication.
Poets in the pot
Striving not to get cooked
For poverty in the hood
As gotten all hooked
Becoming ingredients of hunger
For all to maw
A new season...
A fresh session...
For the wrong reason...
Recession a new name
Best known to them
Stimulating ideas cocooned
We are the laughing flock
of several rudderless shepherds
Life of a wordsmith activist
Still in the soup stewed
Strands of words
whittled to bullets and pellet
Firing from all cylinders
our pot-belly shepherds
Sorting out issues with Pen
But bullied with hunger
Ohhhhhhh...
Analytical paralysis in full swing
Poetry an apt medium
for language of protest
Bully me not today
With words, we travel to freedom castle
With hunger, we fro back into fiefdom cabin
Bold and grave, brave and spot on
Fighting with the tongue and pen
Shall our tongues be mute
when deeds are wrought
Yet our minds far away
From the battle field
Alayande Stephen T.
9.25pm
5th October, 2016
At the office
NB- Just thinking aloud yesterday with the members of Loudthotz Poetry trying to play on (Protesting Poet or Poetry) on our whatsapp group and this poem came knocking...
An empire on which the sun never set
became her commonwealth.
A kingdom of four crowns ,close held
her fiefdom and her realm.
Politicos by the dozen ,came and went
her sense of duty stayed,from heaven sent.
Family failures&tragedy tested this resolve
for many years ' horribilis'.
Ninety now ,to Elizabeth we lift a glass
long may she live&reign in 'annus mirabilis'
Enterprising Henry IV declares suzerainty over state
Xenophobic princes seek the royal prerogative to abate
Cautious king uses diplomacy, threats his minions to subjugate
Old rivals in Saxony Henry's consolidation with tyranny equate
Morose princes in the hinterland seek to avoid a similar fate
Manic King Henry sends his forces the opposition to eradicate
Unifying his kingdom, Henry dispatches puppets, builds forts his
subjects to ingratiate
Nouveau Pope, Gregory VII, seeks his spiritual fiefdom to
accentuate
Invoking ban on German King's power to bishops nominate
Calculating King refuses to cooperate with this diabolical dictate
Arrogant Pope responds to Henry's disobedience with a writ to
excommunicate
Terrified, Henry performs penance to wipe clean the slate
Ecclesiastical mantra restored; Pope Gregory VII absolves the
humbled magnate
Demeaned but not demised, Henry continued to temporal, spiritual
power appropriate
We must do better inspite
of many who might
wish to impose
their fiefdom on those
with a new resolution to press
in the halls of congress.
We have to get better at
conference reports that
only bring more confusion
to our hallowed institution
as gavels bang to supress
little dictators who digress
in the halls ...
Stuffed shirts compete
with suitwomen replete
in conversations from the floor
who must revise and extend their remarks out the door
of all this frenetic energy, thought,
hard work to plot
adding up to nothing in the end
as a mighty pen
will veto any hope again
for the halls in the hinterland.