Rays of golden sun, at orange dawn, I enjoy...!
I wake up, hearing chirps of birds at four O’ clock;
At fifties! Yet, I feel, as though a little boy...!
The earth and the heavens celebrate springtime-joy,
Timely changes in weather never my glee block;
Rays of golden sun, at orange dawn, I enjoy...!
Newborn baby animals race around in cloy,
In ponds around, bullfrogs in chorus gaily croak;
At fifties! Yet, I feel, as though a little boy...!
Breeze, as though touch me not, feels me and fades in coy,
Within feelings, like salsa, to xylophones, rock;
Rays of golden sun, at orange dawn, I enjoy...!
Seed drowsing, spring up and shoot up fresh green savoy,
Migratory birds to their homelands fly in flock;
At fifties! Yet, I feel, as though, a little boy...!
Sunshine! Shower! Wedding of foxes! Dogs convoy!
Ducks and geese and swans and swamps display their catwalk;
Rays of golden sun, at orange dawn, I enjoy...!
At fifties! Yet, I feel, as though a little boy...!
15 April 2022
Springtime Villanelle Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Sotto Poet
Soulless we walk,
despondent and destitute..
Anxiety as our body shrink
illfare to our future..
Our posture stand not,
for our legs are frail..
Our homelands are dreadful..
Lifeless we walk..
Voidness without currency..
Occupant without occupation..
Hopeless and homeless..
Hardship with misery
We clamor for our plight..
Unbearable hunger and joblessness......
Inflation and poverty without cessation..
Food shortage and insecurities..
deadly we walk, with anguish without hope...
Blindfold and reddish eyes..
we can't descry for we're walking dead....
Millions of Indian Muslim marched toward Pakistan,
And numerous Hindus, from Pakistan, reached Hindustan.
The lands they hated most had to become now their homelands,
With their bitter most enemies, they were forced to shake hands.
A little taunting from one was enough for the other,
To hit or kick or beat or bite or callously murder.
Many thousands were mercilessly killed in both the sides,
Atrocities on women tolled as though sea in high tides.
No inner healing could ever, in any way, take place,
Feelings of unhealed wounds ran within as though in full race;
In venom-filled words and actions their revenge fond vent,
Behind each other’s smiles, even today, vengeance seen blend.
06 March 2022
Your hands are now in my hands
mine are in your hands
From now on, our hearts are
our new homelands
17, Sept, 2021
One day in central Africa a long time yonder
A woman and her family started to wander
Away from their home lands
Wanting a better life was in her plans
So the family made their way through the Middle East
Into Europe and Asia not the very least
And as they wandered to suit the land they changed
As the years and generations were arranged
Their skin became lighter to suit colder climes
Eye shape changed to cater for what they would find
Some skins stayed with a black shade
As other changes were for survival made
This has all been proven in the DNA
Survival of the fittest we would say
In past times Empires were built in war and blood
And prejudice was built as bodies laid in the mud
So now people will migrate for a better life
Some leaving homelands filled with war and strife
But one memory should be kept for us to recall
We are one family from central Africa one and all.
© Paul Warren Poetry
Carrying worn suitcases packed tightly
with meager possessions, lofty dreams,
bringing hearts filled
with longings
for the familiarity of homelands
and family left behind,
they came to America.
Schowengerdt, Rabun, Mazzei,
Erickson, Keeton and Rausch.
RaGusa, Martin, Devries,
Kaplan, Renfro, Czypryzs,
Morrissey, Hartpence, Colbert,
Collier, Roth, Proia and Ward.
They came to America.
Shining through immigrant tears,
Lady Liberty’s freedom torch
beaconed the way to portals of hope.
Beyond ... the future’s golden glow
beckoned the brave to create a new America
molded out of the melting pot of diversity.
They came to America.
Standing hand in hand at Ellis’s shore,
in reverent silence,
hearts bursting with pride,
a hundred mother tongues
with single voice proclaimed
in perfect harmony,
“We are America!”
Bengal Tigers are listed as, endangered
and are found in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Myanmar
Their habitat is, tropical and dry forests, mangroves and grasslands
but this wildcat has historical assists, of their ancestral homelands
Bengal Tigers are the National Animal of India, a cultural symbol
but the hunting of them for trophies, and to use in Chinese medicine
and unethical habitat destruction, is an act, of a detrimental criminal
as we are becoming a species, that doesn’t have, humane discipline
Home from the War
Here’s a little friendly greeting
To welcome you back home,
You serve your country admirably
Far and wide you roam.
The folks back home they love you
It’s for those you go to fight,
By being shipped to foreign lands
To help put their wrongs to right.
The act of war’s horrific
Many lives, they have been lost,
You wonder if it’s worth it all
When there’s so much human cost,
But now the war is over
And the fighting’s all but done,
Your friends and family miss you loads
It’s time to come on home.
A change of scene is what you need
The battleground, no more,
For nowhere else on earth compares
To your homelands welcome shore.
POLITICAL SIGNINGS ACROSS THE BY WAYS
Across the streets are road signs
traveling cross the homelands
political arguing I am RIGHT, no I am LEFT
across the streets are road signs
political signs so daring
arguing about ones choice
across the streets are road signs
traveling cross the homelands
11/1/20
WRITTEN WORDS BY JAMES EDWARD LEE SR. ©2020
TRIOLET POEM TYPE
They brought their music to the hills,
a gritty music
that world brook no softening,
but in time the Appalachian mists
grew softer and the work less dire.
They were not one people,
they were one music,
tunes that recalled Celtic roots
that had broken the will of nations
to ever control them.
When they left those homelands
they did not abandon the high landscapes
but sought the hill country
wherever they travelled.
Now they are assailed
by their own who have forgotten
how to be free.
Music keeps them singing,
the earth is planted
with their unyielding bloodlines.
They will be the last to surrender
to those that see only a fading time,
for they dwell within their own time
and their history grows deeper
in each age of sorrow and joy,
an elegy as old and green
as distant hills everywhere.
I didn't know she was crying,
Until I saw the tears and blood dripping from the corners of her swollen eyes,
Her mouth was sealed and heart broken into shreds,
She could neither sing nor mutter any African spiritual songs.
Filthy and unspeakable,
The transatlantic slavery system was brutal,
Over twelve million Africans were stolen from their homelands,
And sold to European and North American markets.
Shackled together in pairs on board the ship,
Their conditions were appalling.
Each slave occupied a tiny space in the hold,
The cramped conditions led to high incidences of diseases and death.
The barbaric and fiendish act disrupted African societal structure,
A glacial pang of pain like the stab of a dagger of ice frozen from a poisoned well,
All that's beautiful drifted away like the rejected waters,
Leaving Africa in an unknown world, wild as primeval chaos.
Lightening
Far in the distance,
there is place,
I long to go.
A place I want to be.
It is nothing like it is here,
there.
How is it different?
How can anything be…
more or less,
except through expectation.
I gather up all that I love,
to give all that I will ever be..
to you.
I want to make sure you know…
that you understand,
there has always been a reason,
for every tomorrow,
and I do not regret yesterday.
Bear with me now,
know that the time is close,
and you will have to choose;
to leap across the divide…
or even further.
The waters below,
rocks and tides to carry you, me, we, us…
to places far from our homelands.
Instead, fly…
give all that you have,
more than you know…
and dreams will be
exactly what they are supposed to be,
when written down
and recorded…
in history.
Prayers for you and your families in these hard times.
In our Lord Jesus name... Amen.
At Chefoo Reconsidered we did speak
Of faith as something we as children held
To be most precious, with our parents’ fierce
Example holding us to sacred truths
But now as adults with accomplished years
We looked with cool detachment on that fire
And wondered if with tainted motives they
Flew us from homelands to a foreign field
With them to fight for faith against some foe
That now may seem to us imaginary
And in so doing wound our youngling souls
Yet all the same - some fire of faith persists
Be it nostalgia for our Mums and Dads
Or maybe glowing remnant of belief
(Or did the love of Jesus never die?)
Thus in your writings, Andrew, and your poems
A light of kindled faith I feel, and warm
To its blessed incandescent rays as one
Who faith did sometime lose, yet seek again
across the black soil clay pan i wander and wonder
my old peoples homelands for millennia
shared now among our not just our families of old, but with newer arrivals
its not so much angst but a simmering disappointment
that our existence continues to be questioned
for where in history shall our learned friends sit when even they cannot acknowledge the truth
fear not i tell folk, for we a not foe, welcome we shall should you need to be
take all and give not they tell us for good, on knees we have worked
equality told but no equity served
humor and hope our resilience is strong as always we have and shall carry on
open arms still extended
offering naysayers in, we carry on the wishes of our old peoples hearts
learn and transfer
teach and acquire, knowledge and compassion our essence to inspire
Gaba Gii (good heart, Gamilaroi)
STAINED VIRGIN
They say a virgin is an undefiled maiden
An immaculate vestal
How else could she be,now stained ?
unchaste and smutty
tarnished and blemished
that's humanity !!!
STAINED is our religion
its no longer a personal race
but a raceway of competition
sanctuary has become an institution
for jeopardy to our disgrace
STAINED is our so called just government
Blood of humans lies in their hands
which has landed us in disfigurement
cause of selfish pleasure
blood shed all over homelands
yet no justice to measure
STAINED are our relationships
we prefer gain to true love
trust has turned into a treasure so hard to find
loyalty has turned to hard to equip
yet everyone wants to feel loved
when we're all disinclined
STAINED are our lives
everyone is in a rush to make it
never minding the consequences
we're ready to receive never willing to give
steady to commit,never set to admit
that's why we make accomplices
life is light
but what we see through it,is blood
brutal,reprobate,corrupt
has become the blight
profane and soiled has been the flood
she's too stained to be pure again
- Praise Irawaji
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