When the cries of a baby come
Women dance to beating drum
Welcoming the child with smiles
Bringing powders in their styles
When the black baby smiles
He lights the way like fireflies
And leaves man grinning till he's blue
Holding his hand in his view
When the black baby grows
He brings joy wherever he goes
Playing games of hide and seek
Taking man’s name to the peak
When black baby becomes a man
He finds his way and brings forth Obian
Another black baby he bestows
Giving man all that glows
Do I sleep when am upright?
A heavenly day and a beautiful life,
A day I live again and again.
Though the office, as we talk,
Or is it just a sleep walk?
A true experience that I see,
That vapour over my afternoon tea.
Or maybe a lived emotion,
Or merely just a practiced motion,
On repeat, till it maybe be,
That I have an odd, rare instance
Of lucidity, dreamless, sleepless,
A realization of my existence,
Voidless, transparency.
But here I go back to sleep,
Into that dream, into the deep
That plays over and over on repeat.
The years I let slowly steep
were quietly astringent
and on the road where I lingered
I wandered into side paths
that left a faint, stinging trace of regret
I also met a brief sunshower
its light thinned by the red of evening
but when a lifetime turned full circle
and something in me began again
there was no need
to keep my ties wrapped
like a scarf at my throat
for the end and the beginning of life
lean toward one another
and kindle
like a candle in still air
Since early youth we’re brainwashed to
measure ourselves with a beauty stick
while the real standards need to be
how kind sweet thoughtful loving we are
I’m sixty-something and past my prime
I’m not supposed to look like a hot babe
I’ve had my day in the sun and made it count
now I’m that fading rose whose time has come
AP: Honorable Mention 2025
A painting on my easel…
a portrait of ultimate truth.
at twilight, the setting sun glimmering
onto the sapphire waves of the ocean,
the gossamer light
of the melting rays shimmering,
on the dock, gray and cracked!
at dawn, the sun will bring back the warmth,
for all creatures to rise and soar!
Life is a cycle,
a wheel of existence!
Birth, Youth, Death -
an eternal journey from beginning to end,
ultimately blending with the universe!
in the middle, joys and hopes, sorrows and cries,
carry us through the strenuous paths
of the darkness in the world!
A baby’s birth, most delightful event
in human reality, our path leads
us to either success or failure,
but we are not defeated!
we walk many miles
throughout our life,
to find happiness and peace, envisaging
children follow our footsteps,
when we cease to exist,
we pass the torch to the
next generation who carries
the legacy, the strength, the courage
to fight, to declare - life does not
stop, it continues to move on to
everlasting goals !
LIFE CYCLE
The leaf looked up to see all its brothers and sisters waving in the late summer breeze. From low hanging branches to those touching the sky, all were green, but with a hint of autumnal gold. It knew that soon they must fall and carpet the ground - there to wish their acorn cousins well in the Spring to come, when they may germinate and take root as new young saplings. They too would grow leaves, just like this. A life cycle it barely understood, but of which it was in awe.
Acorns full of hope
Fall and are crushed underfoot
Never to be trees
Time moves on
There is change
Better or worse
Just never the same
Our hearts adjust
Our souls accept
Our spirit copes
Our memory never forgets
I like the smell of rain
That permeates my nose
a little time before miraculously fat drops
start falling on my head .
They bring a joyful feeling that I can not explain.
those clouds have traveled for so long I suppose,
They come from faraway .
They carry laughs , tears, flavors that slide on our rooftops .
The loving sound of kisses , enchanting songs and whispers .
The sweat of lonely farmers , the noise of fishing boats .
Because to me ,each drop of crystal water
brings memory’s life notes .
Wet stories from the past and its eternal trotter .
The never ending process of hydrologic roams .
Imagine if we could, translate the noise of raindrops.
We’ll find in one of them a sweet tale of endurance.
The story of a grandpa and a curious little girl,
all crazed about the hints of any welcomed rain .
Preparing paper boats to set them on gray currents
and hoping that they stayed afloat.
To keep their little happiness
As a forever revery ,
a minimal footnote
that floats inside a circle ,
the circle of rain’s memory .
(For you're the unknown, I'm unknown too)
I was dancing before
And I'm dancing now
I'll dance with you in every turn
When they become me
And I become you
You'll be me again and again
For my quest to be sworn.
My taal will search for you
Inside me and inside them
Like in a dazed state
Where everything is bleak
And you shine the brightest
To run towards the unknown
So that the dance never ends.
A dance with coordination
Or without any motion
A dance near your vicinity
Or from somewhere away
Whether I'm dead or unborn
May this thirst never quench
So that the dance never ends.
Taxi driver,
You don't know who you do it for
Every day, in and out
The eloping couple,
The rushing artist,
The drunken businessmen,
Strangers who might've once been friends in a past life,
Now bound by the bustling busyness of our modern-day
To take a few deep breaths in the shabby backseat of your taxi
To think of their failing marriage
Or their dinner plans for the night
And you, navigating your amber-coloured agent
Through the city
The suburbs
The almost country-side
The city, again
To take them to their harbour
Is there something worthwhile in that mundane monotony?
I wonder.
The old barn
condemned;
fresh wood
for creative juices;
carved and whittled into
the most refined
picture frames,
you’ve ever
ever imagined
to don
a fine portrait...
condemned
to a new life.
Life is truly a blessing that we must carry on,
even though it weighs more than it should at times,
because life is a cycle that goes in circle
Open now your mindful murmured undertones,
Your whispered washing watery whisking words,
Your sensitive sensory sensual sentient moonstones,
Your rippling roving river rapid songbirds.
Open now your stargaze spectral drifting dreams,
Your view of the darkest soundless vacuum space,
Your fleeting teleport outside of space-time streams,
Your clearest atoms, the first angels with no trace.
Open now your earliest breaths from the start,
Your trajectory then across the heaven’s girth,
Your recorded path shapes and sizes your heart,
Your sublunary gushing leaves behind your dearth.
You’re unsure what lurks beyond this flash of seeing.
Karmic lessons might await you for your next being.
Mute and fastidious enlivening womb,
Blood red zygote is tied in a strange bloom.
Umbilical strands, mysterious quagmire.
Once undetectable vitality is now seed hire.
Wrapped in the space of a narrow room.
Elusive shelter from the entire doom.
Antepartum life, nourishing advertently,
Swiftly evolving forms and lines reliantly.
Enclose the embryonic kid with affection.
For a while, surely keep it safe till inception.
Right to be born, to exist, to suck in air
Renewed spirit and a drive to live and dare.
Kids recalled mother's voice from the womb.
No one knows his death date or his tomb.
Written: March 25, 2022
A clever horse grazes grass before the dawn phases,
out in the open field, a man gazes,
and amuses as destruction causes.
Due to a river changing courses,
Due to the man's travesty of resources.
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