Clean off the deck. This is your shift.
Be careful not to mislay our gift.
Hold fast. To lose it, we can't afford.
Some things we can't chuck overboard.
Hey, where did you just throw that thing?
That was freedom's ring.
Deforestation
Sore cosmos, maimed nature
Silently pouring irate invective
On myopic mortals
Without a lamp or vista
Beauty lost to the beast
Pristine lands, barren grounds
Green fields, brown meadows
Nature mislay, love lost
Man's gain, nature's pain
Buy the forest, sell it not
The Owl mourns its lost cottage
The Lion roars in disillusion
At the sight of its looted Kingdom
Elephants trumpet in hunger and anger
Loud wails echo in the animal kingdom
As humanity hails new conquest
Snow-covered oceans thawing
Seals, sore memories for Bears
The forest shaved bald
As the torrents become bold
Temperature soaring
Men rejoicing
In cathedrals without hues.
From Echoes from the Savannah © Makinde Adebayo Adeniyi, 2024
The window holds no joy anymore
There's no need for knocks on my door
My time, my hesitation subsides
Life's true mystery, no longer hides
My bed is my jail, my cage today
My reason to be, I miss lay
My thoughts dull, my memories fog
I reach for them, so tired of the slog
Each day, each hour one and the same
I'm not bitter as I am glad I came
But my bed is my jail, my cage today
My reason to be, I mislay
So is it my time? My call to above
Will God send my key with a dove
Releasing my body from my soul
To begin my rise, my final stroll
I left my bed no jail, no cage today
For those left behind now, I love and pray.
Did I mislay my bell ringing skull?
Thoughts are out of school
they run into fields of white mice
they multiply - fruitlessly.
Many mock me in front of my other
more head-ridden selves.
Got out of my sleep
with a crowbar and shovel,
mislaid the brain I had yesterday
or was it the day before?
Distant chomping sounds in a rabbit hole.
You can think too much, you can spread yourself
like marmalade over a hundred sticky memories.
Problems appear but only to be unsolved, just
mummified in a facsimile of an afterlife.
I once had a screw-top,
it kept the thinking down to a few finger bones.
Rampant are the curly-tailed nibblers.
All is well, for I dream in the emptiness
of a bell ringing skull,
one placed somewhere else
and far out of sight.
Even if you give up gold, you could find it later.
And if you lavish love, you will mislay on it in a year.
But, if you ruin a nation or a place, where can you sight one?
Written: March 15, 2021
Winter fetches a hillock of the wind and downpour.
Exacerbating people to mislay their blight core.
Peculiar demesne keepers are utterly aroused.
While tiny dwellings, slums are bulldozed.
Flush breaks out among the poorest of the poor.
Thoroughly jiggling, they shiver in the spongy cure.
None of the people around me appear to descry them.
They are enduring dull, agonizing demise mayhem.
In the midst of the winters harshest season,
The scenery is desolate, and homes sap blacken.
Snow inversely overwhelms everything.
Making hills that are huge and transcending.
People in neediness succumb to the winter.
While we continue to offer a hefty fee for a heater,
We tuck ourselves into our cozy beds for the night.
People have stuck to death all around from frostbite.
Relish life by humming songs of love every day.
I'm unconcerned if it's winter or summer ray.
The universe is a child's hand on your shoulder.
When life is volatile, death lacks uniqueness jolter.
Written: January 15, 2022
Winter Wonders Within Nature Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: M. L. Kiser
I suffered through the dark
Hoping hoping i could make a mark.
Timeless struggle to live
But couldn't hold back the things i believe.
Desiring all along to be righteous.
Even the path way to live i was conscious,
But held back in pain with nature.
Was focused but uncertain of the future.
The battle becoming more stronger
My flesh, the brain behind the danger.
All day, my spirit never rest but fighting.
And my flesh also by all means pulling.
Look, i stray and mislay my heart;
Diving aimlessly to the world path like that.
The end of which is destruction
But my mind refuse to take instruction.
The He Goat arises in me no resting
After so much prayer and long fasting.
The world keeps showing me things.
Things that makes my spirit thin.
No! I said, 'I don't want to look.
Not too long in the same act i brook
Many years spent in building
Smashed with an act, sweet but destroying.
How can i overcome?
I cant fight being alone.
Please Lord, don't let me perish
For i am the child you love and cherish.
GONE VIRAL (For Corona virus/ Covid 19 contest)
Don’t splutter, don’t wheeze
Don’t cough and don’t sneeze
Or they’ll lock you up
And they’ll mislay the keys
Don’t tell them you’re hot
Just say that you’re not
And don’t touch your face
Or you could be shot
With those swollen glands
You’d best wash your hands
And stay well away
From where your gran stands
In this world of issues
And black market tissues
Hand gel is gold dust
And loo roll is re-used
For shelves are now bare
No toilet roll there
Somebody said
It’s a media scare
It’s just four weeks on
So many folk gone
The cynics all died
Knowing they got it wrong
In gas masks and visors
The army now spies us
We walk down the street
And a magistrate tries us
But we are survivors
And no law shall tie us
I’m off for a drive
In my Corona virus
19 March 2020
Contest: Covid 19 Contest
Sponsor: Team Poetry Soup
For years it had flown through dim canyons,
hollows where the mute sheltered in echoing caves.
Poems shifted loose and gearless.
Words darted for cover as if caught
in an empty bell tower.
On tongue-chilled days it would croon inarticulately
as it sang beneath jawbone rafters.
Then one drunken night I felt it clearing its windpipes,
coaching a squeaky organ into yawps of utterance.
I can see it now, a raw unlovely thing,
a creature hammered through gurgling fissures,
grown stark with a transpiring clarity.
I would mislay it like a lost penny,
go crazy to find its untrod trail again,
then it would return like a tramp begging at my door.
I hear it knocking now – a homeless angel
eager to shed the next paltry revelation
in a foundling language.
No longer is it a chance sighting,
no longer a luminous flutter on dark walls;
it is red of lip,
a painted vowel in my unbolted mouth.
A mouth that now divulges,
and sometimes in a dull turning year
may say something worth transcribing
for the ears of other madmen.
Unmeasured shade correct the unfrozen
Eyes so burn with each natural die
Relic of pieces tremble drops unbroken
Tread with pasts in next hour's cries
Pedaling against the dull silent nothing
Life's showing brighter desolate
Deeply blamed for soulless bluffing
The liberties control the drawn isolate
Shine within the flesh calamic
None the grieving frail unseen
Acceptance shake uncontrollable dynamic
No choosing social and mislay believed
Enter redemption how confirmed
This prison applause weak ploys
I left upon but now its determined
And I am fain to joy
Walk along the six darkened fallen
Each flow obey the calling flame
Lost the theft of working sullen
and again emotions is renamed
I bare my authentic heart with each word I say,
Then go numb as you twist them every which way ~ ~ ~
Now the entire world weighs heavy today
And I’m too pierced to find words to pray.
My effort was for kindness to sweetly sway
Over your unfounded anger set on slay.
Now dysfunction’s heartache is on display
And I cannot locate a single, warming sunray.
I am holding tattered emotional dismay.
You must know love seeks no swordplay,
But ever constructs an endless thruway.
Blind ears tossed our blessings to mislay.
Broken and dazed by our rough affray,
I can grab no answer in this inane decay ~ ~ ~
So in silent tears, I put all on God’s stairway.
Sadly, I believe only He can create leeway.
... CayCay Jennings
February 9, 2018
A random act of kindness, very rarely do we see.
The new day has a blindness to an urgency decree.
It’s not that we would fail to help, there’s purity of heart.
Our eyes neglect to see the need that’s calling for our part.
Deeply lost we are focused far ahead within our minds,
so very far ahead that we mislay the present times.
A random act of kindness, you'll find it makes you feel so good.
Treat the sick and disenfranchised in ways we know we should.
We often say it's not our call to help out those in need.
In momentary acts you have the chance to take the lead.
However these are times that just grow colder with each day.
Be thankful if a random act of kindness comes your way.
STRAND SELECT N
Sponsor, Brian Strand
You’re always sleeping on my bed.
A companion that I would always want to have.
Secrets and memories are all yours to take
In black and white, with all my mistakes…
You’re the reason why I’m a bit relieved
With the feelings and emotions, that I cannot grip.
In your comfort zone I lay all my belief,
My anxiety, my fears and all that I feel…
Happy thoughts, bad memories
And highlights of the day
All are yours to keep or store away
Too heavy I know, but It’s okay
Don’t worry, you will never mislay…
It is a gamble
Till you try it that’s when you be acquainted with it
Life is a risk full of opportunities
Its either you dig up or you overlook
You succeed or mislay
You never know Rome till you reach it
For numerous ways leads to it
SO, If the Ace fails take the Joker
It is not a compromise but a substitution
Hence life is a gamble its either you lose or win
But bait for the best, if you loose
Endeavor again next time
Never relinquish
… COLLEN GAGA
I Found unknown silence everywhere.
Do not know what actually it is..
Just a silence or words of loneliness..
A wave of loneliness embrace me always..
The wailing wind entwine me with willingness..
I always sink in the ocean of heartless..
I never found earth nor sky..
My heart always gets agitate..
I always lost in the meaning of meaningless..
To know the deepness of sea..
To know the unconsciuosness of me..
I always mislay myself in the world of emptiness..
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