Tangled in a web of fractious emotions
Siblings venture forth to make a new life
Often leaving behind imagined notions
Of childhood, sibling rivalries, and strife.
Siblings venture forth to make a new life
Choosing new totems, fleeing sad memories
Of childhood, sibling rivalries, and strife
While aligning themselves with necessaries,
Choosing new totems, fleeing sad memories
Beginning afresh with their positive dreams
While aligning themselves with necessaries,
As old family ties start fraying at the seams.
Beginning afresh with their positive dreams,
Laying foundations for new family and friends
As old family ties start fraying at the seams,
The interplay between then and now never ends.
Laying foundations for new family and friends
Often leaving behind imagined notions,
The interplay between then and now never ends
Tangled in a web of fractious emotions.
Written November 10, 2022
Is it possible I missed the boat
Which is why I am a dollar short,
I’ve surely struggled to stay afloat
Not living my life for frivolous sport,
But trying my best my load to tote.
Coming to the end with limited means
I have happiness beyond measure
Which is quite enough, it seems,
Since happiness brings me pleasure
I have not coveted life’s extremes.
When all’s said and done, I survived
With all the necessaries of life,
Truth is I have, actually, thrived
While avoiding most of the strife,
At times, I was gleefully high-fived.
Written October 8, 2022
The night air,
waters (somewhere) burble.
A deer in the dark
hoof-crunches
yesterday’s now 12 degree snow.
A mouse moves. In sudden urgency.
Unseen all.
Unnoticed, none.
The moon is lost in wane,
in fog, in the coldest hour.
I balance a bundle of barky splits
in the fold of my arm. Indentations.
Scratches.
The stove awaits. The kettle, too.
Nearly midnight.
Poetry soon. Beneath the maple
silhouetted only by my memory of
the corner of Sky shared in
differing times by first the sun
and then the moon or first the moon
and then the sun.
Taiwanese whole-leaf, tightly bound.
Soon to unfurl in the new heat.
Some rinds to plop in, too.
The necessaries will wait,
tonight.
The tea, the fire, the words
won’t wait,
tonight.
They are the Actual Necessary.
I come to them in dark.
To drink of their light.
They call to me in dark.
To offer me their light.
A mass of grey and rusted silver strewn
By the sky god from sifted appurtenances.
Preserve of ancients jousting with modernity,
Behind edifice a disperse of brimming slums
With piles, heaps of filth, debris, decay and stench;
Congestion and the jostle for ends and gains.
Benin endowed with neo wiles obviating tradition
And irked for now-now pleasure and wealth
Imitating and striving for wannabes
Inculcating habit and aspiring for a world without the sun
Yet far from assimilating it by the words of the old:
Carrot does not sprout in the root of a yam stalk.
Old city, once enliven by aestheticism
And renowned by the arts and crafts of bronze now
At the backdrop with every frontlines bedecked
By remnants of exotic necessaries. Men, vehicles rush,
Scramble and stream Ringroad and Ramat
From dawn to dusk to the abyss of nowhere
And returning home at last to the euphoric solace
Of the mellow hit of Waifo highlife
And the scores of green, brown bottles that thrive.
Benin, where once the Portuguese trespassed,
The Dutch men trampled and the British overturned
Leaving behind their long evening shadows
A new self-image chained in the heart.
I've seen a terrible crime, a murder in fact
Ruthless, ugly, menacing; an unpleasant struggle,
She was an unsuspecting victim, strangled, from behind.
It didn't take too long, and then she was gone.
I have been a witness to many robberies.
Some were fascinating to watch, others quite boring.
Still, I like it when they get away.
Then there are blurbs for necessaries and desires.
These blurbs are much louder, as I am mesmerized.
Crap, now I want a burger and a beer.
With a thin piece of electronics,
I eagerly surf the channels, I can see many wonders,
While sitting in my chair,
I am there, without going anywhere.
Rolling around like their world just came crashing down
It's better to know the truth then a lie anyway
Getting dirty&losing the state of mind
The common sense that you'd need to survive to shield
yourself from the necessaries of life
Distant drums of pompous thunder,
resolute flying lightning bolt.
Evidenced the probable blunder,
played by heaven's musical note.
Castigate the black clouded sky,
it's refusal to disrobe from under.
Heaven's portentous sounds of sigh,
walking away with Thor's plunder.
Ancient spheres of celestial planes,
chase the heavens caustic remains.
Daunted needless harmful estuaries,
flash floods of essential necessaries.
Controlled the Gods of Olympian's kingdom,
the flying albatross's lost freedom.
Enter through grated golden gate,
tempting the unknown of hindrance's fate.
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