Yuletide qualms?
Offer gifts, food and alms
It’s Christmas, observe St. Stephen’s plaint...
Be a blessing, serve the needy without restraint,
be Good King Wenceslas, who is the poor man’s saint.
Many suffer, employment at bay
their year-end bonus pay
Boxing Day
His fingers crashed on the Piano notes,
Like a defiant wave in the Heart of the Ocean…
An Ocean of Music, Rebellion and Symphony.
For where there is Symphony,
There is Harmony…
And where there is Harmony,
There is Beauty and Love.
The intricate melody,
Cried like a Woman Obsessed,
Like her Husband had died,
And now she shrieks for his return…
Music maybe the plaintiff,
But Never the Judge,
Never the Judge…
It sings to us the Story of Tragedies,
Blooming in the Pregnant Bellies
Of Divine Dahlias…
It adds notes and keys,
It adds emotions and memories,
It is the Plaintiff Divine,
But Never the Judge…
True Art cannot Judge,
And the Art that does,
Is Law…Not creativity.
If a boy called Kartik got lost,
The music will say,
Oh, Kartik!
Alas, Kartik!
You are dragging me away from
My happiness and True love.
The music will cry and the music will
Plaint.
But the Music will never find Kartik,
Kartik has moved from the Realm
Of the Heart,
To the realm of the Divine…
All gods, each god-man and god-woman, have preached love on earth.
But who, except Jesus, has taught love for the enemy?
Do good to those who do good—this we've learned from our birth.
Love, He said, and do good to your enemy pleasantly.
Filled with divine love, can you bless the one who hates you?
Can you pray for the one who ill-treats you, just as a saint?
To the one who slaps your cheek, can you show the other too?
If one needs your coat, will you give your shirt too, with no plaint?
I love you. You love me. Why is someone else between us?
What's the uniqueness of this? Dicks and Harries do this.
I'm good to you. You are good to me. What's in it, complex?
Love your enemies, Jesus says, this, indeed, is true bliss.
Nishkamakarmaphalyaoga! Do your duties with love.
Serve everyone selflessly; the prize will be from above.
Midst anger fester the fox's concerns
infecting every breathing room
with pique and plaint in brilliance painted
ensconced in virtue, truth untainted
Whilst swirls the mud, a sewer's worth
from which a sample oozes forth
to tempt the toadies of our times
who lip and tongue their fonts of rhyme
Unity's preached midst raw dissension
clarity abuts miscomprehension
From silken mists scarred stones give tongue
To canticles raised to twilit drear,
Of frolicked hours when seasons were young,
And Promise chastised every fear.
Once brightly smiled upon our days
The kindly sun of Life's beauteous womb,
The reaching hearts, our breathless gaze
Died not nor sleeps within this tomb,
But thunders soft from lips long stilled
No lonely dirge, nor dour 'plaint,
For 'neath these cold mounds Love's not stilled,
Nor slumbers lame with voiceless throat,
It whispers yet though rude encased,
E'en past Death's flowered moat
Too strong a song to be effaced...
IT'S WORTH IT ALL
He carves and sands where I am rough
And smooths those corners down
And “ouch” it often hurts, I say
As His tools go all around
And yet I know that when He's through
No more a 'plaint I'll make
E'n though it may hurt at times
I know it's for my sake
Sometimes if I had tried to live
In a much more careful way
This process would be easier
On the life I live today
Sometimes we learn so very slow
God's righteous ways are best
His love will not give up on us
If we in His arms will rest
So let the process continue on
Until that glorious day
He's made a perfect gem of me
And in His arms I'll stay
Copyright, Kathryn Search
Small Wonders
I count the things…that still work right
While on my morning stroll
My eyes still see the morning light…
(Tho as seen from a deep dark hole)
My knees this morn are trying hard to please
Flexing without a plaint
Bearing my weight with ill-feigned ease
And creaks kept dim and faint
My hips move as if newly greased
Each stride a pure delight
The pain is gone...not merely eased
They got better…overnight
My fingers flex like fingers should
I can pick up things…and write
They’re not like gnarly sticks of wood
This morn they work just right
My eyes enjoyed this morn’s sunrise
Savored it with sensual delight
Op’ed wide in delighted surprise
After a night of full moonlight
My ears clearly hear the Sweet song of birds
Their early morning chatter
I can almost discern individual words
In their chirpy, peeping patter
And last, but not least
My often aching feet…
This morn the aches have ceased it seems
(so far)
It seems my brain has given my ol’ bod
A reprieve for just a bit
With perhaps a little help from God
I intend to fully enjoy it!
EVERYONE HAS A HISTORY
by
JOHN M. ARRIBAS
This Perilous Pilgrimage, Produces Nary a Saint
Time Conceals the Blemished Deeds, Now Faint
Nary a Soul Is Spared from the Indelible Taint
Marooned in Our Conscience, Harboring the Plaint
The wont of sleeps will may trip on illusive tonight
and stumble on a rhythm
laying plaint and wet in some other dream
Sleep may gnaw at my pillow tonight
as the drug of you courses through my veins
and such capillary wanting
may perturb the stars
and question their romance above me hanging
Aye sleep won't fall so easily
as I toss and turn, burned by your imagery
and you may haunt the dawn
while you call to me
but tonight for sure, sleep will not bless me readily
……………………… but I crave your touch, your kiss, holding you, touching you
.... my aching desire is my love for you.
UNSUPPORTED CODE
`Shuttered windows
The absence of any corporeal presence
Is counterbalanced by the ethereal essence
Of the Human Spirits still in residence
In forlorn foyers and empty rooms
Vacant eyes peer in unspoken plaint
through dust hazed windows...
seeking the solace of eternal memories
Of long passed children…and weeping widows
Clock long stopped pon dusty mantel
Hands posed o’er numerals Roman
No longer giving...and long past caring
Of the duty of time and chiming of man
Dust motes that caper in fairy dance fashion
Forming in miniature...galaxies and universes
Inquisitive rays of sunshine that leak through
And peek through the regimented rows
Of the slats in tidily ordered lines
In sombre repose behind
…`Shuttered windows...
For loves attestation had brought them to grief
in all but their filament of hope
lay in the witness ruined
until burden be undone
and from their promises, released
Retire silent and plaint of regret
no longer decry, no longer defend
no more to seek in the chalice of hominian
divinities flicker illusive
must cleave the heart of Seraphim
Allegiance to the singular
no consequence of choice will contemplate
and to final hour render
and for such honourable cause
lay aside all they did anticipate
Drear task now to await on failure
and of illustrious dream capitulate
and of weeping eye make no remorse
for all of love was but a hope
mayhap be granted its renaissance
in another life
The little girl on maintain peak
She can not speak
And left heart broken
Word unspoken
Turn her into crazy
Everything became so lazy
Sitting at a stone
On lonely maintain alone
Her life crumble
How she be humble
When no one is there to show her care
She need someone to plaint her hair
She cook by herself
She eat all by herself
Live all alone by herself
And do everything by herself
Every day and night
She longing for someone to hold her tight
Everyone need someone
No one can be alone
She need someone to love
And play like a pair of dove
Blue diaphane, tobacco smoke
Serpentine on wet film and wood glaze,
Mutes chrome, wreathes velvet drapes,
Dims the cave of mirrors.
Ghost fingers
Comb seaweed hair, stroke acquamarine veins
Of marooned mariners, captives
Of Circe's sultry notes.
The barman
Dispenses igneous potions ?
Somnabulist, the band plays on.
Cocktail mixer, silvery fish
Dances for limpet clients.
Applause is steeped in lassitude,
Tangled in webs of lovers' whispers
And artful eyelash of the androgynous.
The hovering notes caress the night
Mellowed deep indigo ?still they play.
Departures linger.
Absences do not
Deplete the tavern.
They hang over the haze
As exhalations from receded shores.
Soon
, Night repossesses the silence, but till dawn
The notes hold sway, smoky
Epiphanies, possessive of the hours.
This music's plaint forgives, redeems
The deafness of the world.
Night turns
Homewards, sheathed in notes of solace, pleats
The broken silence of the heart.
- Wole Soyinka -
Dried sand eclipsed over the Season’s fall,
sullen rhyme sings singer-birds over scale,
the storm-dance sprays dust against broken wall,
To the hat-worn folks, sorrowed, narrates tale;
Done seasonal harvest with plaint-dried tears,
With diseased cattle shrunken skin to ribs,
With cracked ground, hungry sad visage of fears,
With wasted limbs and pot-bellied in cribs.
keenly begs graceful charity for age,
Promising bags, from next seasons harvest,
To plough the ground below the lowered wage,
And to lock starving kids to empty breast.
Thus rewording he sows the seeds and play,
Hoping golden grain’s harvest from his clay.
©Anees Rahman
We met by chance
at the local dance.
One innocent glance
to start romance.
It was just one look
that’s all it took.
But we were not free
My God what can calm me?
You know that I love you.
You know that I want you.
Why can’t we be
together? As lovers should be.
I want to walk with you
hand in hand as lovers do
Why can’t we be
together? As lovers should be
I want to be with you
and lie as lovers do
Why can’t we be
together? As lovers should be
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