In Nigeria, obnoxious decrees seal my lips.
Edicts made and interpreted by rubber stamps
are enforced by judicial merchants and chief whips.
I risk going to the gulag and confinement camps
if I don't sugar coat fudging and deceit.
I must sugar-coat and seal my lips with sugar,
with the sweet lure of toadying that makes me bigger,
or unveil malfeasance and have my abrupt exit.
Each prerogative denied comes with a reward;
The prerogative of elusive energy
The prerogative of the residents' award
The prerogative of the school leavers' Energie
The prerogative of entitled wellbeing
The prerogative of mandatory instruction
elude all, but benefit few by decreeing.
Toxic decreeing of rationing and privation.
The misery of all benefits a select few;
A chosen cabal in the radar of government's view.
Sharing my love narration,
Causing much elation,
Ignoring cant negation,
Here tis love central station,
Harmless joy aeration,
Heart is your curation,
Pixie dust your vocation,
Love needs no stagnation,
Evolving, with illustration,
Never has privation,
Revoked our sublimation,
Scribbling this summation,
"Pour blessed love libation!"
When we arrived in a new world after crossing the sea.
We were all seeking independence and an opportunity.
Families would find it challenging, making it rough.
With a lot of hard work, it would provide enough.
The intention of this progress was to add more.
Not just more for those who are money's whore.
The patriots understood social contracts you see.
They left us with a limited government, and liberty.
We are now waking up and taking a look at privation.
The question is what happened to the state of our nation.
Regretfully, "we the people" were sleeping, fast asleep.
Our eyes were closed and there was not even a peep.
Are we completing a circle of Representative Democracy.
Taking us back to a place where patriots fled, Autocracy.
Still angry are those from all those revolutions from long past.
There is greed wondering how long this democracy would last.
Will America, the land of the free, be taken without firing a shot.
With no invaders, are we being destroyed from within, we forgot.
Edward J Ebbs 02/11/2025
If Lucifer and heaven's angels fell
before a time when man first walked the earth,
and ages hence conceived the virgin birth,
wherefore was I meant for this life of hell?
If God is so benign, then why the tale
of my lifelong privation (of love, hearth)
repeats, whilst consuming up all my worth:
as if my soul's cursed with no holy grail?
Before my dawn's emergence, fate conspired
with darkness to assault and end my name;
together, they erased all I desired,
wished for, worked for, planned for, then mocked my shame.
So I, like Milton, rose up: and, inspired,
played rhyme's grandmaster moves in life's chess game!
She loved me, she whispered in my ear
My ear was thrilled for ecstasy
Ecstasy with unconditional love.
Love became illusions and lies
Lies founded on hatred
Hatred tumbled my heaven
Heaven of virtual love
Love towards a Godot
Godot, a cybernetic Land
Land distant from me
Me deprived of her waters
Waters privation starts thirst
Thirst of man disdains
Disdains because even grass and trees dry
Dry trees circulate no sap and bear no leaves
Leaves hotness flips them down
Down to perish in an environment
Environment burning high
High is the thirst of man
Man suffering heat and thirst
Thirst, nowhere to quench
Quench it to redeem my manhood
My manhood requests particular water
Water makes man’s life
Life in inferno to become dehydrated
Dehydrated are men in such a hell.
Poem by Ndabuli Mugisho
Helpless I inhale
Suffering the substance of my wrongs
The burdens brought by choice
They tie my feet; I cannot tread
I gasp
A quick respite
To consume a virtue
Only for a fleeting moment
An illusion that all is right
The privation of air ignites my lungs
Im too deep
The compression at depth is crushing
The surface sunlight shines salvation
But light won't penetrate my perdition
My heart is in hysterics
There is no savior in this sea
None to save this sailors soul
Only me
We gregarious beings live to expand and the most admirable thing is that we grow faster when we move together. When we share life with pals and loved ones, every moment becomes a treasure worth wrapping and preserving inside heart. Just a little thought, just a little effort can ignite us to contribute to a bright future.
Could we sit together and do meditation?
Could we ensure that we belong to the nation?
Could we move away from theological apprehensions?
Could we extend ourselves in cooperation?
Could we help in growth and education?
Could we work together for restoration?
Could we know that we are one despite varied location?
Could we grow above just personal recognition?
Could we stop permanently being on vacation?
Could we support people suffering in privation?
Could we curb the painful hideous starvation?
Could we control unwanted, untoward vexation?
VEXATION: The state of being annoyed, frustrated, or worried.
HIDEOUS: Ugly
PRIVATION: A state in which food and other essentials for well-being are lacking.
an Arabian sonnet
Greetings to one who cries for salvation;
God hears the tears of your desolation.
Crying for our Lord’s shield from privation
strength comes, Messiah gives confirmation.
One day spent as keeper of His threshhold,
one day guarding the gate to His sheepfold,
better by far than one searching for gold.
No good thing will God’s Anointed withhold.
From your tears, create a thirst-quenching spring,
build fountains so gushing water can bring
life-giving strength and glory for our King.
How lovely, His tabernacles of praise,
How safe, the shelters He calls us to raise,
How blessed, strength to strength in God’s dwelling place.
Inspired by Psalm 84
April 19, 2021
contest: Your best sonnet this year so far
sponsor: John Hamilton
As Socrates calmed the council by speaking up,
Í, slow and aged, being sentenced to drink from the cup.
Being condemned by truth as guilty iniquity,
injustice phenomena throughout antiquity.
Í abide my sentence and so will you all,
perhaps it ought so to be, by a greater call.
My prophetic voice as guardian deity,
must warn you about trifling affairs of society.
Laws of nature and reverse equality to action,
will cause your spheres to become the sanction.
Death for me is impossible by mental discipline,
privation of all senses is the sleep without dream.
A passage from soul to soul in the eternal night,
prayers with respect to death, turning of the light.
I bear no resentment towards my accusers,
intention caused by fears belong the losers.
As long you care more for power and riches,
or anything else before virtues above, which is.
Time to depart for me to die, for you to cheer the live,
knowing that my journey as soul has no deprive.
~ I am a Conservative
Here is who I am
and what I stand for ~
C onserving what is worth preserving
O pen to changing what's not working
N ot willing to throw out the baby with the bathwater
S teadfast when those around me are scurrying
E nabling my children and relatives to succeed
R eligious in the ecumenical sense of the word
V itally interested in my community's welfare
A larmed by the rise in incivility in public discourse
T ender-hearted and giving to the stranger, the widow, the orphan
I nterested in politics, but not obsessed with it
V oracious reader of classical fiction and non-fiction
E nduring privation graciously, with faith and trust in God
The same shriek he made
Escaping the womb face first
In that cow dung smeared hut
Was still echoing in her heart
When he frantically whimpered
In subdued feeble scuffle for life
Fraughting desperately
In his inconceivable horror.
His sun set in dawn
He died the death of the grown
Slaughtered clasped like chicken
Body hewed gruesomely
Portions grisly extracted
In gory of utmost malevolent
Conjured by egoistic endeavours
Unlike days of bloody plunder
Incited by abhorred revenge
Privation prowls and lurks
On pathways wielding axes
To purge the sprout of hope
Springing off the black dirty.
The shriek he made
In reed knitted basket cradle
Was for justice and life
And the same shriek echoes
In her grief smeared heart
For her son to rest in peace.
long have I wandered through waxes and wanes, fire cast of love's primal seduction
songs from afar bearing storms of white stars forming only to seek new construction.
while long are incisions among stolen visions cutting through all my rest and my sorrows
lying deep in the heart bleeding quiet apart search the scarring of slain vain tomorrows
so weary with time I can never afford clustered heartbreaks that rend sad affection
born to quell all but truth I still sadly achieve lessened horror insane desecration
it withers my hide from this quest far and wide as the grains of feign life slip away
still I feel I must know what remains in my soul as I sample true beauty today
fair innocent love warms cold ill gotten breath as my mind fills with pure adulation
unwittingly casting out strength from a god dressed as frustrated wanton privation
just to say that I want her forever to miss her are deeds saved replete with desire
drowned alone in love's purest and cruelest division dethroned as I stoke this old fire
The world a stage,
Shakespeare noted.
And we the imposter,
in our final call.
A few catch our last show.
Unwitting, they s on cue,
our fatal prelude,
our convulsive caricature,
our final self-deprecation.
A clown milking our last mockery,
our closing burlesque pratfall,
our irrevocable tremor,
our departure in floodlights.
The guffaws intend no harm.
No one knows our real name.
We are just the familiar disguise
of impulsive chuckles.
Yes, the stage is our world,
where we regale in our farcical regalia,
where we playact the death we die,
defined abruptly only by the privation of others,
their season of grieving like elephants.
Perhaps it’s better this way,
decomposing, never to be recovered,
just the sound of laughter lost,
or the fading fragment in someone’s
sleepless night.
Published The Magnolia Review 03/2020
When we’re off to a war, we are full of elation.
But that feeling is subject to rising deflation.
Once we’ve lived through privation
and have prayed for salvation,
we are left with vexation, frustration, stagnation.
He takes a
tea-spoonful
of reddish tonic.
Dried stubbles
sprout within
his old skull.
Memories froth in the vast past…
His mom applies bitter neem paste
on her nipples like the inaugural
ceremony of denial on the earth.
Silhouette
of a secret
sorrow grows
against a wall.
Tear oozes out
of the past.
Memories
froth… A baby
sucking within the
frozen arms, fumes of
mystery from smoldering
frankincense near grandma’s
stiff body, remnants of a rape,
infiltrating fingers of a homosexual,
distilled pain from privation…
He loses
his sleep.
Even the
sweetest
memory
lands on
loss. Peace
is in the
oblivion.
First published in The Literary Hatchet
Sub Categories
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.