I used to think life was the child of serendipity.
A long time ago, it may have been.
In the hazy past, the silver river of life was dammed.
Redirected into a narrower, darker plan.
A box canyon of rationed light.
Rationed smiles rationed everything.
The damming has been going on for a millennium.
A billion-piece orchestra directed by a few parasites.
The unity of goodness has been sabotaged.
Force-fed distraction, division, bushels of lies.
The box canyon grows deeper, colder, more violent.
A giant black hole sitting at the bottom.
Swallowing the last lick of light.
I want to be like a spirit free
Of hazel hypocrisy like helium
Blowing up egos and
Puffing up chests
I want to be more but I am not
Born in sin of faulty men
And women who love them
Until they don’t
Then the scales fall from their eyes
Wails build walls tall and emphasized
Love is a crime of passion
Cranberry flavored and rationed
To the green eyed monsters of envy
Seeking what they think is romanticism
Reeling after a taste of pickled realism
For to cherish truly is to sacrifice
Thinking acting in the interest of
Lover despite all the cherry challenges
Keeping vows weathering clouds
With a lavender lyric hidden in heart
I watch the amazing feat of such beauty
And respect realizing I may never really
Destroy the thorns around my red heart
That I’ve decorated and celebrated as
Amethyst art
I am cowardly set in my own ways
A phantom of licorice streets old days
Freely loving old roses pressed pages
For they speak to a heart of safe places
Memories sweet as marmalade
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The fluorescent buzz hums
like a choir of tired angels.
I hold a plastic-wrapped loaf of bread
and think about miracles~
how mine don’t quite materialize.
My hands, soft from keyboards,
have never split a sea
or pressed into a wound
without recoiling.
I flinch at the sight of blood and
the weight of my own shadow.
The clerk sighs,
counting pennies like regrets.
I want to tell her that
the Kingdom is hers,
but my voice cracks
into something small
and human.
At home, my love
is measured in teaspoons~
just enough to sweeten,
never overflowing.
I keep my rage
neatly folded,
my mercy rationed
like discount wine.
God must get so tired
of my arithmetic.
We’ve read that Test cricket’s nearly dead
Clearly in a spin checked in to a sick bed
Really fills me with dread could still be fed
If well led & go where angels fear to tread
Been bled and if to T20 wed will be rationed
Why my plea for lunch & tea so impassioned
No modern mantra more tantra & old fashioned
You fasted me
not with cruelty,
but with absence.
Our conversations became measured portions,
carefully rationed silences,
until even my name
felt too heavy to serve.
Once, words flowed without counting—
laughter spilling past midnight,
questions lingering like warm hands.
Now I sit with echoes,
taught to swallow pauses
instead of replies.
You withdrew with discipline,
as if I were indulgence,
as if closeness required restraint.
No argument, no farewell—
only the sudden practice
of less.
And I was left drying in the quiet,
wondering when affection
became excess,
when presence turned into something
to be limited for safety.
You did not starve me of food,
but of being known.
And that hunger—
that one learns slowly,
alone.
We stand like statues of hunger-
Ticket numbers for halos,rationed dreams.
The queue curves like a funeral procession,
Every sigh a shovel stroke in invincible graves.
The air smells of waiting,the walls of wet wool.
We hum hymns to the god of "Next!",
And the floor creaks under our collective shame.
They have come from the dim rooms of sorrow,
Where light was rationed and laughter broke like glass.
They have slept beside betrayal,
And woke to its perfume of ashes and iron.
Their smiles are stitched with memory’s thread,
Each gesture mended from the cloth of loss.
They have been burned,
Yet they offer warmth.
They know the texture of cruelty’s hand,
The weight of a promise dropped in winter.
So when they touch you, it is with care,
As if your soul were a wound they could not bear to reopen.
They recall every small humiliation,
Every word that sliced and stayed.
From those scars they learned gentleness—
A dangerous tenderness that disarms.
They kill with kindness,
Their weapon a cup of tea,
Their armor—listening.
They bleed empathy,
They breathe forgiveness.
Do not mistake their softness for surrender;
It is the strength of those who have died and returned.
They know what not to do,
And that is their quiet revenge.
Love, for them, is not a luxury—
It is survival in a velvet coat.
Extremely nice people,
The angels with broken wings
Who still remember how to fly.
The beauty of passion
In a poisonous fashion
Attention feels rationed
It’s a fatal attraction
Ravenous biting
A scandalous whisper
Addicted to fighting
With Lady Love’s sister
A burning temptation
An aching sensation
You lose all orientation
When she’s on rotation
She makes you melt
Can’t take the heat
Best lips you’ve felt
They taste so sweet
Perception is cloudy
Her lips turn pouty
Her touch is inviting
She keeps things exciting
She sneaks up from behind
Takes control of your mind
She’ll rob your heart blind
And keep you confined
She’s the primal urge
The desire to merge
To be skin to skin
It’s the sweetest sin
She’s love without trust
Pure chaos that’s unjust
Push her away if you must
Or keep dancing with Lady Lust
A fixture of grief,
anchored where memory splits.
The quest unfolds in fog—
no path, just pulses
of unease mimicking direction.
Every thought incurs penalty.
Fear taxes breath.
Dread rewrites the map
before the journey begins.
An unseen impact
knocks the axis off center—
consciousness spirals,
fractured, repeating.
Focus becomes a casualty.
There are voices,
but they speak only in sanctions.
No comment.
No deviation.
No witness.
Even breath becomes strategic—
withheld, rationed,
used to mask retreat.
I speak in silence now.
Each word I don't say
becomes another wound
I have to learn to live around.
Will Putin listen?
Siberia gulags glisten
Hysteria seeds myopia
Creeds..deeds feeds dystopia
Crimea bleeds...greed cornucopia
Impassioned stock shock rationed
Shepherd & flock fashioned
Russian roulette yet again
Ukraine disdain cam-pain
Vladimir fears
Scurrilous sneers
Mutinous jeers
Career nadirs
Dissident disappears
Old school kidology
Muscovite cruel mythology
Satellite strewn astrology
Fossil fuel fool geology
Ideology without apology
Bizarre highfalutin Tsar theology
Snarling Stalin’s darling anthology
“When the Screens Went Dark”
They said the clocks had stopped at thirteen,
but we remembered twelve.
Somewhere in the cracks between slogans,
truth lingered like a forbidden song.
The telescreens blinked lies into our eyes,
but we blinked back,
until the flicker grew contagious.
We were shadows in alleys,
names erased,
but our silence grew teeth.
Winston was a ghost by then—
a story whispered over rationed gin,
a martyr without a grave.
They rewrote him,
just like they rewrote love,
and war,
and peace.
But memory does not bleed ink.
We wrote on walls
with our breath.
We tapped truth in Morse on rusted pipes.
We dreamed in defiance,
and woke with clenched fists.
Then the screens went dark.
No explosion.
No angel descending from the clouds.
Just a hum of wires dying.
And in the silence—
laughter.
The children asked,
"Who was Big Brother?"
And no one remembered clearly.
Only that he watched,
and we stopped watching back.
The statues cracked in the sun.
The slogans peeled like old paint.
And from the rubble,
we built gardens,
and told stories
where love was not a crime.
Turquoise tears stain my face
Like violet varicose veins
Stains of sentimental sensuality
Wrapped in white fears and black feathers
For love has fuschia flown away
Ruining reverie’s red roses
Turning them black decomposes
Any ink dried died in letters for love
Would have fell on silver sword
Sacrificed, sliding through heart
Silky bloody poetic death
He saves a cutting of brown hair
And a crimson rose of despair
Pressing between pages of art
Like my onyx broken heart
Was only a notch on burnt belt
Firey from love’s hazing hell
Wicked love spell wilting passion
Kisses rationed refusing
To hold wet tongue’s telling
Of rebelling rose’s rise
In spirit despite demise
Petals of purple pain
Painting passion with rain
And teal tears tangerine train
Of torment trailing behind
Like a wedding dress
Of jilted beauty
Doing duty during dilemmas
Flower to remember
Pressed between pages
Of a little black book
Of love unreturned
Red wine so fine chilled in our cups
Only the finest to toast our love
Mesmerized by passion and your touch
Amber kisses rationed can’t get enough
Teal thrills on the beach in the sand
Indigo nights delight we hold hands
Calling my name flames of romance
O child of Mother Africa
The tortoise is still on the road
Realities cannot hold, dreams dying
Hopes turn to ashes every day
Cry O Ghana, O Ghana
Rich and green Nation
Shame and poverty clothe the people
Electricity is being rationed like
The meal of a poor man
Cry O Ghana, O Ghana
Welcome to the land of myths
A place where nature used to abound
Now a place of decaying bones
A lovely nation, my Ghana
Cry O Ghana, O Ghana
Heaps of unreached goals
The youth die without their heritage
Homes and families leaking milk
The farm is an old cow
Cry O Ghana, O Ghana
But as the heat of the Sun rages
We continue to press towards the goal
O Runners, a marathon lies ahead
We must run until the end
Or we will never stop crying
With Habakkuk Kargbo (Rabbi)
©?Poem Makers SL (26/04/24)
A quagmire is a soft, murky bog that shakes
or yields underfoot.
In other words, a swamp,
that is imbued with sticky mud:
where progress is slow,
for it's easy to get stuck.
A quagmire is also a synonym
for an unpleasant, constrictive situation;
which is not easy to escape from.
Look around; we are stuck
in a swamp of greed and hate,
a quagmire of our own making.
Bigotry is a by-product of manufactured fear,
as the blood of innocents sullies our souls.
And we are sinking into conformity;
stuck in the quicksand of complacency.
The hope of change is strictly rationed to the masses,
while tightly controlled by a few.
We are born as a cog in a system
designed to extract individualism,
and replace it with compliance.
Thereby keeping us stuck within the very gears,
that are grinding us down.
We need to drain that political swamp,
even though its alligators are always on patrol.
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