I was born through that bloody door
Through my mother’s womb, I saw the gloam
I was once two, expelled as one
I’m now on the flip side of the portal
Into life, the door closed behind me
I come back to what God denied
I unlocked the door with attempts
I still jiggle the lock pursued by suicide
There are marks on that cold facade
On the other side, I pulled to its face
I know the contours of the living door
Its surface magnifies my weariness
Calls of loved ones have a gravity
They like greater heavenly bodies
Those beyond the gate are sirens
Won't the knob stop beckoning?
I gaze through the opaque peephole
Hoping to see where I came from
The door calls to me before my time
I know the door like an old friend
Only I lay mines on the doorstep
Fight the urge to blast it open
Shrapnels lead others to despair
Keep them safe from mines
The cold steel door lulls me
I’ve got better things to do, death
If I exit your bloody door
Will I, at last, be no more?
No door, no egress, no me
The trinity united with the great thou
A singularity of endings or nothing at all
To exit as one with patience, God
Categories:
shrapnels, angst, birth, christian, death,
Form: Free verse
Dreams Fade
Curtains lift to changing scenes–
mountains conquered, fairytales.
Leisurely visits to heavenly beaches,
dissolves of scenic Bali,
montage of bohemian safaris,
unicorns, ocean of repertoire,
kaleidoscopic and bewitching,
invisible to all else–
form a halo.
Camouflage from the ambient
to stave off annoying knocks.
Flying carpet glides above the
storms and provides
escape from the churns.
A safe haven from shrapnels,
coming from many directions,
known but mostly unknown
and a flood of wonderment––why?
Sources vary and roots hide from the light.
As journey reaches foggy trails,
retrospection begins to nibble at the halo
Categories:
shrapnels, 12th grade, allusion, society,
Form: Free verse
The fake postman under the spell of your sob story
had dropped the forty-ninth letter in nine months
Envelope stained with cerise lipstick, perfumed with promises,
sealed with the saintliest of tears.
Your best ammunition had met my firewall
Shrapnels dropped like snowballs at my feet
You knew I still missed you to the bone
Turning to meet you I see the circle
I cringe like a mouse that recognized the trap
written, "We can still build our future together again"
My tenderized heart gathering its hewn
stones thrown far apart when you showed me my old aftershave
telling how you smell it to
sleep for five years
I fought tears refusing to water the old garden
of our broken love.
I can not return, Never!
Hell is heaven when it cries for lost prey
I had smelt the quicksand beneath your rosy bed
"Forgive me" I spat
Feeling for my tourniquet dripping fast
"I choose to be doomed with my decision.
I have moved on."
Categories:
shrapnels, confusion, longing, lost love,
Form: Free verse
Confused world, complex challenges,
contracting earth, climate changes;
conflicting cultures coalesce.
Booms, bangs, shrills, shrapnels
flood the air; blood clots in the street.
Shredded homes float for sheltered
peace: victims of greed that weathered
the world in her wallows. Who dares
pull back lust or freedom marchers?
Who cares for the mammoth flotsam--
dregs of a fractured world that ripples
under quakes and storms to an unknown?
What a pursuit of freedom that leaves
the world in rubbles--her future forlorn!
When restraint relents, lust screams.
Wilting, yet nations hail wealth,
not weather; consumption or ruination?
Impel moderation or hug implosion.
Celestine S. Ikwuamaesi
(Feb 24, 2018)
Categories:
shrapnels, philosophy, world,
Form: Free verse
flawless wreck
floating wrapped in lulled current
by fluid veracity you have overheard
draft of my soul's architecture
moaning from the pellucid frame
embedded in that petty-bourgeois wall
I listened your eyes whispering through my glassed barrier
scream
yell
treble
something changed inside
glassed surfaces started trembling
which made me envisage
they have shape of a fish tank
I listened your eyes whispering – you don't want to be a fuc**** fish
mute and hunted
scream
yell
treble
glassed surfaces are trembling
thousands of translucent shrapnels
created a harmony from my outburst partiture
I'm screaming
I'm yelling
I'm trebling
you were the first one
who really listened
those drawn lines
from that saturated paper
I've heard your eyes vowing – I'll rebuild you
piece by piece
we will be a home
Categories:
shrapnels, love,
Form: Free verse
T'was a thick dark night
When the captain gave charge
T'was a strong cold night
When the matadors are guiding the duke
We are loaded with destruction
They are loaded with dreaded weapons
We are less aware of their heighten aggression
They knew so little about our mightiness
1
We are ambushed at the age of sunrise
We saw the bullets flying over as bane
We meet, we clash, and the earth frightens
While the cuckoo beguiled in the whistling bullets
Both side kill and was killed at the crossfire
Alas! Our men were cut low beneath shrapnels
But their men suffered most behind our bane
Warning ! do not listen to the cry of powerful fighters
2
When metal meet meat, without warning
It penetrates, it Pierce, it raises men down
Bombs are property slayers, they ruins earth
The red roses and their petals, where are they?
How about the beautiful road side flowers
Not even the winsome looking gardens
Nor the trendy posy
See what we've done!
Human attribute is ruining the earth.
Categories:
shrapnels, anger, emotions, fate, fear,
Form: Narrative
A songbird dances on a power line;?
a man in white at a market square
sings, swings, ears to a distant drum—?
a tuneful hum from a frenetic world.
Peace beams out of a warm face—
?beauty of a world not mine—
sees?pink roses, lush hyacinths; rainbow
?hangs low from the blue, defying
the whirl of stormy wind. He soaks
dew-drops and dumb patter-patter.
Yet, before me: a kinky weather,?
wavering stocks, grating headlines?
of bombs and booms and doom;
flying shrapnels whiz overhead.
Screams and screwed up faces
of a distraught race in chains,
in culture that labels the man
a crank, unhinged from reality.
No, in white he is sane and free
as the little bird on the power line;
?as a preening bird about to roost;
as a rooster roaring the dawn.
He sings from deep recesses
of a true life wired to a source,
?detached from the market square.
© 2016 Celestine S. Ikwuamaesi
Categories:
shrapnels, faith, imagery, tribute,
Form: Free verse
Who would have thought
that so much money could be made
from humans killing humans
And how ingenuity could be harnessed to
the industrious fabrication of weapons
The unconscionable necessities of profit
design the shrapnels politics
Who would have thought
that so much luxury could be bought
from humans killing humans
Pitiful deluded patriots of weaponry
so worship the anti-life money
But in the festoon of lacerated death
target genocide on the innocent
Bitter salt to those so easily encouraged
filling bank accounts with their marching corpses
Count the coins by bloodied liters
weapons dealers are never soldiers
And who would have thought
that so many humans could be brought
to serve the armories of weapons industries
Categories:
shrapnels, sick, violence, war,
Form: Free verse
(Dedicated to all Refugees, the world
over)
Here we are
Soaked in hunger
Dressed in thirst
Drenched rags
Fear, our pillow
Neglect, friend...
Then...
Our land yields peace
We sleep with eyes closed
We snore
And leave doors open...
Later...
Came the gendarmes
Guns booming
Shrapnels tearing
Bombs tearing
Shrill cries
Rending the airs
Bulldozing us into corners
Of submission
Blindly we ran
Leaving our all
Forcefully
Tearfully
Painfully
Exiting our homes
Lands
Savings
To a future uncertain...
Now...
We are in a forgotten corner
Once said to be
A citadel of intellectuals
Roof it has not
Diseases eat us up
Yet they say
We are lucky to be here
I ask
Is death not
Better than these?
We can't die
They say...
Aid is coming
when?
Soon it has been
Since we got here
Years ago!
But we can't
Go
Move
Run
Anywhere...
We have to wait
Here...
And wait
And hope
And have faith
With them
For help...
Cos...
We are...
... Refugees...
Yettocome...
Ramadhaan, 1434.
July, 2013.
Categories:
shrapnels, sorrow
Form: Blank verse
Joined by the funeral, we sit down,
under the blue sky, fire watching, sequentialling
the processions. Ultimately one by one they come,
to dust, hands turned down. After close of the rainbow
there is an explosion and a transition
censored by stone age. They flee from the shrapnels
to swathe in bioluminence of death. The penury
makes a fanciest atrocity.
A pockmarked moon stands there to listen
the scandalized whispers of crulest legends
in century’s hopelessness, guilt’s bleeding.
You never chained the voice of booms. A god
mourns in fading light.
SATISH VERMA
Categories:
shrapnels, art,
Form: ABC
And the stories fell in reams
Of the past and future dreams
For war had not bittered them
These valiant but normal men
Tales of home and pastures green
Of family, fields and flowing stream
Treasured times at campfires glow
Bring forth a smile in battles throw
For these are the quiet hours
Not the day when fear sours
A time to sit in reflection
Distant memories for collection
Not the angst or shedded tear
The shrapnels call or bullets fear
Foxhole, ditch they bravely sit
Tomorrows call and death outwit
Stars are stars on any night
Who ever gazes burn so bright
Your enemy sees them to
And makes that wish as you do
Categories:
shrapnels, war
Form: I do not know?
Joined by the funeral, we sit down,
under the blue sky, fire watching, sequentialling
the processions. Ultimately one by one they come,
to dust, hands turned down. After close of the rainbow
there is an explosion and a transition
censored by stone age. They flee from the shrapnels
to swathe in bioluminence of death. The penury
makes a fanciest atrocity.
A pockmarked moon stands there to listen
the scandalized whispers of crulest legends
in century’s hopelessness, guilt’s bleeding.
You never chained the voice of booms. A god
mourns in fading light.
SATISH VERMA
Categories:
shrapnels, adventure, allegory, angst, animals,
Form: I do not know?