Why do we crave war-war?
When it's better we jaw-jaw,
Why do we bomb-bomb?
When we are not dumb-dumb.
Why do we crave war-war?
When it's only bloods that pour-pour,
Why do we fight-fight?
When we can make peace-peace.
When it's better we jaw-jaw,
Why is it war that we saw-saw?
When we can be friend-friend,
Why is it that it's war that trend-trend?
When it's only blood that pour-pour,
Why can't war stay for the days of yore-yore?
Why are we humans so sore-sore?
That we desire war more-more.
Why do we bomb-bomb?
When we are better off calm-calm,
Why do we kill-kill?
That it's daily, lots of blood spill-spill.
Are we dumb-dumb?
Not to see that war makes cities slum-slum.
We talk war even in hush-hush,
While innocent blood gush-gush.
dark matter groovin'
anti climatica drill
midnight rain ether
I know like a solvable sum
Every Samson’s riddle bum
Roaming our banal slum
Besides my tricky chum
With his insincere dum-dum–dum!
Not in his favor
His ear- assaulting chewing gum,
A thing to not savor
His disquieting rum…
If not slapping some drum,
Strangers asking where they came from,
Glowering at the seemingly dumb.
Sometimes, touching tunes does hum
But with a face decidedly glum
And not infrequently hitting his mum
For recklessly postponing his plum.
.
wasps buzz, sting, fly off
eyelids swell like farm-fresh Dates
flies invade the face
ants tickle, trickle, prickle
nose and lips look frozen-fruits
mosquito-marching
bugs mate under warm pillows
crickets, cockroaches
tour on physique sleeping deep
rose chafers enter the nose
cutworms curl coolly
earwigs settle under sheets
millipedes get in costumes
make matters messy
ticks cling on heads from nowhere
(This is not simply fun. This is an everyday happening in Indian Slum-Life)
26 August 2021
A Buggy Tanka Contest Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: M. L. Kiser
The slum
When I was born the manger was occupied
I got a cot at a Home run by the salvation- army
and stayed the until my step-grandmother committed suicide
by jumping out of the third-floor window, she was going
to join my grandfather
A funny thing about the window it kept opening up by itself
for years afterwards.
The home, the SA ran was called the slum, the flat we got
nearby, as was also the big white house belonging
to a shipping magnate, he was born in the house and was
not about to leave for a fancy building out of town.
For us children, it was just a name and had no connotation
of poverty or low life.
My best friend Alf lived permanently at the Home and later
became a chief train conductor in South Africa.
I met him once in Johannesburg entrenched in middle classness
big house and servants, something of a change from the slum.
When all are fine and dandy
And all are rich and dumb
We'll all go down to randy
and bare a ditch and slum
Slum
Where hard looks and thin soup oppose,
the spider, cockroach, rat, and mouse dispute
in patient litigation or in border raids
our title to this world.
There is no mystery, it boils down to food.
Our ruined lunches providing theirs
as Roman baths provided stones
for abbeys of a different creed.
They too win converts. With earbite and cold fear,
patient, persistent, numerous,
their inquisitors huddle together in dim light
to study our disgust.
Greyly, brownly, blackly surpliced
they muse on our improbable millennium.
We slum dwellers strive through arduous thistles of hardship
We tough it out through the mere adroitness of apprenticeship
We writhe morosely, carrying the world over our shoulders
But we tussle toughly the travails like soldiers
We're the slaves that bolster the aplomb of the upper crust
The hapless mendicants whose ascendancy the haves must thrust
The loyal ignoramuses that politicians use for their puissances
The impoverished natives the government uses to seek aid for its juissances
The kooky denizens that researchers scrutinate as a case study
The inane old guard whom the civilized take as nerdy
We sleep like foiled wolves and wake like champion lions
We carouse in our wobbly shanties like they're our Zions
We wade through the filthy excrement as our daily tracks
These afflict no more, for we've in vain raised our flacks
We accept to be the encumbrances the society discard to roaming sellers
But we know behind the hurdles what we dream, we slum dwellers
His life echoes in misery in his tin house,
as the arms of the law crackdown on rioters,
who get their money from politicians.
Selling second-hand clothes is his main job,
but the council officers extort money from him,
leaving him dry, frustrated and teary. His face shows
he's seen a lot in his lifetime, with scars from a failed
leadership system.
His neighbors steal his hard earned cash,
when they have a deathly debt on their necks,
or they have lost all their money on a soccer bet.
The problems in his neighborhood repel back to him,
for he is part of the neighborhood,
no matter how innocent he is. The flying toilets,
garbage, broken sewerage, and broken promises by leaders
are all part of anyone living in the slums.
Some years back a stray bullet pierced through his tin house,
hitting his wife's chest; she now rests with angels in heaven.
His children wander in the streets, looking for money;
by the end of the day, they come, their esteem deflated
with abuses, kicks and broken dreams.
He looks up at the blue sky,
and wonders whether one day the rains will finally
come with his blessings....
Slum gangsters
I'll wash my hands
In your blood
Dare i catch you selling
Alcohol to children
There is no world without sins
It is written so
The birth of humanity was the first sin
Sinning flowed like lava from the mountain tops
Sinners and sins
The world to some may seem dark and grim
Floral looks the most beautiful and virgin when is dying
Exquisite and exotic before petals fall crying
There are the ones who defend deplorable beliefs
Instead they should see the autumn, the colors of the leaf
They speak so as to be heard, to have the last word
They are the sinners whom really seem the most absurd
There is no god, no god that you know
It’s in your head you see, and thoughts melt with the snow
Yet sinners march on, carrying crosses and crescents
Sadly their religion is the religion of peasants
Sinners Sin
Some drink tea, some drink gin
There is upon us this ray of slim hope
Seeking enlightenment that comes not from the book
When you couldn’t in your youth
not with the fist to strike the rocks,
with progress push life smooth,
the tiny origin of your brain.
Now take in your palms countenance,
the swollen years of past.
It won’t be straight at once
from nothing to arise.
Arise, how worthy it is to live
with powerless hand to change the Earth,
to be a fulfillment of each day,
in a weak body with might remain.
Of tiny speck thing is conceived
not hugged is sorrow, not mature.
Night without the law
is part of every existence.
God, encompass this lure,
take it in your transforming hand
and leave me something more to carry,
than the skeleton’s shadow.
And when your life will expire,
dark sweat will mix with blood.
Dust of life, how others desire –
think, how wonderful life you got.
Frost batters the slum
The alley cat plays the piano
Bat cries spear the soul
A slum outside Paris
A cardboard city thrives a place where no one has
to pay the rent and electricity are purloined.
is it impossible for middle -class folk to understand
but the Roma thrive despite living by a city dump
where you dump your trash wash your hand and are
happy to live in a block of flats and house the rules.
Now they want to get rid of this illegal city that cost
nothing to run and need not tramlines. But they are
not like us do not share our values, no they are not
like us the do not deplete the world`s resources and
when the last car has stopped the Gypsies will as they
always have done crossing the landscape with their children
women and dogs carried pulled donkeys on ancient carts.
And the man with a wristwatch and finery will offer
them riches for a lift to better times.
Rapid urbanisation of the last century
causes more slums to mushroom
in the major cities of the world
particularly in developing countries.
Unplanned townships make it difficult
for government to plan for better
service delivery such as roads,
electricity,health,water and sanitation.
Local planning authorities should halt
illeagal allocation of land which leads
to the proliferation of slums.
Government should keep planning
for the poor;and must find better
solutions of phasing out slums
which have characterised many
towns and cities of the world.
And slums lie on a GOLDMINE
(PRIME LAND)which can
generate great wealthy
for poorer communities.
chipepo lwele
29/01/2013
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