Chakpii!
Wooo! ! !
We have gathered
On grandfather’s stoneseats
After a hurried meal,
This moonlight...
Assemble, children, and hearken
To the tales we know
And heard from
Our fathers...
Chakpii!
Wooo! ! !
Oruru otu mgbe (Once Upon a Time)
The full moon, naked as birth, stood.
The silent leaves of mother forests
Listened;
All sternness loosened
In the face of the moon...
Conundrums,
Pulses,
Quizzes,
Proverbs...
A parched and famished ground once,
Now elated with
Grown ears; feet below in the
Wondering, dark and lonely soil
Chakpii!
Wooo! ! !
Oruru otu mgbe...
No distinction,
For among kinsmen
A child is the father of a man.
Charged upon native principles,
Conundrums,
Songs,
Quizzes,
Chants,
Oaths,
Verse,
Pulses...
Fortified in sponge-weave,
And voices coming from the one
Gong-hole
Scare
Cultural invasions,
Scientific blackmail,
Traditional irregularities...
Wafting fraternity,
The lunar concern ceases.
But we do not grope
In the dark,
For each eye is the other’s
Lamp.
Categories:
sternness, africa, childhood, nostalgia,
Form: Free verse
How the birds chitter chatter and the church bells ring.
Daffodils fill the graveyard and are picked by passers-by.
Families attend the spring fair where a florist sells arrangements.
The chided children are guilty of picking flower petals but are
Pacified by their parent’s sternness by partaking in a Spring dance.
Dancing deer dart away out of view in the village field.
Freshly hatched chicks are made victims of the foxes.
But not before the farmers so threaten their temptation by
A gunshot or two.
Another Spring rainfall, the grass greener and greener still.
Dogs are walked in the woods where children accompany wilfully.
They attend church with holy communion and in his honour bread and wine is consumed.
In his remembrance of his resurrection, it is such a ritual, and they are thankful for his offering.
Categories:
sternness, easter,
Form: Free verse
Eureka of Archimedes was part of his daydream,
Thomas Edison nurtured his dream in bright light like gleam;
Could sleep ever overwhelm Alexander Graham Bell,
Till he heard the noise from the other and fell in a spell...?
George Washington Carver, who found in peanuts and soybeans,
Utilizations, like treasures, hidden abundant gleans;
Eli Whitney's constant daydreams gave birth to cotton gin,
That separated seeds, hulls and wastes; hearts of all did win...!
Johannes Gutenberg’s innovative printing machine,
Or John Logie Baird's mechanical television sheen;
Benjamin Franklin's lightning rod and the iron furnace,
Or Henry Ford's ventures into automobile sternness...
No invention has found its sphere devoid of day-dreaming,
This should be coalescence of action-vision creaming;
Together with concentration-shift toward internals,
Should bring forth spiritually resonant externals...!
21 November 2022
Don't Quit Your Daydream Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: craig cornish
Categories:
sternness, day, dream,
Form: Rhyme
There in the wastes comes music, singing
Such contrast, a backing track to real life
Like some Hollywood film, unreal, constructed
Gathered souls in green clothes passing through streets
Boots treading soil of foreign lands
It courses through, in another context you would maybe dance
Lead by the rhythm, cadences, but for now you must decline
Retain a vigilance, sternness, resolve, distance
Such a shame not to partake, to enjoy, to enjoin
If only for a moment to forget, to wish peace, serenity
These simple two words we often take for granted
So, forged by another’s play we ignore this gift and tread on
Doing our thing, while they do theirs
Like ships in the night we slip past each other, lives, cultures
Worlds apart our sails furled different winds but with perhaps a grateful
moment of collision
I so wanted to forgo these trappings, to embrace, to enfold
But never to be, never meant, never done
This golden chance lost in time, in life
But I still to this day I have the music in my head
Categories:
sternness, music, war,
Form: Free verse
The husband asked, "When is Mother's Day?"
I said, Everyday!
M is for makeover. We don't always get it right the first time
O is for older souls fertile with love as mother
T is for tenderness we teach each other
H is for hope that the pupil in us stays humble
E is for endless love that resurface and make us renewed
R is for righteous thoughts that fuel acts of faith.
The Wife asked, "When is Father's Day?"
I said, Everyday!
F is for faith in the Almighty who leads the way
A is for another brother with enough love as father
T is for tender sternness that outweighs callousness
H is for the height and measure of a man of God
E is for endless love that redeems a man and his home
R is for reflections that fuel change within and out.
Categories:
sternness, appreciation, blessing, encouraging, fathers
Form: Acrostic
Each seeded pod of active indulgence
With the sternness of instructions
Delivered to one and all,
‘Never leave under light
Sunlight especially at fall,’
A test one thinks for the human race
Does one wait to reap the spoils of his haul,
When so many of the world’s population
Are cloned when the cuckoo doth call?
© Harry J Horsman 2020
Categories:
sternness, imagination, perspective,
Form: Rhyme
Lists
of dreams
Daddy mailed
with sternness changed
his playful nature emerged and prevailed
Mom smiles engaged in lifts of happiness
decorating
sweets baking
gifting
love
Bro
cocoa
blanket warm
Christmas lights drive
siblings mingling in anticipation
... CayCay
December 15 2017
Categories:
sternness, christmas, happy,
Form: Tetractys
The coarse green fatigues
etches away at me, cracking
and burning my skin.
The hands I once so warmly held
are replaced with the cold sternness
of pistol grips.
Every shot of my gun whips
me into form, chipping away
the soft ends of me. They hammer hard
as the army sculptures another soldier.
I've forgotten the lift of careless laughter
as these muscles tense and freeze.
As we march and our boots thump
against hard mud in this dark jungle,
I feel this cold settle in and wonder
if this is the passing of boyhood.
Categories:
sternness, growing up,
Form: Blank verse
The coarse green fatigues
etches away at me, cracking
and burning my skin.
The hands I once so warmly held
are replaced with the cold sternness
of pistol grips.
Every shot of my gun whips
me into form, chipping away
the soft ends of me. They hammer hard
as the army sculptures another soldier.
I've forgotten the lift of careless laughter
as these muscles tense and freeze.
As we march and our boots thump
against hard mud in this dark jungle,
I feel this cold settle in and wonder
if this is the passing of boyhood.
Categories:
sternness, growing up,
Form: Blank verse
Tambourines in the air;
Whistles and bustles in a
rhyme.
In the house of Khloe,
Melodies of the heart;
A reenactment in the farm house
of old rhythms.
Grand mother's tongue in cheek,
but she is gone;
Gone home to be with the lasses
Free from the pains of the masses.
The house of Chloe will never be the
same again.
Mirth and laughter gone through the
back door.
Enter the dragon, my mama with sternness
and a rod.
Not to be spared for our scrawny behinds
my mama.
The house of Khloe has changed course
never the same again.
Categories:
sternness, eulogy,
Form: Free verse
Sober Times.
A gigantic dark grey cloud covers the town and its environs
and rain fall in large lazy drops that when hitting ground
splits into a thousand droplets like cluster bombs designed
to destroy people but let building stand. Not many cars on
roads austerity grips us with an iron fist and no one drives for
fun anymore, the clear sign that we must look for a modest
future; haste for material gains we left brotherhood behind.
Although the day is murky light is not on in buildings around
mine, we have to do with the light this day gives us till evening.
Trees in the avenue are leafless, soaked and dismal now and
elegant pavements slippery, by leaves of sternness and I think of
the suit I bought at a second hand shop, it had been a banker´s
who scared by the masses wroth had fled to Bahamas…he could
have done worse. We love to hate financiers we also envy them
so we d not have to look at ourselves for money we borrowed to
buy a bigger house and a new car none of what we really needed.
It has stopped raining and a finger of light pokes through the grey,
severity is easier to bear in sunlight.
Categories:
sternness, brother, sympathy, light, day,
Form: Blank verse
Behind the rough and gruff facade,
amongst the sternness and the pride.
Along with calloused hands and the scars
A little boy still resides.
in spite of responsibilities,
the hard days, daily grind.
There within a man full grown,
that little boy still hides.
In the crooked grin, stuck out chin,
mischievous twinkle of the eyes.
Crazy antics, chances taken,
a little boy joy rides.
Eat one more cookie before dinner,
spend all weekend, playing outside.
Put off mowing the lawn one more day,
that little boy decides.
Work extra hours to pay the bills,
don't let that "Honey do" list slide.
Do anything to see me smile,
His little boy is justified.
For the contest; Anything
Sponsored by Matt Caliri
Categories:
sternness, husband, boy,
Form: Rhyme
My fortunes drop from my hands with despair.
Pearls that plop on the sand are the rest of me that's left to bare.
Juggling gorillas and dinosaur tea parties swirl in discordant dance,
While my aimless mind presses spring in Hamburg 'gainst a wintry France.
All lives re-awake each morning with a choice to laugh or cry,
Since there is no door for the key you hold, no pan for the egg to fry.
So with oatmeal in your hands you run from house to house,
"Is this sad or is this funny?" You add you use to be a mouse.
And when even the flag of writing is held against a vacant wind
You meet metal with wood and not as wood and your heart you feel has sinned,
For not to laugh at the madness of sternness is to lose our only magic power.
To fall from branches that were never there is to star in the saddest movie of the hour.
Grieve not if your gift seems little now where once you shot rockets.
Remember: you were once a mouse, and now your have oatmeal in your pockets.
Categories:
sternness, funny, sad
Form: Sonnet