Time casts a heavy glow
On the world I left behind,
Transfixed on a new tomorrow,
All the new seeds I’ll sow.
Emerging is a new day,
How the light blinds my eyes.
Focus on the bright cascade
Of this everlasting rise.
Beneath the earth is trembling,
My footsteps unsure and numb.
The silence almost deafening—
I can almost hear Hope hum.
A quick glance back behind me
At the thralldom left behind,
Hope continues to remind me
Of all I’m rising from.
The dawn unfolds before me,
A light I’ve never known.
Each step is one small victory,
In this light I call my own.
A gentle breeze enfolds me,
Countless paths untrod.
With open arms, I gather
The dreams I once thought flawed.
He has made his own reed gourd pipe
To play on and allure his captive -
The stray serpent, in his basket inactive ,
And rendered a fangless, servile type .
Being a lazy sot, gets his drink
Displaying the hooded creature apt ;
And blows odd tunes with no tact ,
Nor ever allows the coil to jink .
Motley onlookers dole out a coin ;
They know not why : fear or taboo,
Or even feeling heavy with ado
And he leaves , having drunkards to join ;
Loyal or helpless the selfless reptile
Ever returns to it's bamboo cell,
Despite the strain or a nearby dell ;
Thralldom corrodes the entity all the while.
As I wondered what I should write
And floundered in my own confusion
I thought – why not write about poems
That set me thinking what poems are
A poem could be anything, we know
At best it is distilled thoughts put into rhyme
Or a moment caught in time
A window glimpse into the world
An engrossing passion’s ardent curl
A snap shot of scenes from Nature- wild
Or a slice of life, birth or death
Sometimes it could be a yearning
Or an image long hung on a pole
A thought turned inside out
Or the emptying of a mind about to spill
It could be the liberation of a fancy
For long held in thralldom
A gnawing pain, long suppressed
Or a secret, never divulged
As I pondered over the subjects’ enormity
And a poem’s vast scope,
I asked myself- ‘Why hesitate?’
Soon I felt a stir inside,
My thoughts broke loose
And a terrible block lifted off my head
My silence became audible
I embroidered these thoughts
Into the pattern of a poem
Here it is before you, have a look at it
Will it annoy you or will you enjoy!
Placed First
A Strand (1070) Poetry Contest
You are a sustained landscape
one that changes only when you smile or frown,
a fermata, an endless note
something akin to love strung-out,
pulled thin
until it vibrates at the same tone
as does love, but
not deep,
just the tension of a chord made to sing
as a vibration
upon an unvarying reiterative.
The landscape is in you,
the one holds the other in place.
it forms your stance and mien. From a distance
of years
I see you smile or frown, wave or turn your back
from my outreaching arms.
The sounding wire is continuous,
only those minor wincing fractals
upon lips,
the corners of your eyes,
the bandwidth of a memory never changing.
The landscape does not build a thing,
not a brick or a leaf just
this constriction in my throat while I echo
the atonality of a mood,
and given the small modulations, your perpetual
disengagement,
and my need for this vision to change
even so, am I kept listening
to this
ever e x t e n d i n g
minimalistic curtain-call,
a thralldom
to a reenactment that draws near to love
while rebounding away.
The rosy mirage of freedom
Is like a scarlet evening light
That paints the clouds with fiery hopes
Which fade in thralldom to the night.
From: Bedouin
Date: 9/17/2019
Poetry Contest: Arbitrium Divisa 4
Sponsor: Gregory R. Barden
Beyond a sandstorm’s gritty veil,
A solitary Bedouin,
Like a ghost in a sea of dunes,
Rides slowly along in the dusk.
The singing of rababah strings
Mimic the cooling evening winds;
Tambourines and flutes sound sadly
From the oasis where he’s bound.
His caravans once wound their ways
From the Atlas to the Tigris,
Trudging across the somber sands
Of a boundless and barren realm.
O Bedouin, where are thy tracks?
No hooves clatter in the wadis;
No trail of rotting camel dung.
O Bedouin, where are thy ways?
O Bedouin does your dirah
Yet teem with goat and camel flocks,
Since you have settled in the towns,
Which you once heaped with scorn and mocked?
O noble herdsman once so proud,
Tightly wrapped up in culture’s shroud,
Are you bottled up like the Djinn;
Forced to serve those who hemmed you in?
The rosy mirage of freedom
Is like a scarlet evening light
That paints the clouds with fiery hopes
Which fade in thralldom to the night.
We are the legacy
We are the prime time
We are the heroes’ of our time
The continual legacy of our fore-fathers
We are the seeker of truth that unshackle the false
We are the seeker of knowledge
And we shall strive for it
Oh! By the truth we stand
In the dispensation of public service
For we are the legacy of truth, of our forefathers-
Toiling, tolerance and unshackle of thralldom
We are born to serve –
Our pedestal nation
We shall be faithful to our creator
And grandest loyal to our nation
Oh! God of creation
Bless us
And bless Nigeria!
We are soldiers of light and love
With fresh fire we fight for freedom;
Freedom from the thrones of thralldom
We strive for salvation and not stardom.
This shall forever be our anthem;
We are soldiers of light and love,
strongly persuaded that every problem
We face cannot steal our eternal diadem.
No situation can stain our saint-status
As we forge ahead with faith and focus.
We are soldiers of light and love,
Hallelujah shall be our eternal chorus
With humble hearts we cling to the cross
And there we laid down our luggage of loss,
We daily deny ourselves of delightful dross...
We are soldiers of light and love.
Fierce, fiery, forgotten, forever
Enthralling, endless, elegant, enraged
Agitated, angry, anxious, autonomy
Resentful, release, rhythm-less, repent
Over, old-fashioned
Flash, finished
Destiny, dust, delicate, destruction, distraught
Effortless, eternal, expiration, empty, exhale
Alone, asleep, apprehension, alarm, anguish
Terminal, thralldom, taken, tender, tortured
Heavy, honoured, hounded, hurt, hushed
One dispensation full of grace
As gothic as my savior’s face
A trenchant shadow of the things
That law and grace can only bring
Christ in sorrow tempted me
From sin to splendor’s twinkling
A romance of such perilous times
Yet time itself is not the crime
Somnolent souls my Savior guides
Through thralldom to the gospel light
I was immersed in an impervious imagination
of these frail flowers feigning a feel of freedom
I watched their wings whirling in whoredom
Impious, they are implanted with impinged impetus
A dignified dust, decorated and dubbed a domineer
Yet they decided to be detritus on a detour, detrained.
Thronged by thick thorny thoughts, theme and thrust
On a throne of thistles, ever thrilled by thralldom,
Pots parading potpourri, they preen in power pomp,
positioned in a plain, poisoned, they prey on the potter,
O where did you wield those wings of woeful wisdom;
to trail the terrain that will only twist and tame you.
A dust you are, drunk and drenched with delusion
Deluged by derisory dream in the domain of darkness,
you drill and drink from the dust you did not designed
O dignified dust, your destiny is but dross and dust.
Devious: you devise deviltry with the devoiced dusts,
With a magmatic mind, mutinous against your marker
Your beauty, brain and brawns will soon get broken,
And you will be drowned in the dust you dignified…
Florid light from
The heavens glistened down
Illuminating tranquility as such
Shadows veil, so not to be found
Angels would escort her
Along soft moss covered way
Warm breezes of summer
Stirred gentle winds
For a radiant maiden
On a god's given day
A harsh winter’s night
Or a dank, dispiriting day
Of these I speak
The gods kept away
A lover she longed for
Selected I as her last
Surrendering to love's delirium
By her spell I was cast
A lady slipper found
In woods rest solely
A grasping hand
Creates a demise unholy
My angel's wings
Dispatched her in flight
Home to Eden
From a thralldom too tight
At sad times I ponder
Are her thoughts sent my way?
From a radiant maiden
On a god's given day
IN THE 3-D MOVIE THEATRE
In the thick warm darkness
Like rows of fishes moveless
Netted on the bottom of the black seas
Trapped in red velvet seats flipping down with ease
And fighting for elbow room lest
We lose our place on the arm rest
In mouthopen awe at the screen bright
Making seeming day from our night
Until the moment of freedom
Seat flipping will clear the net’s thralldom
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..
Anyone who has seen the photos of vast 3-D cinema audiences
in the 1950 s wearing the paper eyeglasses will know
what this poem is about.
How I recall my thralldom as a man!
Base troths with idols, rituals of lust,
Hellish haven, hot blood; too late thou learn'st
Drowning desire and pleasure-profaned ban.
But sin may lead where virtue never can:
I - burning, thirsting, bleeding, dying - thirst
For love. Abandoned I, by mandrake curs't,
My lech'rous limbs cry out t'embrace a lamb.
Dear God! My bed a beam becomes. Blessed
Light, in which tearful floods and baser blood
Are rudely mixt, melded, hammered into good,
Grant unto me eternal love and rest!
Our natures thus cros't, I, like bedded bride,
Delight to sleep here, ever at Thy side.
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