Where’s the Love?

Often, when my eyes survey the world

They see joy lost and everywhere peace is gone;
And to earth falls flat pleas as dreams lay torn

From the lips of tears and misery I hear anguish

In panic my blood runs cold at things that unfold

When I shake hands with hurts and pain and melancholy.

It’s here I asked myself, where is the promised love?

With hope bereft and despair disguised as gentle arms

I went to the church and feathers of hope fell off me

I went to the village grounds and met open betrayals

On each street corner are greed, paybacks and spite

And all that can break your back left me dismayed.

I choked on the smiles on lips and the love on fingertips

And I asked myself, where is the love we talked about?

I cannot be at peace when people are not free.

And all that come to sooth the soul is angst
I ask myself is this what the revolution was about?

I see people who cannot marry the love of their lives.
I see countries and families torn apart by war and strife.
I met the nakedness of freedom, racism and inequality,

With a wounded heart that silently weeps

I do not think this is how it's supposed to be.

Like a seed that blows in the gentle breeze,
I want to spread love and put bigotry down on one knee.
Every human and every soul deserves happiness.
They shouldn't be harmed; we must lose bitterness.
But why have we lost love in our world?

Deep within my heart, there is a scorching flame
That demands I help my fellow man and woman
They scream at me to give them my hand.

My one wish is to deliver upon the world a soothing rain.
To cast away the reign of intolerance and fear,
To deliver humanity from tyranny's pain and torture

That a lifeless soul or a faceless one losses not the self

Once We Were One

For once 

we were nothing, 

yet my people, we were one.

Somewhere in the forgotten world 

we both climbed each other,
cleaved and cleaved to one another.

We both heard the years hurtling past,
whirring like gears in a hulk factory.

We saw kin and kith breathing,
we gathered our thoughts like defetsui leaves

For the diviner and if some death was coming this way

it will go beyond our ears.

Even before we took Kete to Datsutagba 

there were no doubts swarming 

like reconnaissance planes over forests of sleep,

we were one.

We only heard words murmured in love.

What a grand time we were. 

Is it a grand time now?

What a grand time………………….

Where are we now?..

Where are we?

Jacob’s Ladder

Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman,

Sojourner Truth, John Brown, 

Ogalala, Adoeette, Nkrumah

Turner, Biko, Lumumba, Sirowiwa

Mandela, Martin Luther King and all

they saw the ladder

burning in their dreams 

and they climbed it

yet sleep today pressed us like a stone

in the dust
when we should have risen like a flames

to join their choir,

but we were too sick of running

and we closed our eyes to the Seraphim

ascending and descending

too conscious of the impossible distances
between our steps 

and we missed it

to mount the crystal ladder

and slowly we disappeared

one by one into the dark

beneath the stars to sleep forever 

and stone upon stone will thump
our cold shivering bodies into dust

wish we could have grown greater dreams

than desires

Once, I was there

Clouds are poems Nature writes in the sky

They sing, for us to hear their songs

And what fear they bring us leaves us

When we sit still and what is stirring

In the ticket becomes quiet and like babies

We sleep away from what is afraid in us.

Then many days after laboring hours

When mute in a universe that roars around us

We may hear at last again the uneasy songs in the poems

And when we sing those poverty-stricken songs again

The clouds move as if their awkward task is done.

Sometimes, the whirlwinds sparkle like rollers and screeches

But the seamstress of the Universe leaves the scissors

To cut through shapes designed even though it wounds

When the designer draws the long thread to knot the corners

Like tomatoes nude on the ranks faces torments as it burns in oil

Its teeth only grits uncomfortable tense; but what can it do?

Soon, the designer will return like the evening swallow with smiles

To pour the sobbing tomatoes onto a plate and stretching a smile

Rejoices in the shadow of a cozy comfortable homey shade

Not remembering the discomfort of the destitute moments

When the unsuitable restless whirlwinds blew painfully all hopes

And disgust argues in the stomach and in the pocket was pennilessness.

Once, I was there, an unacceptable embarrassing needy, unsuitable

For the ashtray where I tried to stand up in the poem but rising

My dreams were like a bird without wings in a world

Where pain and disturbingly troublesome glances greeted every hope

Who wants that when we know 
The Titanic was sunk by only an iceberg? 

You can’t have what you want

We all want what we don't have, and such is life.

We all want to go to heaven but can’t afford to die.
Often our favored doors are under lock and keys.
The beautiful apple on the hill is too high to pluck,
What song shall we sing when we can’t have it all?

No one is happy at where he or she is,
There's greener grass in the neighbor’s yard.

Some want to be happy, but can’t afford the pain
We all want a bigger house and a faster car,
We want to hear the truth, but tell lies each time.

We want the world, but is there room enough in the world?

We all wish love doesn't hurt, since it’s meant to be forever.
What do you do, when your best friend is your worst enemy?
Or when saying goodbye is such a painful word, since often

Unwanted pregnancies stick harder than leeches?

I want to be the face you see when you close your eyes
I want to be the tad you need every night when it’s cold
I want to mean your world, to want you burn like a charm

But you make me like a tree in the shadow, like a river frozen.
How can we live when I want you to need me like the air,

But everything I do is a seamless rock, and not what you want.

The Determined

Whether you start at dawn or in the evening

It’s your own set of sails and not the gales
that tell the voyager how to paddle the boat.

It’s always the prize that rips apart the brave
and when you find out why old words die out on the tongue,
you’ll learn to let new melodies break forth from your heart.

Like the twisters of the sea are the whirlwinds of fate
As we journey through life’s alleys; it’s the aspirations
That decide the goal and not the calm or the tears

For Lives lost in South Africa

Amenorvi, your death didn’t give me pain;
How can it shake me when my feelings are numb?
African men and women, what has become of us?
Yesterday, we fought together for the peace of our land,
Today, we sold our unity, killing one another on streets
Loaded with blood-soaked faceless human bodies.

Is it for this that we stood in long lines on Robben Island

And shouted Amandla when at Pollsmoor Prison,
There were no mountains to shoulder our sorrow
And no rivers to dissolve our tears?
Is it for this that Rolihlahla Mandela died?
Africa, our Sun has fallen into the ocean.

Take the gun, take the machetes, walk the streets,

Search the alleys for every footprint coming to town,
Drive each soul away from the lovely morning,
And fence the moon, divide the sun and take the stars
Apportion them according to your household!
Are we no longer kith and kin of the African world?

I pity it, I pity it when I look across the street

Many like us are lying there in the dust,
Blood spread on the streets of J’burg;
Machete wounds cut the head in two;
And many souls are caught in an oppressive night,
Away from home, and this pen refuses to write.
It tells me, we cannot write a song. It pities it.
 

Norvinyewo, the silence of the starry night

Shouldn’t burden you to go lost in memory.
In the remaining light of the day we won’t forget 
Those we lost along the way, and they know
Those left at home will listen to every dog’s bark,
To not keep quiet when there are no answers to WHY.
They will cry, they will weep, till every soul reaches home.

Unreturning

I’ve been acquainted with the night before,

But I walked out of its rain to the furthest end

I know why I did not call back or say goodbye

The music I heard with you was not my music,
The bread I broke with you was not my kind of bread;
Now that I’m no more the luminary clock on the wall
All that was once so beautiful is dead in the mind.

It is Agbozume-laga who said, he needs no interrupted cries

What dropped his eye this dawn he is unwilling to explain,

But anyone who comes to the twilight knows leaves whisper.

Once your hands touched this table, this plate and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass a dozen times
But these things do not remember you, the once beloved,
Your joy crushed out the day and our dead fear to return home.

Before his helpless sight, Agbozume-laga had dreams

You plunged at him, guttered him, choked him and drowned him

You placed his dreams behind the wagon and hang his writhed face

It’s not the landing on strange beach under a broken sky

But besides the salty herb, it was the lengthening biting sun
A heart that’s cold and wild, and doesn’t remember anything.

Please, be careful where you step; the grave is so wide.

The Year Is Now Dead, What Next?

We have come to where the sidewalk ends

And tonight, when the dreary bell rings at Midnight

Each of us will ponder over each second of our days

When we were weak and weary yet life went on

Some with thanksgiving will remember God’s grace

Like many mothers mourning for their children in the storms

Others like wives bereft of husbands and fathers singing dirges
For the loss of their flesh, with their spirit misplaced in tears

While blissfully some drums would thrill with champagne

In august and royal homes where lights glow, yet we can’t forget
Songs of sorrow the music of desolation of many wearing masks
Just to drown their songs of lamentations carried for miles

Do you remember how you once baked bread with your sweat

Then dare not to forget and never forget the ABCD of our lives

Armory, Bullet, Calamity, Devastation in “I can’t breathe”

They walk through lives of children of our Motherland

You may have experienced freedom from want
But I understand freedom has more colors than one
In fact more than I can explain today or tomorrow

In the Mouth of Wealth there are wounded souls

Can we have God with songs in the future

Straighten limbs of men and women to glow

Enter into tomorrow where life's visions never vanish

And dreams live on and we no more bath in tears

Will you celebrate the me and mine and sing of the self again

Let’s leave behind that place where the smoke blows dim

To go to where our desires are and our hopes profound

Now that the Old Year is dead and a New Year is born

Let’s go to where the moon shall be bright when we are dust

To where the stars are starry in the time of our darkness

Let’s pause now at the place where the sidewalk ends with all

And on the new street we dance with our innermost hearts out

To my Ancestors

my silence salutes the tall Dreams

of the Dead who withdrew from here
to roam over fine mountains and
frighten hawks reshaping my dreams

sometime the sound and throbs of their breath
is a rage of blood in eons of anger with stones and axes
at times they come as Fumes of Smoke
on a Dark Noon to take me across rivers of Solitude

but I sometimes wonder if while tip-toeing

in the fog of foreign suits we have not lost sight

of the ancestors' humorous laughs

at the steps we place in the quicksand 

and call ourselves special names

sometimes I stroll around the roundabout of my memory
when carving affections for my dead soul
in unforgettable words like a master-butcher

who picks up the axe and dismembers parts of goat-meat

that tastes so good and says, tonight there will be another party
with champagnes in place of palm wine

I have grown sick of songs of sorrow
I want to cross the rivers of solitude
sing new songs of joy to celebrate the past and present
and sing and dance in gratitude for life at Home

but will my ancestors be accustomed to forgiving me
every day for the loss of my Soul
the Soul lost in the fog of foreign suits

The Art of Transformation

Today, I want us to think about certain situations in life. For example, if you're not happy with the way things are in your life, what do you do? I think you MUST take some sort of step in the direction of transformation.

The key, however, is not to see the loss of money, relationships or power as a MAD venture, for you to relapse into certain habits (that can be related to as insane) as an indication that the path chosen doesn't work. Remember, the path is not what's on trial, here. For every path will have challenges. Every path will have risks. What's being tested is you and your ability to rise above those challenges, and act despite those risks, and to learn from the consequences of those choices and actions, and MOVE FORWARD afterwards. As I've said before, this whole game of life is a game called "believe" and the act of changing a belief system you've had all your life can be a long journey. But then, the beauty in transforming your life (either from it was to what you want it to be or what your enemies thought it should be to what God wants it to be for you) is like beauty of the painting on a wall that endears itself to the heart and soul of people from all walks of life. Achieving your dreams can become profoundly great when you master the art of transformation, past the borders of your present beliefs.

There are steps to making this transformation a reality. First find some friends to feed you with hope (most men are stuck on "nay"). But be careful whom you chose as friends. There are masses that dine on curdled dreams. Feast not from their buffet. Then find a path to venture on. Test the path too for most paths will do. The trick is to commit to walk despite what you go through. In all, do not accept friends who would like to ride with you in the limousine but can’t walk with you for the rest of the journey when the limousine breaks down.

The Art of Transformation at the Borders of Belief

You promised yourself better, yes?
and talked a real good game
But all these years have come and gone
and things still stay the same

You've dilled with the victims
And you've dilled while you yearn
You've journeyed to the border
just to gaze, sigh and return

Perhaps today's the day you'll cross
And leave this phase behind
So heed these words for travelers
to foreign states of mind

First find some friends to feed you hope
(most men are stuck on "nay")
The masses dine on curdled dreams
feast not from their buffet

Then find a path to venture forth
most any path will do
The trick is to commit to walk
despite what you go through

Embarrassment will come to pass
and risk is how we grow
Regret's a dish best left un-served
and wow will follow woe

One day you'll find the beauty
that exists beyond the grief:
The art of transformation
past the borders of belief

 

 

 

Don't Let Anything Change You

Today, I want to encourage you with these words: Don't let any thing that comes your way Change You or Don't Let Anyone's Vindictive Words and Vicious Actions Change You. Think About This...........Believe it or not, it's been shown that while mankind is essentially good, there is a contingent of about 20% (one-fifth) of the population who are here to wreak havoc on the other innocent 80% (four-fifths) of mankind. (Don't worry, if you're even reading this kind of inspiring thought, you're probably in the 80% or you may be in the 20% unknowingly). No matter what, don't let the vicious ways and vindictive words of the 20% blind you to the beauty, hope, kindness and caring that exist in others around you. Don't equally adopt their destructive ways of being in retaliation. Maintain the beauty of your spirit, the kindness in your heart and the friendliness in your demeanor. There is no reality save for that which we accept and buy into. My Grandma used to say, there are two ways of spreading light, to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it. Be a light unto the path of others and not like the man who because his pride is slighted vows to destroy other peoples' life. Live your life purely so that it is through your eyes, your words and ways that the world can see its kinder gentler self. Reciprocity is not a requirement for conviction, any more than a mirror makes you who you are. Maintain the reality of who you wish to be and soon your world will reflect and become you. Therein lies prosperity.

Don't Let Anything Change You

One-fifth of man will find ways to suppress the other four
that seems to be their purpose, nothing less, and nothing more
Your mission, on the other hand, is clear beyond all doubt
Despite what men may do, don't let them change what you're

 For happy men must smile, and gifted men must give
your purpose is to be the change you want the world to live
And activists and advocates must act and raise their voice
for only by example will you give the world a choice

At times you'll think it futile and you'll want to pack it in
When good men choose do nothing is all bad men need to win
For slow it seems a brick a day is how new worlds are made
But with each act of kindness is a new foundation laid

And those of us who comment on the flaws of one man's way
must watch our words for so shall we create our world's delay
The minute that you start to say "that's just the way it is,"
you've lost hope in your world, you've joined him there in his

The minute that they break you, friend, their side goes up by one
And you become the very thing you say you want undone
As Gandhi said, "an eye for eye leaves everyone quite blind."
Don't let them douse your spirit, fire, beauty, gifts or mind!

 

 

 

Life Is a Matter of Survival

Life is a matter of survival. In this world we meet different people every day. Each of them leaves profound impressions on our lives. Some rub you the wrong way even before they say a word to you. Others bring you joy and happiness never before experienced. Whatever side they show, they affect you and leave you with something to always remember. But, how they affect you depends on who we think they are. Some could be the victims of stereotypes, playing into unwarranted fears, or simply resisting the personal growth that interaction with other persons may offer. On the other hand, sometimes that inexplicable feeling that this person is "bad news" may be your instinctive response to danger or what you are forced to believe and that is what you try to honor, hone and hold on to. Sometimes, our views of people from other cultures are clouded by perceptions we receive from others. And that affects how we could love them or enter relationships of a sort with them. How many times have you found too late that your initial response was valid or invalid? How many times have you come to lately realize you were wrong and said 'I should have listened to my own gut'?  Many hearts are always broken by our perceptions that the future with such “other” persons will yield no pleasant fruit. Well, it is not easy to let someone into your life who elicits a gut reaction in people who may tell you to stay away. No one can blame you for being judgmental and unfair too. Life is a matter of survival. But if your love is strong you two could weather every hail and storm no matter the consequences.

A Matter of Survival

It's not all that unusual to think things with your gut
despite the tendency of men to trust in all things and fail

That visceral response to man and things keeps you secure
a remnant of survival skills in fact that's what it's for

In ancient days it honed your knack to choose to fight or flee
it mattered not if justified by things that you could see

 It's not being judgmental, quite the opposite in fact
it saves you from the weight of thoughts that might keep you off track

 So careful to trust in impression, or trust the way people make you feel
for nine times out of ten you'll find it's borne out as quite unreal.