Slavery Was Not Glory

Growing up as a child in the midst of America And Europe, 

My legs led me to an unknown site,

Where chains were the bedspreads for the Negroes.

As their lips befriended silence.


I painfully knelt down, to see if our eyes were of the same kind.

All l could see was the sorrow of words digging down to the center of their hearts.

Their minds were the home of loneliness,

As beating sucked away their beauties.


Their feet were like a fula bread, striving for a brush to be smoothed.

Slippers were their greatest enemies.

And their Shirts were exchanged for chains.

As hunger and setbacks were their national

Anthem.


Sorrow then escorted me to granddad.

In questioning him of what l saw,

"Granddad, why were human creatures,

Treated in the 70s, like a moving object?

He answered and said, 

"They were our vehicles and machines for work".


Oh!

I then wondered,  if slavery was the fruit for the negroes.

Color is just a design, not a fault to be fought.

Silent then kissed his face, for he said 

"We shall talk, another day."


Author Bio: 

Amos Momo Ngumbu Jr. writes from somewhere in Monrovia, Liberia. Born March 21, 2002 unto the successful union of Mr. and Mrs. Ngumbu.  His works are forthcoming in Poetry Soup and We Write Liberia website, Agape Review and somewhere to else. He is also the author of the chapbook called ‘Africa Weep No More”. When this lad is not writing a poem, he finds comfort in graphic designing with his laptop as well as reading books.

Listen 

When the lightning smiles,
let fear not boil your blood 
for my voice will be deep into the thunder scream,

give ears when the cloud gets shadowy 
and the rain is dancing on your roof,

listen to the wind when the trees dance 

look beyond the wave of the oceans 
as it chases itself off the shore,
for my eyes will be smiling in each tide
 
when the sun oozes down the ocean,
as hummingbirds sing lullaby,
as the wind stands still,

listen to those lyrics 
from the sounds of crickets  beneath your window
for  I'll be flying on the wings of butterfly 

listen to nature 
for I am in every sound you hear. 
to paint your heart with kisses,
Listen.

My mother is nature 

           
The fountain of God's love 

Her thighs are the roots of cotton tree 
And the ground on which my feet first tasted 

Her hands are the gravity that held me 
when I thought I could fly without wings 
Her fingers still taste like raindrops on my heated body 

The circulated winds from her nostrils 
breathe life 

in her smiles-- I see twinkling stars 
beautiful flowers from the top of Everest 

in her veins-- I see oceans upon oceans 
oceans that tide with the peaceful hands of wave
Her face holds the brightness of the sun 
as it escorts itself every morning
 
In her eyes-- I see winging butterflies being chased by Blue Jay 
and tiger happily racing with antelope 
As the branches of her eyelashes stand tall above
 
Her chest holds waterfall canals 
That flow down from mountains built in heaven 

In the heart of nature--I see jewelries 
Gold, diamonds that smile with love

She is as green as Amazon forest 
The sky shows her eyes
And her body is Sahara 
Nature lives in her

At My Table

The silent dead sit at my table on Christmas night.
They have been buried a half century of stony time.
Under thick carpets of weeds and grass they sleep now—
Old voices that once were heard within these white walls—
Old faces now departed but still mingling with the vapors.
I can see my dead mother at the end of this long table.
Pauline is young again as she gazes upon her old friends.

My mother died in 2003, but there she is with a red apron,
Haunting me still with culinary aromas from her green kitchen—
Her feast of salt and sugar still on display from distant 1967–
Her dead relatives smiling now for the Polaroid picture.
She says life is a bowl of green beans laced with bacon grease.
The whisper of dry voices say grace under a dim chandelier.
Now I can hear the clanging of forks and knives at my table.


Anti-Poem I Without A Soul

Luscious creamsicles cascading as glacier pedestals
Transfiguring all the remarkable inclinations with pizazz
Luminescent monte carlo dream rhapsodies of tuna silk
Spin and spiral like rabid frosting rockets of glorious goo
Translucent moth girls collide into the shy fires of night
Licking now the smooth verdigris of old copper mornings
Turning and extending their silver lullaby preponderances
To the sipping uncles seated on hungry sofas of leering pleats
Fingering now the electric diamonds of a comatose creamsicle


The Coming Andantes

you are flying on a hazy dream carpet —
floating up there, above these old streets, 
these ancient genuflecting pines and cedars,
rising above the sleeping dead on Broadway, 
soaring now through the white tombstones—
the low walnut branches that flail like hungry cats.
now the sudden rush out of death’s hand we fly,
whirring by faster than blood flow in a silver sieve,
in and out of the shadowed majesties far inside,
these soul itchers that foretell the coming andantes, 
here in this perfumed dreamland with only you, 
as we seep through the spinning pines and cedars,
the long extending blood rivers naked with stones,
of venison death and fish spasms in the final sun.


Nightmare Again

Another loose grind from bedtime to flickering bedtime
The white pills on my bureau sit there like lactose bugs
Lurking silently as sad dogs would, waiting for the door to close
Life is the uneaten fish inside the garbage can out back
The maggots there drink champagne cocktails with their dim wives.
Another nightmare now with hordes of death nurses sucking on syringes 
Their black marble eyes enlarging like stoned puffer fish

Happiness is the Only Mask I'm Wearing

despite all the pain that lay beneath my skin
i've pushed happiness into my body
like a baby mother wearing proud joy 
in the labor room, post-birth, in agony.

love has given me so many reasons to be broken
it has sailed my heart in the wilderness of anguish
& had clayed the surface of my heart into a valley of wound 
like a solved puzzle.

when i say, i'm happy 
it means: my body has befriended freedom like my forefathers of Liberia

my heart wears the joy they wore 
when they were freed from the jaws of slavery.

every morning,
depression wraps its breath around me
& sit at the edges of lips
hoping it'd be the first thing i taste,

but, when i drag my body into reality,

happiness flips through the pages of my skin & mind 
& brush away anything saddened or depressing

truth be told, 
when i was birthed,
my grandmother named me "Muna"
which means: happiness

because that's what i am.

Elbov Kulmonov was born on 29 May, 1992 in Koson district in the Kashkadarya region of Uzbekistan. His poems and stories were published in local and national newspapers. 

His poems were published in a collection of "Ezgulik yolqini" and his poems were published in Uzbek Writer's Anthology in India in 2013 and '*Katla-lntercontinental magazine in 2013.Now he is a correspondent of "Tarovat" newspaper. He is a member of the "Astonishment" creative writing club.

Uzbekistan 

My body made by from your soil. 
I know some day I will die. 
Some day my soul will get across my body, 
So my soul is a temporal. 
I will take you away with me, 
until dead your memory. 
I will live in your land till this event, 
I will remain in your soil. 


Dreams

Dreams, dreams white dreams, 
You are a ray lighted my soul palace. 
You appeal me to live, 
You are an Antelope in my heart. 
I am trying to reach the dream's mount, 
Everyday, cry an hour with hope. 
I admire my feelings to reach you and I will gain a victory some day.

O human life, I pay homage to you

O human life, I pay homage to you
in teary wet eyes
in birth and death
in mosques-temples-synagogues-pagodas and churches.

O human life, I honor you,
in atheism and skepticism
in hunger and starvation, in food and luxury
everywhere, O great life, your very existence.

O human life, I thank you,
you showed me
a dew on the grass
Water hyacinth flower, Flame of the forest and Red silk cotton trees.

And whatever is sacred
baby’s smile mother’s caress and father’s affection
books, pens and ink
generosity-love and forgiveness.

O human life, I thank you
everywhere, O great life, you exist.


At Morges and an afternoon at the bank of Geneva lake

Walking can be a lovely experience
when you are in a new land.
the pictorial landscape
the silence, the raindrops.
The seagulls, the boats and the fisherman
at the port of Morges
at the bank of Geneva lake.
Being alone and loneliness not always crush
when you have water, lakes, mountains and the giant Sequoias
And they whisper! you are not alone
you are among us, you are with us
and we are too.


Tareq Samin is a Bangladeshi Secular Humanist Author. He is the Editor of the bilingual literary journal Sahitto. He is the author of eight books, including five poetry collections, two Short Stories collections and a Novel. Also he has translated into Bengali, two books of Anthology of International poetry of 22 poets from 20 countries. In total he has ten books published. His poems are translated in more than 20 languages including English, Spanish, Chinese, German, French, , Italian etc. Also his poems, short stories and articles are published in more than 25 countries.

Tareq Samin received the ‘International Best Poets Award-2020’ from The International Poetry Translation And Research Centre (IPTRC), China and the Greek Academy of Arts and Writing. Also he has been awarded ‘Honorable Mention’ in Foreign Language Authors category for his poem ‘Another Try’ in ‘The prize il Meleto di Guido Gozzano Agliè’ poetry competition held on 12 September 2020 in Turin, Italy. In July 2021 he won Naji Naaman Literary Prize 2021.

Tareq Samin is a Martin-Roth-Initiative Scholarship Alumni. The Martin Roth-Initiative is a joint program of ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen) and the Goethe-Institut, funded by the German Federal Foreign Office. The Martin Roth-Initiative protects artists who are dedicated to the freedom of the arts, democracy and human rights in their home country. As a Martin-Roth-Initiative Scholarship holder, he was a guest writer in Goethe-Institut, Kolkata, India. And Kathmandu, Nepal. 

In 2021, he was also an International guest writer in Château de Lavigny International writers-in-residence,  Switzerland. 

Listening to The Moonlight Sonata During
	a Mohs Procedure

Thinking the last time
I saw this piece performed
was at Saratoga with Andre Watts
backed by the Philadelphia Orchestra,
an outdoor performance one humid
August night sitting on the hard packed
hill, all the grass scuffed away during
rock show crowds of twenty thousand
plus, all of them amped or strung out 
after scoring big on drug alley, the place
we think of as the promenade, outside
of the Hall of the Springs; the moon
low in the sky, the pianist caressing
the keys, the surgeon not even born yet.
 
All those Virgin

Island nights
I couldn’t sleep
listening to mother
play Chinese Checkers
with her selves
in the dark

Six voices arguing
false moves
phantom jumps
quantum leaps
over clogged
northwest passages
to nowhere

Her cat’s eyed
marbles polished
until they gleamed
in the darkness
as they played

The unnaturally
colored ones
pale blue greens
like death
or red irises burning

in a nightmare
that stays with
you when awake

 
I was stuck in a single take

tracking shot like a Russian Ark 
movie but instead of The Hermitage
I was on a set designed by interior
decorators of the Red Room on
Twin Peaks, then twenty-five years
later where all the carpet mazes
interlock and transport the unsuspecting
to an Inland Empire then the ballroom
of an Overlook Hotel and I’m following
Danny, the hot wheel kid, on the impossible
mobius strip carpets that lead so far into
the past even the dead people dancing
haven’t been born yet and I’m stuck
dumb, made immobile by whatever
Laura Palmer is whispering into my
severed ear, all her words dissembling
into tinnitus white noise static like
nine inch nails in between stations 
chanting, “She’s Gone, She’s Gone…”
and I’m back at the Road House drinking
skunk beer ignoring Mr. Booth exhorting
me, “Heineken, fuck that shit. Pabst Blue 
Ribbon!” and the scene shifts to the back
seat of Frank’s speeding car and I’m
squeezed between Frank’s under-dressed
droogies from a clockworkorangebluevelvet
in a noir nightmare neither Roy Orbison
nor Ludwig con can save me with a chorus
of crack whore angels singing and dancing to
Little Eva and Alle Menschen are waving
their hymnal and speaking in a language
that hasn’t been invented yet like space
age revenants from a futurama fourth reich
I can’t be rescued from until Billy Pilgrim
makes the scene in a Slaughterhouse Five
of the mind in a Twin Peaks diner where
nothing is as it seems. Not even the coffee.
Not even the pie.
 

 
Work Anxiety Dream with Lydia Davis in it.

I’m back in the tavern again
and its wall-to-wall humans
though it could be worse as previous
night terrors have shown.
Everyone is smoking clove cigarettes
to cover the smell of hashish hookahs
emanating from the blind corner
to the left of the bar that I can’t see
in my back bar mirrors. 
We’re all in the midnight witching 
hour, stuck in jukebox hell, listening to 
The Best of Patsy Cline,

” Worry, why do I let myself worry?
Wondering what in the world did I do?”

Then the new general manager is
behind the bar introducing herself as
Lydia Davis and I’m thinking what
the hell is she doing here? She doesn’t 
even look like the 70’s version of Lydia
despite not knowing her then, I’ve seen
photos of what she looked like.

And she assures me she is the same
Lydia Davis so I just go with it and try 
to find out when she changed jobs 
and why but she’s not interested in 
anything I have to say. “Read this.”
She says and turns to walk away and 
I say, “Watch your step.” But she still 
isn’t listening so I’m not surprised 
when she steps in the place where the wooden
slats we walk on are broken, turns her ankle 
and would have fallen flat on her face
if I didn’t catch her.  
“I knew you were trouble from word one.” 
She says, pretending
she can walk on a broken ankle.  
“You’ll pay for this.” Lydia says.
And I say, “You can’t fire me. No one else
can run this place.”
 ” Watch me.” She says.
And Patsy is crooning,
“Dreams I know can’t come true
Why can’t I forget the past”

And I wait for Patsy’s plane to crash. 
Planes have crashed here before 
as I saw first-hand outside the tavern.
Patsy may be gone and I may be fired
but I’ll be back. That’s why they call
it jukebox hell.

 
Her cousin saw

mother in the City
a week before she died.
“You’d never know
She was that close
to passing on. Of course,
she was thin but
then she always was.
Seemed happy and
talked like there
was no tomorrow.
How did she die?”
I told him that
when they opened
her up, after finding 
the stomach cancer they 
didn’t look any further.
Was enough cancer there
to kill two people.
“Stomach cancer.
That’s supposed to be
painful, isn’t it?
She showed absolutely
no signs of pain.
We went McDonalds’
and she ate like a horse.”
“I expect her dissociative
personality gave the pain
to someone else
What did you do
when she started
talking crazy?
I mean how did you
handle it?”
“I just laughed and
laughed and eventually 
the subject changed.”
He was the kind of
guy who made the best
of things. He just dealt
with stuff. He identified 
the body for me too.
He was a better man
than I am.