SILHOUETTES AND SHADOWS


Earth was a shadow
with figures positioned in its ends
silhouetted against light,

A myriad of hills shrouded in mist,
guarded kingdoms shrouded in mysteries,
Mortals faced with the Labour of Hercules
were covered in a cold aura
blazing with the fires of hell,

Earth became an ungrateful planet
mocked by Mars and Jupiter
– they were the most insolent,
and Saturn was the gossip

The constellation of bitter silhouettes
opposed by a clique of dead shadows
in a lodge full of damned aquatints
engaged in a cloak and dagger
with singers hitting a clinker
"Oh! How soothing!"

Earth defied sanity
and welcomed ghostly silhouettes
in deification of medieval kings
Then, a fierce opposition;
Shadows refused to bow

By riversides fed
with melting snow seasoned with blue blood,
shadows got murdered,
silhouettes, charred,
and earth birthed volcanoes 
that erupted without warning

Saturn chattered,
frail Pluto wept in hurt
– earth was its bestfriend,
'Death' in dead shadows died,
silhouettes became extinct

Like a shield,
darkness covered the earth,
with neither form nor void,

Alas!
Earth got a visitor,
an invincible speaking spirit descended
and said;
"Let there be light" 

The Genesis of Genesis.

SOUNDS OF MIRTH

My heart dances with the whispering winds
Swirling, twirling and fluttering its wings
I enjoy gleefully the soft breeze caressing
Listen to the melodies sweetly resonating

The blue oceanic sky welcomes all days
The glorious sun is shining its crimson rays
Puffy clouds billowing above high
The eagles are soaring and taking flight

As I strolled leisurely in the magnificent park
Beautiful landscapes captured my heart
The essence of flowers embalms me
The songs of the birds serenade me

Not far away, I hear the waterfall gushing
As I move closer, the crystal water is enticing
Drops of water kiss me and splashing
The cool atmosphere is refreshing

Sounds of mirth fascinate me with pleasure
I relish the peaceful moment in leisure
Silently, enjoy to the music of nature
Reverberate the soul and free from pressure.


YOUR GLANCES

I read the message in your sparkling eyes clearly
Your piercing glances penetrate my heart deeply
I want to feel your warmth and embrace you  tightly
In wondrous moment, I'll never let you go easily

You light the spark and my bonfire heart is flickering
You have touched my soul like an epitome of spring
You mean everything to me and so much more
I have found my love, you're what I have been looking for

I love you profoundly, no words could ever define
You have inflamed the feelings in this heart of mine
You have made each day so wonderful, I'll always remember
Your intoxicating fragrance drenched me all over

Your beguiling eyes drowned me with ocean of love every time
Let's spend the rest of our lives the whole lifetime
Let the rhythms of our hearts play the music
We will sing our love song with romantic lyric

Your alluring beauty creates ripples in my heart every day
You kindle the passion of flame and makes me sway
Your ecstatic elegance stirs my mind blissfully
Rapturous love of my soul belongs to you only.




Eminent Author/Poetess Ms Lilian Woo hails from Malaysia and is the author of the book 'The Pearl Wonder'. She has received numerous international awards for her soulful writing. She is a Chief Administrator with Motivational Strips, Editor for Writers Tribune, and Chief Representative for the World Nations Writers' Union (WNWU). She has been appointed as the National President in Union Hispanomundial De Escritores (UHE) 2020 for Malaysia and also nominated and entitled H.E. Ambassador General of National Peace Unison ( India), International 2019.

HOW NOT TO DEFINE A COUNTRY
after Mubarak Sàid

I inhale the stench of isale eko - the dirt of mile three park.
How does the boy learn to speak seven languages that can hide the lingua franca of joy?
How does he rehearse the dictum of pain?
How does he master the syllables in grief?
How does he converse in sorrow?
How does he achieve fluency in anxiety?
He questions his existence like a man seeking reality in a tabula raza. 

He tells the tale of a girl caught in the peril of a nation that gives adulation to the antonym of goodness.
This girl sheds Antarctica into her dress;
It is how she fights wickedness.

How do I gather the casualties in my heart, delete the record and start again?
We are taught to understand that 
to die is to live
to revolt is to fault
to complain is to end in pain
to hope is to hang on a rope.

The skylarks fly quickly, I watch their steps, their posture; how trickily they become 
lords of the air.
How they deceive us to let them roam the sky, now see
them own it, see them seize the sky.
See them leave fragments of the sky for the grass,
For the grass who let their tongue get wet from political fore-play that is well played -
The grass that is gardened yet dies.

I remember that a poet should not fret
I give heed to the voices from the root -
They speak of
How the truth is a tongue that has lost its language to the colonization of deceit.
How my country is a testament of Golgotha with barrage of bodies torn apart into fleshy crumbs.
How is my land a metonym of distress?
We ask 'how' until we don't know how to define the complexity.
We ask how until our voices become an orchestra
screaming; 'eli eli lama sabachtani'

How not to define a country is to say the sun sets at noon -
To say wahala is a facade.
Look at him defining a country in metaphors when 
he is the metaphor for a wailing parrot
caged in a place
where good plays the role of evil.
He sees the country as
the synonym of hell

&

It is written in the book of abnormality; 
That the parrot will wail on the way to damnation & not find rest.
Yet in the dome of gods, there is peace for the wicked.

JOEL OYELEKE studies Literature in English at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun state. He is a published poet, literary enthusiast, God addict, poetry reader for Arting Arena Magazine and curator of Poetry Village, OAU. Author of THE THEM IN ME (Direwords, 2022). Co-author of LET ME GRIEVE (Arting Arena Magazine, 2023). Joel won the Arting Arena Poetry Prize in 2022.

Asides writing, he loves to teach, talk and play football. 

It has been

raining off & on over the last few days, occasionally quite heavily, as the bottom edge of the monsoon trough passes across northern Australia. Even now the clouds off to the inland are acquiring that gray glassiness that might indicate another storm is about to arrive. But it's also been reasonably warm, & the mosquitoes are out in plague proportions. Disturb them & your arm, within seconds, resembles one of those commercials for insect repellants, where some dickhead sticks his arm into a glass case that is swarming with the little beasties. I keep thinking of Ross River virus, Q fever, some other thing that brought crows crashing down out of the skies that I saw last week on a documentary that Brad Pitt narrated. Which, at the same time, was also killing people without explanation, but nobody made the correlation with the crows, especially not the Centre for Disease Control because they're so far up themselves that testing animals is beneath them.

Let me just point out in passing that it was a veterinarian who first posited the relationship between kuru, a disorder that was discovered amongst the Fore people of New Guinea, & scrapie, a disease that affected sheep & goats. & let me just say that it was only veterinarians who protested against the British Board of Agriculture loosening its regulations on what could be fed to animals. & let me finish my aside by saying guess where bovine spongiform encephalopathy, shortened to BSE, popularly known as mad cow disease, came from. Feeding cows infected animal parts. Oh?

Not that I'm putting that forward as something to be found in my garden. I'm the only mad cow around, freaking out about the mosquitoes, doing strange dances as I attempt to swat them. No crows are falling from the sky, but with that raucous caw they have, I don't think I'd mind.


 
midnight rambling  

I have a jukebox inside me. Sometimes it lets me play what I want, but most of the time it determines the selection.

The music is mainly from the mid-fifties to the mid-seventies, for me 15 to 35 years of age. A bit of bebop & blues & Bach from before that time, a few ballads from after. Things I grew up with, or found by going back to the roots of what I'd heard. Things that later fitted in with what I'd heard before.

Some of it I have chosen. Some of it has chosen me. I tend to have an emotional attachment to my choices. Songs that make me weep or feel joy, that I probably early heard at some particular time & gathered up & kept the environment as well. I get the same sensation in my gut from particular Bach & Aretha Franklin & Miles Davis pieces. Much of Motown fits in there. Plus a whole lot of single songs – Winter in America, Time after Time, Darling be home soon, 7 Seconds, Heroes.

The ones that have chosen me are varied. The jukebox's favourite is Milestones. I'll be somewhere, anywhere, & suddenly that staccato Da da da da, da da da da, da da da da Daaaaaa will come blasting out, causing me to veer off the road or slop my drink or drop whatever it is I'm holding.

There are a few that are shared between active & passive – transitive & intransitive? – choice. The jukebox has a soft spot for Dylan which I don't always have. Occasionally we separate the song as if it were a disputed territory. Sometimes we both agree.

Round Midnight was playing inside my head in the early hours of yesterday. I went to bed, & when I woke up was confronted with the snowplough of Milestones clearing all before it. Then the jukebox paused, said "You want midnight songs? Let me give you one."

I felt a slight frisson, thought Wilson Pickett & thought it inappropriate. But was pleasantly surprised when the jukebox started into

The bridge at midnight trembles,
the country doctor rambles,
bankers' nieces seek perfection,
expecting all the gifts that wise men bring.

It is one of the songs we share with no dispute. So, in a duet, we wandered off into the afternoon singing

The wind howls like a hammer,
the night blows cold & rainy,
my love she's like some raven
at my window with a broken wing.
(2005)

Stupid Elevators

That morning without you again... does it have to be bright?" says my lightless gaze. I come to the window with my forehead straining... it's as if the world from the upper floor falls under your feet. If only dreams would fall like this under my feet, I would immediately take you, the most elegant wish among them, and hold it in my arms.

I sat on the windowsill and rested my head on the frame, observing the world. When I fall asleep, I still miss you. The morning is breaking, the swallows are so lonely, huh? He flew deep. Calling the roosters, as if we are the wakers of the clear morning, as if we are bringing the sun...
Heh, you're just like my naive gullible swallows...
In fact, you don't know about the rains.. Just like my faith...
Morning thoughts...

Hot coffee likes to give my sad thoughts a little light... Its aroma is comforting... it's so bitter... coffee without sugar.
Just like my grief. It's bitter and it doesn't need false comforting sugar. However, just as sugar cannot suppress the taste and aroma of coffee, so my simple consolations cannot suppress my sorrows.

“social worker’s lament”

 
drunk chasing herons, 

i pause to reflect—old friends,

open roads, less thoughts 

 

 

“coldblooded prophets”

 
speeding home i pass a turtle 

holding the universe 

inside its shell 

 

 

“distracted by everything”

 
an egret glides overhead—

my watch is at home, 

i wish for autumn 

 

 

“they know no laws”

 
sparrows refuse adhering 

to red traffic signals 

they keep flying 

 

 

“gravity sucks”



black ivory wings 

beat through a cloudy blue sky— 

i am just a man 

 

Weeping as a Mutilation of Fear

Today, every face in my community bears tears like a mutilation

All ears of our land are worn out by the

acerbic headlines whistling out from our radio.

Outside, the whole land is becoming a sea of corpse

In here, fear has a large apartment in our bodies than blood.

In this home we cannot home

For we are preys chased by wild raiders

Yesterday, the raiders strike in at midday,

and left with my father’s blood on their knife.

Yesterday, a holocaust ate up my uncles barn of grains and hays

and at the time the day became grey,

another mutilation of fear and tears outshone from our faces.

Nags of gunshots are chirps of birds,

A tragic song we perceive on steady basis.

Perhaps my father’s God said that the day

violence chews the serenity of our land,

we should know we are approaching the butt of life

and so we pray this day not for the end of violence,

but for the kickstart of apocalypse.