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.

Bring dynamite and a crane
Blow it up start all over again...

                               (Tobacco Road)


                           Obligation


                     His fly is open.
              His cock is a two-forked tongue of the bell.
Meanwhile, he sharpens a boning knife. 
                     The famulus is skinning the foil off a book.  
       Now the poet is the boss. (Hanging on a hook.)
Mr. Blockhead and Miss Witless complete
the selection committee.
 
After the explosions comes the living revolution 
paralyzed into barrenness      
       (It destroys things unnoticed.) 
The hissing, decaying wreckage of our world: 
       a billion barricades on the river Otter Tail. 

The poet would call the literates of Honeyland 
       hiding in the swamps, 

but they are blind,
deaf and
mute.



(Translated by Gabor Gyukics)
 

Bring dynamite and a crane
Blow it up start all over again...

                               (Tobacco Road)



                                   Obligation

                  

                                   Slicc nyitva. 
                                          A pöcs kétágú harangnyelv. 
       Közben csontozókést köszörül. 
                     A famulus könyvfólia-bőrt nyúz.  
       A költő most kápó. (Kampón függ.) Gyöpinger úr és 
                            Ostobenkó kisasszony kiegészíti
 
a választmányt.
 
A robbanások után jön az élő, 
meddővé vénült csend forradalma.  
       (Észrevétlenül pusztít.) 
Világunk sziszegve málló roncs-maradványai: 
milliárd torlasz a Vidrafarok-folyón. 

A lírikus szólítaná  Mézföld mocsarkba bújt 
írástudóit,

de vak,
süket,
némult mind…  

Laszlo Aranyi (Frater Azmon)

Goetia


Legless centipede.        On all four.
                                              

A bloated abdomen split like a gangrenous log.
              (A fissure in a blinded mirror of ice) A shriveled faced pirate with dangling balls
                                        is the late prey of our civilization. 
       The deck is a lifeless quicky, 
where the flayflints of our freedom feast, 
              with their saliva dripping, 
       the laughing Grim Reaper dances like a living shred of meat on the festive table. 

"Go on, leave the wheel, turn into a bottlenose dolphin yourself!"

                     Behold, the hominid, 
              and his ubiquitous sidekick, 
this is what we deserve, 
       some hideous beast, it's holy true. "No, to the trough, 
my friends, but up for puking!" 

Then one day you'll awake in your grave, and touched by the one returning before us, "Come, leave it to the maggots," and points at the wobbling, 
        filmy moon-palm above us -

“you will now move into his body…"

              Freedom is simply as follows: the condemned man can choose the method of his execution. And we telling lies stating that this ever-decaying terminal stage is progress. Three-pronged wand, cudgel, bell, shrunken head of a man,
       sickle, wax rigidity after bloodsucking, catatonic delirium. 
              Fingerprints of our doings on cosmic flypaper. 
              The Earth purged of humanity, and the boisterous oceans are continue writing their history without us…


(Translated by Gabor Gyukics)

Goetia



       Épkézláb százlábú.        Négykézláb.
                                   ˙qálzéʞʎƃéN 
                                              

Üszkös fahasábként hasadó, felfúvódott has.
              (Hasadás megvakult jégtükrön…) Aszott pofájú, lógó tökű kalóz
                                        kései zsákmánya civilizációnk. 
       Élettelenné vált tákolmány a fedélzet, 
szabadságunk uzsorásai ott lakmároznak, 
              nyáluk csordul, 
       élő húscafatként táncra perdül a röhögő Kaszás az ünnepi asztalon. 

„Menj csak, hagyd a kormányt, változz pléhcsőrű delfinné te is!”

                     Íme, az emberszabású, 
              valamint a mindenütt megbúvó kísérője, 
amely, 	
amit érdemlünk, 
       valami undorító szörny, az szentigaz. „No, vályúhoz, 
cimborák, okádásig!” 

Egyszer aztán föleszmélsz a sírban, s megérint az előttünk visszatérő: „jöjj, hagyd a férgeknek,  - s a fölöttünk imbolygó, 
       hártyás hold-tenyérre mutat -
mostantól az ő testébe költözöl…”
              A szabadság mindössze ennyi: a halálraítélt választhat a kivégzési módok közül. S fejlődőnek hazudjuk ezt a folyamatosan hanyatló végstádiumot. Háromhegyű pálca, dorong, harang, zsugorított   
       emberfő, sarló, vérívás utáni viaszmerevség, kataton révület. 
              Viselt dolgaink újjlenyomatai a kozmikus légypapíron. Nélkülünk is tovább írja történetét 
              az emberiségtől megtisztult Föld, s a háborgó óceán. 

Laszlo Aranyi (Frater Azmon) poet, anarchist, occultist from Hungary. Earlier books: „(szellem)válaszok”, „A Nap és Holderők egyensúlya”, „Kiterített rókabőr” His poems in English have appeared in over a hundred journals. New book about to be published, “Delirium &…The Seven Haiku” (Published By DEAD MAN’S PRESS INK ALBANY, NY 2023). He has been nominated several times for international awards. He is known for being a spiritualist medium and his work explores the relationship between magic and art.

I am marginalised in my own country!

WHEN YOU SMILE BACK 

I am your companion, your lover and friend
You are the heart that feels my every emotion
My heartbeat,  is the wellspring of your life
You seek your home in my arms every night
and in my hands I hold your tender heart
We've both overcoming earlier difficulties 
and have grown in many ways together
Only you truly know the beats of my heart
whether I am happy or I am somber inside
But oh, how easily you can find my smile
And when you smile back.. there is no doubt
that my pounding heart beats only for you.
   



I NEVER KNEW DREAMS CAME TRUE

Far away I may be in distance 
but in my heart you are so close
What I thought was only in dreams
has become reality in front of my eyes
I will never grieve you with my pain
Though I know you'd take it gladly
Just keep me in your prayers at night
The One above us will give me rest
You ask me what is my reality
I think you know by now
But the words are like a wish 
I dare not say it out loud
Or else it may not come true.
Just know that no matter what happens 
in my heart you will always have a place
Every time you think of me, I will appear
And in sleep, no one can take you from me... 







MY CHILDREN... WALK BESIDE ME

Walk quietly beside me
along a shore that never ends
Tell me your dreams and desires in life,
tread lightly through the twists and bends
Make me smile with your beautiful laughter
Experience a distant land
Visit me when you feel lonely
and for a moment, hold my hand
And my children, I promise you this..
I will always walk beside you when you reach a rocky trail
I will encourage you to live your dream, even if you try and fail
I will proudly cheer you on as you accomplish your every dream
I will hold you up when you feel weak
on me you still can lean
Many say they will be there for you
and many may not follow though
But when life gets too hard at times
I'll be there to walk with you
Always help another in need
put yourself in their place
Cause one day you may be the one
who needs to be shown grace.
My children, I'll always love you. Life's an adventurous race to run
Just give me a moment now and then before my days are done
For one day you will walk my path, realizing that time does end
You'll find yourself wishing you had more time on earth, but
time.. it never lends... 






YOUR SILENCE SPEAKS FOR ITSELF

We used to speak almost everyday
Life got complicated and time went by
Before I knew, it became years
I know now that you didn't know why
But I thought you would understand
I needed time to heal inside
without advice or reprimand
never meaning to hurt your pride
When you needed time I never failed
to understand why I didn't hear from you
To me our friendship always prevailed
I'm sure thoughts of me now are few
When I felt strong enough to talk again
You returned my letters that now sit on a shelf…
It was never my intention to shut you out,
and now your silence speaks for itself.
Now I am ready to let go... 

Kristy Ann Raines is an American poet and author born on April 9, 1957, in Oakland California. Kristy has five books which will soon be published. One anthology with a prominent poet from India, Dr. Prasana Kumar Dalai, will launch sometime around August 2023 and is called, “I Cross my Heart from East to West.” She has also written two fantasy books entitled, “Rings, Things and Butterfly Wings” and “Princess and The Lion”, an collection of poems in English,” Walking Without You”, a collection in French, “Little Rose Poetry”, and one in Arabic called,  “Jasmine and Roses.” Kristy has received many literary awards for her unique style of writing.