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.

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.

Following the Shadow

When I walk I could easily forget my body in motion,
and watch my shadow as it glides across the ground, 
over everything, without obstacle. 
Each time I walk I could choose and appoint
my shadow as my alter self, my soul walking free.
I could go out on a bright day and wander everywhere 
and follow with admiration the sometimes surprising 
grace of its movements. I like to imagine 
it would know the way better than I do. 
And so I find myself leaning further into the shadow,
as if to transfer to it my own volition and momentum, 
gradually letting go of this awkward body 
with its long life of wearying missteps. 
And when obscuring clouds come over, 
I know that the shadow does not disappear, but instead
spreads out across all that I can see of earth. Perhaps then 
it encompasses the world. 

The Expanse

In another life that must have been my youth 
I walked beaches of a distant ocean.
And then years later other beaches of a different ocean, 
and then yet another. 
Always drawn to wander the boundary of the known 
and unknown worlds, looking for anything that had been 
brought to me from the other side--shells, driftwood, seaweed.
In this way the whole expanse and depth of the sea 
spoke to me of itself.

Even now, finding myself in another life, 
here among green hills and dark woods,
I'm keen and alight for any things that might be brought forth
from all that is unseen. This life of appearances is rich with signs.
Each day presents a new reading of whatever comes. 
I watch and listen. The sun comes up and it goes down. 
The birds come and go. Once I found antlers shed by a deer 
just outside my back door. 


Seer


I have settled into this quiet place
where little happens--
watchful for changes and portents,
any tiny openings into the future.

A future to be sifted out from a hazy spectrum of dangers--
fire and ice, the slow dissolution of the familiar, 
hardships as yet unnamed.

Though every day I strain to see 
I can see little but bits of love passed on, from this point, 
beginning with me, 
from one to others and from them to yet others,
stretching far forward in time, fragile bridges into the nothing.

The Lake

It has stood by us all these years, 
steadfast and silent ally. Not asking, not telling.
Seen here from our house just a thin bright sliver of blue
with tiny white houses stacked around its shores,
a dock and some bright dots of sailboats, scattered,
as if to make invisible forces visible.
Closer in the shallows children swim laughing in bright water.
We can't see the depths but they are not so far
and as we get older we imagine them. Timeless currents 
revolving in the dark, somewhere underneath our life.
We can see so little of what is happening.
We love the lake but sometimes we love even more
whatever made the lake, and whatever made that...



The Secret History of Summer

Finding myself left, becalmed in an aftermath, 
I wandered down the trail through woods
from the house to the creek, as if something in me
sought the water's level. And stood for a while,
as I had before, in that place where no one ever went.
Where the passage of time was slowed
to the flow of the barely rippling water.
I loved that when I swam in the creek 
I could see no houses or roads or telephone poles. 
Could not see where I'd come from 
or how I'd come to be there. 
Only clouds and water, trees and wildflowers.
Happy at last to have nothing left over 
and to feel the simple fullness of my life
flow on through me, unimpeded.

E. J. Evans is the author of Ghost Houses (Clare Songbirds), Conversations With the Horizon (Box Turtle Press), and the chapbook First Snow Coming (Kattywompus Press).

My Body is a Testimony of Grief

as a boy growing up,
i tossed my body against the cold floor screaming for things i couldn't get.

i poke my fingers in the fire & thought scars are not real.

i have held scars without fire, too many times,
this is how a boy germinates into a man.

i remembered the one that sailed me to this unknown place
it turned me into a wrecked boat that lost its route.

this poem holds a testimony of a boy who survived depression
of how i sobbed in dark.

Written By: Aloysius S. Harmon

Aloysius S. Harmon is an emerging writer and poet who writes from his room and quiet places like the beachside, under the large mango tree, etc. He is also one of the disciples of Dr. Patricia Wessely.

Look! Her mournful eyes say it all what words can't
She is too tired of battered but you don't understand
She was an endearing dream, turned to be a nightmare
And this is because of your so-called reprimand
                   WATCH OUT!
She isn't anymore a magical fairy of a fairyland
Now she is a grisly dinosaur from Jurassicland
She is a roller coaster of emotions but no longer your wonderland
          She is invincible, She is archaic
She is the Chosen one and owns her own never-never land
            Listen adorable "SHE IS YOU"
Who eventually understands how to take her own right stand...

By Doctor of Optometry RAAFIA SHAHEEN
From PAKISTAN..

This poem does not wish to have a name because name is of no gain when pain is a name. 


This poem rewrites the scriptures into a nightmare
where man and wife unglued one
to one and one.
first one seeking comfort in the arms of another, 
second one finding hers
 in the arms of her daughters
so one and one made their homes, 
far from home.
we watched them become brushes
painting their marital underwear simultaneously
on our pale faces
we were just four little cubs
putting on the skins of pain as clothes
their disjointed union had sewn us. 
it was lengthy and weighty
and threatened to uninstall joy in us
and whether or not we wore 
the old ones
their needle words would
 weave more for us. 
so our broken hearts watched 
as one split in two 
believe me, this wasn't a divorce 
there was no paperwork 
but even God knew 
 the better-or-worse deal was off. 
so our broken hearts watched 
mom and dad become 
mom, dad
 and  was washed away by the brutal storm of grieve
and betrayal and infidelity and denial.
so our broken hearts watched
dad yearn the arms of another
I'd rather be a dead lad than mistake this imposter
as mother
that one that willed happiness from us
rolled dad away from us
 or presumably, she did not. 
for our broken hearts watched one split in two 
way before three was born


a voice tells me,
that this union was not meant to be.  

The Weeping Poet

The weeping
poet is
not weak

we
have
the strength

to tell
the wonderment
of truth

in all of its beauty
before
we lose it

to those
that want
to outlaw
tears.