POETRY CORNER

The Sounds of Smile

Shh!! Did you hear that sound?

It was the MP and his Mistress in a jeep

They headed for Hilton Hotel for the intoxicating

bottle of castle milk stout

Such hollow sound, it was of laughter, newfound.

Was it the unscrupulous money-possessed Landlord

Who sits in his thorn-breeding cushion and rancorously laugh?

But the exploited tenant boy too shall laugh

And in the Landlord a Nebuchadnezzar shall emerge.

Oh! Is it the ungrateful grade I teacher

Who with leper-chalked fingers points at his misery?

The AIDS-orphaned child wails; “I am hungry”,

Being dumped and marginalized by the society.

Was it the dutiful but miserable mother and the devoted housewife

Who screams in the hands of a perverted drunk husband?

Helpless screaming girl whose clitoris is being yanked,

In the name of tradition and maintaining her paper-white?

Did you see the trader and big tycoon?

They sigh under the heavy and crippling tax toll,

And some are sycophants amassing their usurious wealth.

And the hunch-back wrinkled old woman,

Like chain gang silently toils.

The mad Mr. Anybody shakes his head and smiles:

“There is no hope for hopeless and the hopeful,

The cycle keeps on going round and like a rainbow too.

I have already resigned to my fate

And you can only hear my smile”

BEHOLD! I

Here I Come

He sailed for the unknown and psychological bliss,

Suicidal if not death-kissing.

In every heart must be a silent peace,

A loving peace and worth-cherishing.

In every mortal, a sun shines,

A sun that must have crossed through thick and thin,

A never setting sun of sweet wine,

A sun that forever lingers within.

Behold! An enchanted land of the achu eaters,

Is the dream of the hospitalised wanderer,

Where the golden winter languishes the harmattan

And in the amused eye is wonder.

Apportioned to every heart

Is a balmised all-knowing Angel;

Where one must possess a manly heart

To see King Solomon’s colours in such an Angel.

BEHOLD! II

BROKEN VOW

When the natural clock chimes,

There is an unexpected U-turn,

Vows with the gods and psychology

Are forgotten and a return to the alma mater.

The hurt of the past distorts

The joy of the present and unveils

The bleakness of a dark pool in the future

Where uncertainty looms...

That future of today sees the sun

And the horizon of bliss is an unputdownable

Evergreen forest of petals, depicting

Such an irresistible mermaid that beckons

With a subtle and coy smile.

Behold! The angel strikes with Moses’ rock

And the gauged heart is erased without defects.

In such emotional bliss, the prickly thorns are

Left behind, as a happy tomorrow is painstakingly constructed