We Cry For Peace Read online

Of a fallen martyr.

  WAR CRY

  by Vincent Van Ross

  Weapons can’t buy peace

  But, we buy weapons

  All the same

  The logic

  Is self-defeating

  Yet, we buy this logic

  Weapons manifest war cries

  No weapons—No war

  It’s as simple as that

  Common man

  Does not want war

  He wants to live in peace

  But, our leaders are war-mongers

  Because, there is a goldmine

  Waiting to be tapped in weapons

  Weapons and military hardware

  Make up the biggest chunk

  In international trade

  If the money spent on defence

  Is spent on development

  Every country would be prosperous

  We cry for peace

  They make war

  God knows—Why?

  THE ELDERS OF THIS LAND

  by Oyin Oludipe

  (After Wole Soyinka’s The Children of this Land)

  The elders of this land are bowed

  Their gazes sit on mines in place of hills,

  Earth to breed the marsh from dust

  Sensuous froth trailed by foul tongues

  Their bristly groves are riddles for faith

  The elders of this land are swift,

  But only deviously so.

  They clap gourds on conquest

  But – know – the barrel it was that sealed

  Rock seams their offspring saw to sprout.

  Once, it was oath for their harvest

  But their wagging skulls are devout

  To a black storm sky, to a pull of droughts

  The elders of this land raise the proudest walls

  On mourner lands, dissect hearts to bear

  Eye-woe waters. Their songs are scab

  For bile whose virulence has shot

  Through tart lips to the passing of purity.

  But sweet memories hang dead. Their ghosts

  Are dormant kernels and grounded lives

  These are the treasures of the misplaced,

  The fresh and brisk severed. Greybeard dethrones

  Agile brood. The elders of this land

  Are gourmets in coal seas, all turncoats

  And nude masks – the crust of their returning.

  Their shadows are ghoul for the lost child,

  Cold horizon for a distant grief, and hope.

  A worn breed will crown our race –

  Where the morrow is lost, guest

  To echoes from far crowded shores, parader

  In lone universe fabricated by hungry minds,

  Where the morrow is hidden courage,

  Ancient leap, vied by fears

  Of chronic present

  But the elders of this land round the gulf

  As undertakers.

  The spires of their compassion

  Rain flames on hearths once dance grooves,

  And limbs of birth. The elders of this land

  Are carved as gods, their antimonies bash

  All cautions of the past. A horde

  Surges through their vision, but douses the air

  With one bold warrant:

  These are heirs to the rust!

  CALL ME NOT A FATHER

  by Mipo Isaac

  #BringBackOurGirls

  And if---

  If only voices could be printed

  On the surface of papers,

  The shock of reading

  Will probably kill her

  Before the cruel hatchet of those ruthless beings!

  Where is the voice to even write?

  Words muddled in tears,

  And punctuated with heart renting guilt?

  Of a MAN that bows;

  Shivering legs and shimmery eyes,

  Staring at the stars at night,

  The sun at day!

  The mothers wail!

  The children cry!

  Our neighbours curse!

  And see, the walls are crumbling fast,

  Yet, culture says I cannot weep-

  Not a drop of tear,

  From overgrown lashes!

  Oh culture, what will I answer at Judgement?

  That I watched the way to Sambisa

  And could not run the path

  With a cutlass in hand?

  That I ate the flesh of herbs,

  When my daughter munches

  The morsel of desolation?

  I am not a MAN,

  I had loss my potency!

  I am guilty before man,

  Condemned before God,

  For I couldn't stand to face death -

  A torch in hand, a sword abreast,

  Beat the leaves, path the way

  Till I feel that familiar aura of my Beloved!

  What will I answer at Judgement?

  That I slept and rocked beneath a shawl

  When my child's teeth clatters;

  Molar beating canine,

  Till the twenty eight little tiles

  Becomes weaker than my father's!

  Shame!

  I had eaten a bowl of pottage,

  I had sold my responsibility

  To virile men on uniform;

  I beg my mate, my equal

  To help me search,

  Pleading and begging

  "Please search out my child!"

  Now I know,

  I am closer to my grave than ever...

  I leave this message - distorted

  Read my sins, find in your heart to forgive!

  Today I bow to the One that scared me,

  For I'm ashamed to meet your eyes,

  I am not worthy to cuddle your temple!

  And If...

  The foliages of Sambisa

  Sw-all-ow

  Swallow you

  You... up

  We'll meet above,

  A failed father

  And a righteous daughter!

  CHIBOK DEBRIS

  by Károly Sándor Pallai

  #BringBackOurGirls

  Gnashing sunset coating the skies with

  Purple fear. A palpable dread enwinds

  The baobab and dogonyaro trees along the roads.

  Forgotten bodies of children selling

  Sachets of water, sunburned promises.

  Steps of vigilantes rhyming with the metallic

  Thumps of clenched machine guns and machetes.

  Hundreds of girls taken by decubital inexorability.

  Words are strained sinews on the triggers.

  Jasmin-demonic words of Maitatsine,

  The evening star is blurred by the crumbling

  Of blackening lungs, by the wee sighs of

  Putrefying exasperation: a life-documentary of tragedies.

  Survival shivers in the terrified semen of child soldiers.

  A moribund congregation of languid faith.

  Pestilent headlights, snapshots of a landscape betrayed

  Long ago by tattered, necroptic guardian angels.

  Faces marked by hollow cuts: pulsation of sorrow,

  Violent disruption. A carcinomatous, evil moon

  Laughs as he falls through the heavenly ladders

  Bruising his visage in his effort to feel for the brutally

  Stolen futures. Despondency is a shrilling, parched,

  Scutellate prostitute selling ecstasy and vapidity

  To a lithified nation submerged in the gaze of

  Renunciation. Stretchers, cerebral and mental

  Thromboses, an unmerciful, tuberculoid salvation.

  Understanding is replaced by shibboleths,

  And besotting watchwords of evil stupidity.

  Ferruginous bed frames gritting like squinting rendezvous

  With sinister clouds. Burned-out classrooms: pusillanimous

  Remnants of horror, recalling moments of b
arbarity skiving,

  Twinging, throbbing, ululating, splashing and gushing like

  Razors in our rectum. Who disciplines the ulcerous present?

 

  TO GROW AND GLOW

  by Abdulhafeez Taiye Oyewole

  The mirror of life lacks glow.

  Does it heal in praise?

  Or in curse?

  The shinning crown house hassles;

  Seems it lights have slept

  On hinged thoughts.

  Nation can’t be best built in a day.

  Rome of world takes years

  To breed peace.

  For amity:

  Accord- a must earn,

  People’s love and trust,

  People’s hearts and might.

  …Continually and togetherness must thrive.

  The reflection of life must glow.

  It will by day grow-

  Bit by bit.

  In mirror of life is love,

  Attainable in tranquillity,

  Of ambiance and souls,

  Of the blue and the earth.

  So soon happy living means sooner peace,

  And sooner peace means soonest love.

  Clear of thoughts, tolerance, endurance and perseverance…

  Are swords to peaceful revolution cum cohabitation.

  REFLECTION

  by Shannon Marie Antoinette Samuda

  You stare violently,

  But your eyes portray serenity.

  You reach out to touch,

  But you don't feel

  You don't feel.

  You're enclosed in a world of appearances,

  Beauty, brains and vanities

  You once again reach out to touch,

  But you don't feel

  You don't feel.

  You hear the voices around you speaking,

  And you start to wonder what's happening.

  You turn away but you don't see.

  You can't see.

  My back is now turned,

  So you no longer stare.

  You no longer wish to feel.

  You just wish you and I traded places,

  So that you could be real.

  Funny thing about your wishes,

  I wish them too.

  I'd rather be a reflection,

  Just like you.

  HOW?

  By ADELAJA RIDWAN OLAYIWOLA

  If stones were gold and everywhere

  And sold for free all here and there

  How rich our men would be?

  If smiles on face are nothing rare

  And every man for a must, must cheer

  How happy the heart would be?

  If love is placed so high and dear

  And man to man becomes a pair

  How peaceful our land would be?

  If honesty becomes the air

  And every-nose has its own share

  How healed our world would be?

  If wisdom is all human’s care

  And for it search, we all would dare

  How wise everyone would be?

  If righteousness is the ship we fare

  And truth is that with which we steer

  How fulfilled our life would be?

  WISHES

  by Civa Bhusal

  There are few of the things in the world

  That we sometimes wish

  Were all ours

  The stars, the moon, the river and

  The tides

  The roses, the evenings and

  The valentines

  Inside a huddled hut

  There is nothing

  But still-

  There is peace

  There is sleep

  There is everything

  A man inside a huddled hut

  Doesn’t dream of the stars, the moon, the River and

  The tides

  Doesn’t even dream of the roses, the evenings and

  The valentines

  A dream

  Is a killer truth

  So is the wish

  There are few of the things in the world

  That we sometimes wish

  Were all ours

  But at the end

  All these things

  Leave us in solitude

  TIPS FOR PERSONAL PEACE

  By Fatoki Temilehin (15 years old, Nigeria)

  To be a successful visioneer,

  You should know that

  To achieve, you must set goal

  To set goal, you must plan

  To plan, you must meditate

  To meditate you must analyze

  To analyze, you must share

  To share, with those that care

  Who care to see you achieve

  To achieve, you must believe

  Then your life embraces peace

  FREEDOM

  by Adewumi Olumide B.

  To give this purging of heart a Fallopian tube,

  With foreshadow, I shall announce its coming.

  To the statue of the great thinker man have I spoken, yet more chains

  And binds I got, for I have been tied down by my own ways and deeds.

  Years ago, I travelled to a village far and old

  To seek the words of a shaman, great and bold.

  He poured down his cowry and spoke some verses,

  But his gods were silent on my quest and hitches.

  Then I told him to summon the dead,

  Those heroes who made captivity flee in dread.

  And with the speed of time, he yielded my tongue

  And quickly they came, those living voices that once sang the freedom song.

  First was Lincoln, that slavery King,

  Who chased slavery out of America with his civil war Sting.

  I asked him to show me the way I should trend,

  But he shook his head and left me to my questions and end.

  In despair and grief I called on Luther

  The Black freedom Dreamer

  To tell me how I might be free from my bond and chain

  But, like Lincoln, he gave me more pain,

  And at last I called on Mandela, that apartheid Lord,

  Who fought bondage intensely with his freedom Sword

  To help me out of this dilemma,

  And like the rest of them, he showed the same cinema

  Exiting the realm I caught a thought: there was but one I have failed to hallow

  Into the questioning roundtable, and OH MINE! I was but that fellow.

  I have chained myself to a lover’s debt who I had once vowed amity

  Yet chased away without a heart to care or pity.

  Now I know, till when I take my words for words,

  I will forever remain in this bondage, chains and odds.

  A COUNTRY IN GEHENO

  by Ewuola Bayo Olanrewaju

  The poignant pogroms of the innocent creatures

  Rattled the rancorous ransacked yet to be tranquillised country

  The explosive banging in the Northern axis

  Kidnapping-ransoming saga in everyday South

  And the ritual escapades in the West-

  All calls for Agbantara- chesterfield

  The skirmish of the fourth estate of the realm

  Fomented by the so considered pathfinders of our nation

  Has articulated her endangered organogram to wreck

  Alas! The threshold of our oneness is sagging

  And we doubt if ever there was a country

  Nigeria! Yea, a country in Geheno

  Awake from your Tarshish journey

  Else, be subsumed by the Bermuda of the jungle

  And the umbilical ligature binding you become weakened

  Awake oh country and gather your scattered offspring!

  Tread their labyrinth to peace, else, we fall a-peace!

  BIOGRAPHIES OF THE POET

  Abegunde Sunday Olaoluwa is a highly inspiring motivational writer and speaker with a pleasant sense of expres
sion, yet very objective as he drives home his points clearly. The Nigeria-Born African writer, speaker and poet was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth and thus has passed through ample of challenges yet eventually ignited the unleashing of his potential. He is wholeheartedly compassionate about impacting people from all walks of life. He is the Principal Consultant of Speaking Pen International Concept and curator of Multivisionaire Network of Writers.

  Poet Sunday is rightly described as a distinctive voice to this generation that should be heard and read. He is the author of bestselling inspiring book, “Unleash your Potential beyond Just Motivation” and also has his poetry collection titled “In His Realm”.

  He won the FPASU Award 2013 as Most Inspiring Writer of the Year and also ACJ/CNN Outstanding Young Achiever 2014.

  Bob McNeil was influenced by the Imagists and the Negritude Movement. Furthermore, even after all these years of being a professional illustrator, spoken word artist and writer, he still hopes to express and address the needs of the human mosaic.

  Shannon Marie Antoinette Samuda is from Kingston, Jamaica. She is currently a student of the University of Technology, where she is studying Communication Arts and Technology.

  Her inspiration for her poetry works comes from her surroundings or her thoughts. They reflect and embody her life experiences, both good and bad.

  Károly Sándor Pallai is a PhD student at Eötvös Loránd University - Budapest. He consecrates his research to the contemporary francophone literatures of the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific.

  He’s a member of several international scholarly societies and literary associations (Mauritius, France, United States, Australia, Colombia).

  He’s the conceptor, founder and editor in chief of the international electronic review of literary creation and theory Vents Alizés and of the publishing house Edisyon Losean Endyen. He’s a member of the editorial board of the Seychellois literary review Sipay.

  He writes and publishes poetry in French, English, Creole, Hungarian, Spanish, Portuguese, Kiswahili, Romanian, Tahitian and Turkish. His collection of poems in French, Soleils invincibles was published in 2012, his play, Mangeurs d’anémones and his collection of poems in English, Liberty Limited were published in 2013. In acknowledgement of his theoretical, poetical and editorial work, he has been chosen among the "50 Young Hungarian Talents" by the La femme magazine.