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  Jul 2016 Ovi-Odiete
Valsa George
To escape the bite of frost at night
People slide their torso
into tightly made up beds
They wrap themselves
in several folds of wool
Form into cocoons
and lie down,
hibernating
To emerge,
like butterflies in spring !
  Jul 2016 Ovi-Odiete
David Adamson
Summer morning.
Recrossing the borderline from the afterlife,
the dreamer is expelled from sleep, the dream lost.
I am a dream’s shadow,
heavy with transition, jagged from sleep.
Light gathers me from every room I have ever slept in
onto the shrinking island of the bed.

Someone cues the poetry. Unquiet lines.
The past was worse than you thought,
voices say.  Your life is a weighted skin.
Stop swimming against the tide of loss.
Sink.

Yet gloom is porous.
From the sky’s cracked mosaic,
Daybreak seeps in.
The light reassembles familiar objects,
which replace mere longing in ordinary darkness.

The things of the world resist but return
to radiance, resume the work of existing.
We are all day laborers.
It's my shift. Summon the coffee.
The world yawns before me.
And I am, therefore (I think).
  Jul 2016 Ovi-Odiete
Nick ross
Today was the day I broke down and cried
Uncontrollable howling sobs from the very pit of my soul
Helpless and forlorn, not knowing how to make it stop
Just had to ride the wave and let it  take its toll

I hadn't cried for twenty years and never in front of my brood
It wasn't what I wanted or what I thought was right
But today was the day that it erupted from me
Emotions too powerful to fight

Driving the car, my family with me
We passed a shrine on the side of the road
Carefully manicured square yard of grass
With angels and scripture and candles that glowed

I felt the cold sweat rise as I realised what it was
a sweet young girl from just along the street
A friend of the family, the same age as one of mine
A talented artist, charmed all she'd meet

She died in a car crash a couple of weeks before
I was shocked by the news, a terrible waste
I guess my family has been lucky so far
And something like this I hadn't faced

The wife and the two eldest went to the funeral
While I sat in with the young one
Paying their respects at the church and reception
As I tried not to think of the pain of her mum

A lady I knew from when we were young
A connection that made the pain keener
But I kept my emotions in check that day
Upholding a solemn demeanour

But the shock as I realised it was her shrine that day
Made me lower my guard and allow me to taste
The pain of her mother, the acid and bile
As she tended that spot, sobbing, such a waste

The anger, the rage, the where and the why
The questions, the impotence, the need to understand
Could she carry on, was anything worth it now?
Why had awful fate dealt her this hideous hand?

An ever increasing circle of anguish
Coursed through my mind as I travelled
Until I could swallow it no more and gave way
As my sanity unravelled

My head in my hands, my face contorted with grief
My shoulders rocking, howls escaping my throat
What must my family be thinking of me
As I lost it and sobbed in my coat

My wife sat there looking embarrassed
We were never the same again
I felt that I had shown her a weakness
My machismo was all in vain

I cry much easier these days it seems
As though I'd breached the floodgates
The only comfort I get from that
Was it wasn't in front of my mates

I don't know if I am emotionally *******
Or it's just that I've been graced
With good health for me and my closest kin
My mortality has never been faced

But as I get older I have to come to terms
With aging parents, in-laws and all that entails
I wonder how I'll cope when I see those close to me
Breaking down in tears, the cries and the wails

All I can ask is that parent goes before child
As eventually go we all must
And hope to have led a full, happy life
Before we all turn to dust
  Jul 2016 Ovi-Odiete
Valsa George
It had rained all night
And drenched the land outright
Leaving puddles and pools,
Here, there and everywhere.
But the morning saw
The sun blazing ever more bright

I watched the water
Flowing silently away
With no ostentation
Along channels, furrows and waterways
Cavities, crevices and culverts
And through ditches and drains
What little remained,
Seeped down unnoticed
Through innumerable pores unseen.

As prisoners from narrow cells
Suddenly released into boundless space
Or troops from a garrison
On a spurt of fresh attack
The children shut indoors
Came out in gangs
To romp, jump and play.
Unmindful of anything,
      They soon lost in a wave of giggles.

But how sudden was the change!
The sky over cast with dark clouds
Fired out like a water cannon.
Once more the rain,
Cascaded down with greater vengeance
Each drop weighing gallons
And the silver needles pricking deep
Making the children flee
In directions all round
Like autumn leaves
Scattered by the wind!
The rain continued to pour
Inundating the low lying lands

Oh! Mother Nature
How erratic are your moods
How unpredictable
How like a child throwing tantrums
And how quickly appeased!
July is the month we get maximum rain in Kerala... Sometimes it will rain for days together... But the sunny intervals in between showers are most cherished by children and they get out from confinement to play out door, unwary of Nature’s tricks!!
Ovi-Odiete Jul 2016
Bewildered and haunted through flashes of memories that relive themselves
I sit and ponder and look into the sky
there is no pain greater than been lost in SELF
battling with a STRONG shadow called SADNESS
she stalks and haunts and bring you moments of agony
she comes along with her sister ANGUISH
and they taunt you,
galvanising and pinpointing your mind to the PAST you left behind






OH SADNESS!!!!!
have you not rendered men a roaming wretch for years?
are you not content with the tears you have drank from your millions of subscribers?
are you not pained because of happiness and her many gifts?
when will you leave the vulnerable ones and stop feeding on their weaknesses?
for how long will you continue to taunt MEN with their horrible past and perceived failure?







You are hopeless and weak and so you feed on people's misery alongside with your heartrending sister called ANGUISH
Leave us alone,
for we do not want to commune with you
you are meant to die alone,
but you have garnered so many souls as your followers
reminding them of their most terrible past
conjuring pieces of AGONY
and feeding them with misery's venom
you are a witch SADNESS
and you dwell in the dark
you mesmerise us with beautiful tragedies and allure us into your cavernous seeking kingdom

ARISE
eschew sadness
before she infects you with her incurable disease
SADNESS has no home
and so she roams*

Ovi Odiete© 2016  All Rights reserved.
Poet's Notes about The Poem

Sadness engulfs the heart and mind and all that is left is gloom.

I was inspired by an intelligent and advanced Poet from Writer's Cafe called Sheila Bowler Kline who wrote a heart moving poem titled MISERY and so I began writing. I must say she is gifted and write from the heart. Here is the poem below written by her and published on Writers Cafe





MISERY

BY SHEILA KLINE © 2016


Not a poem, not a story..........just random thoughts about MISERY! Oh, how it seems to permeate the soul of this writer far too often! Shake it off, stomp on it, run it away yet it ever finds a way of coming back far too often!
Perhaps a bit macabre, but then again, I am passionate about that which I feel within the depths of my marrow!


Misery

O' Misery, why do you plague me with your incessant railing every conscious moment of the day and suffocating hour of the night?

Are you not galvanized enough by tending to the dead who beg to return to the land of the living—skipping and frolicking with fate that swings like a pendulum ‘cross tombstones glistening under a moon made fat by the ingestion of a cycle of the universe?

You torment the living with your unwelcome presence. You take residence with the weak who suffer, slurping their lifeblood to quench your perpetual thirst. You craft a vacuum in man's psyche where joy once flourished as you wound your victim with anguish, making certain to cauterize lacerations that ooze any inkling of happiness.

You count the seconds, keeping tally of moments of vitality ready to unleash a counter attack to hasten the time of their demise. Weakness empowers you like rotting carcasses strewn across the Battlefield of Life strengthens the very soil they now litter.

You are wretched, toting gloom in a haversack of tricks. You were destined to bring grief to man before you were conceived. Calamity is your self-designated birthright. You arrogantly swagger through unending tunnels of doom to cavort in a sarcophagus unsealed by your penchant for woe.

The only light is that of your pride reflecting from the bleached bones of those who have been snuffed out by your doggedness to award them residence in your bastion of suffering. A lantern may flicker yet your foul breath smothers it before it lights the tinder and thus a flame of hope.

Those you infect with your virus of despondency pass it on one to another in a never ending stream of tragedy and despair. Misery, you are a driven contagious force that cannot stop as you have an insatiable appetite to commune with your casualties - "Misery loves company".

Sheila Bowyer Kline©2016


"If misery loves company, misery has company enough." - Henry David Thoreau
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