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Famous Isaacs Jun 2014
Here, now, is the world before me:
Women are struggling to make a living
And men struggling for beer.
The markets are full of drying-up warehouses
And market stalls pregnant with emptiness.

A woman comes in,
Calls the last goods on the shelf, indicating interest.
There are the dying smiles that echo no goodwill
Upon the naming of a price-below-purchasing;
There are the hungry laughters at the teeth of the buyer
Who seeks his own gains;
There are the welling-up tears that fill the eyes of the seller
Who needs the penny to live another day.

Poverty and want wears an ugly face
And gives hate a voice to echo its disdain.
Much displeasure fills the air but in business
The customer always wins.

Pain eats up my heart as I watch the transaction.
Here, survival matters- just as much as love,
But now even this is no more.
                                                      
                                                                                     Abacheke-Egbema, Imo State. January 2014
Basically, my kind of poetry is that which is about people, about lives, about women and children- their very lives interests me.
Famous Isaacs Jun 2014
I’m a child and not a bride, but
Last month you made me marry you.
You know it wasn’t love that made me say yes
But the fear of what shape my death could take
If I were to turn you down. Of course
I had no voice. I could only muse to myself
In the dark closet and imagine myself
A mother at thirteen: would it be awesome?
Would it be dreadful? Would it…? I died of anxiety.

Last month you made me marry you.
I had no time to discover me for myself:
Who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be;
I had no time to think before I had to say yes.
But it pains my bones to the marrow.
I am an unripe fruit for the eating.
I am a piece for the show-glass.

Last month you made me marry you.
I spent nights upon nights weeping over how you’ve
Broken me; how you’ve set my life ablaze
Like a forest in a wildfire;
And now the once-upon-a-time sweet sounding music
Of my soul is burnt into silence.
I have forgotten the dialect of my soul.
I hush. I hush. I hush. I hush. I hush.
You have beaten silence into me,
And now I have to prepare to moan and wail
Beneath your weight, while I watch you helplessly
As you bite into my innocence,
As you suckle the un-ripeness out of me,
As you dig into my childhood and pleasure yourself
In the childhood screams you hear from me.
But it isn’t the fun that makes me scream.
It is the bitter pain of knowing, of remembering
That my life ended at thirteen:

Broken like a fallen calabash
In the hands of a fifty-five year old man.
2013, in Nigeria, a 55-year old Senator married a 13-year old girl. The #ChildNotBride campaign against the senator's decision was born.
Jonas Gonçalves Jun 2014
To a friend*

I'm ready to travel
through your person.
I'm ready to unveil
your dirtiest secrets.
I'm ready to rediscover
the role of soul
– heart and feelings.

And if you still believe
who I'm an astronaut,
I ask you, my dear,
not to lose your faith in it.
Because even though I'm not one,
I like to pretend in order to cheer you up.
And we need to be more heavenly!

Looking for something better
than the existence of us two.
I'm just looking for something
which makes me stay longer.
Looking for something worse
than the absence of us two.

We've had something...
something easy to love,
but, easy to lose.
We've had everything...
and neither that was enough.
We've had nothing...
nothing by which to remember.
Scatts Jun 2014
i will be famous and that is for sure

i will write and write a lot
people will love me
and hipsters will use my quotes as Facebook statuses
you know hipsters like to brag they read
and critics would glorify my prose
even though I never liked critics at all
(if they don't write, hoy can they even judge other's work?)

mum would be proud
her girl finally made it after all that hard work
she's finally succeding after that time her boyfriend dumped her
and she spent months doing nothing but
going outside, a little
crying, much
writing, very very much
writing like her life depended of it
and now honey finally made it
her name now appears in book covers
in shiny gold cursive

my life will be shiny gold cursive too
i will spend my money in libraries and nice hats
and eat swiss chocolates in a king sized bed
(loaded with pillows, of course)
huge lines for book signings
******* shades with crystals and the pointy upper corner thing
i will be interviewed for famous magazines
and have margaritas in pretty glasses by the pool side
and get drunk, but fancily
with cigars and diamonds and couture dresses
yes sir, i will live good
and you will remember

you will remember as you flip the pages of my book
that time when you insisted on reading my poems
not because you like poems, since you hate them
just because your vanity was stronger
you will flip though my best seller
your name as title
no picture, just pure white emptyness
just your name and mine in a side
(by your side, like i used to believe i wanted to live)
you will read about you
after all this time, you will see
i will make sure i say something nice about you here and there
because you were stardust
but honestly, you were more of a black hole
and i will them them about that
i will tell them everything
that day when you called
that day when you didn't
that day when you told me writing was a waste of time
that day when you said "maybe we would be better off apart"
that day, a week later, when you got a new lady as company
they will know you
they will ask about you
and i won't answer

until i win a really good prize
a prize good enough to stand up and say a little speech
and i will thank, on the verge of tears
you know tears always look good in those cases
(even though tears were useless when i missed you)
i will thank, this order:
to god
no speech would be complete without thanking our lord
and momma and poppa
you told me to reach my dreams and this night feels like a dream, actually
my editor
who believed through thick and thin
and mostly, to you
because without you, nothing of this would have happened

if you didn't turn away that night
maybe i would have still loved you
maybe i wouldn't have aspired to become better
maybe i would have lived forever by your pathetic side

luckily you did
and you will remember
you can be sure as **** i won't let you forget.
...this revenge sounds a little shallow, isn't it?
Gaby Lemin May 2014
I think we are all just
wannabe artists
trying to figure out
how everyone else  
managed to get famous
Daylight 4U2C May 2014
I have a fairy by my side
Which says I must not sleep,
When once in pain I loudly cried
It said "You must not weep"
If, full of mirth, I smile and grin,
It says "You must not laugh"
When once I wished to drink some gin
It said "You must not quaff".

When once a meal I wished to taste
It said "You must not bite"
When to the wars I went in haste
It said "You must not fight".

"What may I do?" at length I cried,
Tired of the painful task.
The fairy quietly replied,
And said "You must not ask".

Moral: "You mustn't."
There are two things about this poem that made me want to post it.
1)After I say number 2 this seems rude maybe, but the way he wrote it was somewhat silly and made me laugh. Of course after much actual thinking I came to:
2) it seems like he's talking about sleep paralysis, which isn't a  commonly written about subject. I enjoy this poem and I hope others do too.

.
Martin Narrod Apr 2014
Not an amulet, an off white vertebrae; bone.
Brass wire, a loop at one end.
It bends as to make sure this will fit.

A gauge that measures mesmerization,
And we both must get along, but
Not because we're not tough enough:
Most of us aren't soft right yet.

So many stiffs, folly after folly.
The whole carful of loose cadavers,
Dangling, their feet hang with wet snow
And carnage,

Not even musk deer pop up,
They've all gone. Roosting in a parabol,
With X's sprayed to their groins.
Burning pop couples

Doing it like laboratory mice. Capybaras
Hiss, my own burnt blood is also
Flocculating.

Turn the cup upside down and
See the fire's balmy lachrymal opaque
Moss while it does not drip.

This is the story of man you asked me about;
Devoid of a muzzle, fur onto his chest; coarse
Hair in a garland.

It is the God of a tool that buzzes into the night.
A plateau for this most sensible study.
We feel another coming.

And when you awoke, your larval tongue
My eye mush, a song of verse and melancholy.
This half list of greatness, a tally we both wish to see.
marquida Apr 2014
Happiness is
dancing in the
darkness
and exhausting
yourself
in the chasing
of your dreams.
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