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Arthur Habsburg Jul 2018
Cockcrow harbour:
the gulls whining like tethered dogs
about rooftops
paliophobic cars and
grounded vessels..
Look:
on the hoary horizon
a glaucous strip
beguils
with backwater.
Not putting on a show
the frigid sea benumbed..
Easily,
with a tail of emerald jelly
skim a vanishing lane off that
lustrous sheet
and watch
the trailblazing mainland
scuttle.

Now,
Only scattered dreaming is possible.

In it's bachelor pad,
cradling over crinkles,
away from the meretriciosness
of validating the real by sharing it,
THE WIND
blusters off any veneer.
Here,
stale but spry,
fare your way around the inoffensive isle
to it's most shyest of harbours:
a mouth full of silver
saving it's breath.
The windows facing the sea
seem
black & white,
their wooden frames hooked to the wind,
the splattered gulls meow
your name
in a way
that's
personal.
Of course comes to mind.
The pines
are demanding a visit,
They're whispering
so you can hear them,
each as different as every snore,
these pines know
how to grow in the sand
and still reach for
the Nimbostratus with heads in unison.
The spaces
between their trunks illuminating
the blazing needles
raining down
painting the ground
familiar
to your lover's
skin texture:
Feel her closeness
from jilted borderwatchtowers
as she speads her mire
like no one's watching:
weedy and sugared
with bellflowers,
the waves in her shallow armpit
billeting a pair of white swans:
demurely they float
sometimes as pillows and sometimes
as question marks..
Go ask the seasoned locals,
they say the bones she parked
when she let her ice sheet melt
are portals
to her noble underbelly.

Hidden in the woods
reminiscent of your heart,
the red
tank-sized stone
is sealed,
but what the lighting reach cannot
the rain shall sluice apart
dumbly.
And though her hair has
come to be
the moss
black and hoarse
as sailor's beard,
there is still time.
The void says
her noisy neighbour is nothing
to die for.
The theadbear car with absent doors
incites
to drive her
in reverse gear
to the first few
days of holidays:
her golden locks a-blaze,
her arm around your
hind-sighted doppelganger.
Going to Prangli island.
a bilingual rensaku

       1

píosa eile coiréil
            caite i dtír:
                        bhog sé – portán sligreach



another piece of coral
            washed up on the beach:
                        it moves – hermit crab





            2

spéir gan teimheal –
            ar aghaidh leis arís
                        ag máirseáil, portán sligreach



cloudless sky –
            off again on his marches
                        hermit crab



            3

tost ... airgeadaíonn an ghealach
            an gaineamh faoina luíonn
                        na huibheacha turtar

silence ... the moon silvers
            the sand that hides
                        turtle eggs



          







            4

iompaíonn a lí
            ar an ré chródhearg
                        teitheann na réaltaí



a blood-red moon
            changes colour
                        putting all the stars to flight



            5

cruth an choiréil ******>            cruth réaltbhuíne
                                                            i gcéin



the shape of this coral
            shape of a distant
                                                            galaxy



            6

oileáin á nochtadh
            is ag leá
an mar seo a cruthaíodh an domhan?



islands coming
            and going
is this how the world was made?













            7

ní gá iarraidh orthu –
            seolann na crainn phailme
                        bríos chugainn



cooling breeze
            from palm trees –
                        without asking



            8

an féileacán fiú
            glacann scíth
                        san ámóg



even the butterfly
            takes a rest
                        in the hammock





            9

taoi foirfe, i ngach slí,
a mhuiscít; mar sin féin
fan amach uaim



you are perfect in every way
mosquito; nonetheless
buzz off







            10

spléachadh ar thurtar
            a shúile
is a bhfuil feicthe acu



glimpse of a turtle
            his eyes
and what they have seen



            11

lorg bídeach chosa an éin
            ag díriú de shíor
ar ghaineamh gan chríoch



faint imprint of a bird’s feet
            pointing                       pointing
towards infinite sands





            12

isteach i bpoll sa ghaineamh
            rud a bhí róthapaidh
                        le hainmniú



into a hole in the sand
            something  too quick
to be named





            13

níl faic ar na gaobhair
ach brostaíonn an chearc a hál
an cosán anonn





nothing in sight
yet the hen bustles her clutch
across the path





            14

féar mara
            itheann na turtair é
                        seachas sin, n’fheadar



sea grass
            turtles eat it
                        apart from that, who knows















            15

linnte geala
            domhainchiúnais
                                    a réaltaí, na himíg’!



bright pools
            of deep silence –
                        no, stars, don’t go!



            16

nach toilltach!
            ar luas an tsolais, nach mór,
                        scairt an choiligh



how penetrating!
            almost at the speed of light
                        **** crow





            17

an lá á ghlaoch
            chun beochta acu
                        coiligh nach bhfeictear



calling the day
            to life –
                        invisible cockerels









            18
          
domhan fo thoinn
            cruinniú gearr
                        leis an mballach Napoléon



underwave world
            short meeting
                        with the Napoleon wrasse





            19

guth dearg an choiligh
            dathaíonn spéir
                        na maidine



a ****’s red voice
            painting
                        the morning sky





            20

coiréal inchinne cnapánaí
            gealas na réaltaí-
                        gan smaointe



knobby brain coral
            starglow -
                        no thoughts





            21



coiligh ag freagairt dá chéile
            eatarthu leátar
                        an ré



***** echoing one another
            between them they dissolve
                        the moon





            22

cos léi amuigh –
            tá an chuileog rómhór
                        do bhéal an gheiceo





one leg hangs out –
            the fly is too big
                        for the gecko’s mouth



            23



anáil chiúnaithe
            na cruinne: is ansin
                        scairt an choiligh





the stilled breath
            of the universe: then
                        cockcrow





            24

éisc ar crochadh
            faoin ngrian –
                        muir gan mhonabhar



fish hung out
            to dry
                        murmurless sea





            25

ina gceann is ina gceann
ciúnaíonn tonnta
                        roimh réaltaí



one by one
            waves become placid
                        for the stars





            26

scáil an turtair
            nó féar mara
                        b'fhéidir



turtle shadow
            or sea grass
                        maybe





            27

línte reatha -
an t-iasc séabrach
ag scríobh ar uisce



fleeting lines -
the zebra fish
writing on water











            28

hurlamaboc

            francach

                        in airde sa chrann cnó cócó



hullabaloo

            a rat

aloft in the coconut tree
Sid Lollan Dec 2021
It is 5am. Undressed but for boxers

                I join in the unvoiced burden
Of suburban detectives and cul-de-sac mystics,
And whomever else screams into a cloak
Their spells to cure insomnia.

I dream of the city-dwelling
fellow all-nite travelers,
envying their resilient hours’ darkly id,
their alley ways foot traffic car horns…
I can’t explain this impulse.

I know I know ‘The cure is sleep.’
But I think, ‘something more.’

   .  .  .

Hours expand.

My neighbor’s new rooster —-
He does not yield.

And the cockcrow puffs the blinds,
And the cockcrow wigs the veil!

Hours expand
Out of their wrinkle-&-bind;
But I’ve yet to penetrate the cloak,
Or tap into its magnetic-field.

        like
        so many,
just so happened
so clumsily
        to touch,
tugging at its tassels
but failing
        to clutch

Before the cockcrow puffs the blinds,
And the blackbird wigs the veil!

Only my eyes
under an apex moon
can hypothesize
in a bulb’s-flash (!)
such extravagant design…

After the boulders roll & crash
The avalanche of balderdash,
                      etc. etc. etc.

Out of the rubble
the wrinkle and bind:
A head atop some shoulders
with eyes like fingers —-
                undercover,
         cigarette-stained,

Following his leads, out along the frays
of a magician’s cape, or a death shroud?
Silver-stitched
            geodesics,
                        some twine-gold ciphers,
         some…

And the cockcrow puffs the blinds
And the cockcrow wigs the veil!

And as quickly as does the violet
in the clouds above the hothouses,
it dissipates… hidden like an axiom…
The hood is lifted —- once again revealing
       The Dawn Sun.

It is in these moments ensuing
That I feel most strongly
Something has been taken from me.

.  .  .


Postscript

Where are the rats of which I was one?
What are they chewing on, now that day breaks?
All those secrets left out in the dark?
They began without notice, in the city of Mombasa
By the Al shabab shooting baby Osinya in the head,
Killed the mother, leaving a slug stuck in Osinya’s head
Killing and mauling many others macabrously,
Killing for no other reason, but tribe and faith,
Their victims confess different religion and ethnicity.

They had initially lynched the West Gate Mall
In Nairobi, killing the aged and seasoned darling
Of African poetry and true fountain of peace
The dearest Kofi Awonor, in full watch of his son,
Confirming a trail of the ghastly curse of fate and death
That totted him arduously from his home in the west
Of the tropical gulag that makes the land of Africa
From where the terror maestro ; Boko haram reign scot free
Mayheming, Killing, ******, and kidnapping harmless virgins
Killing For no other reason but tribe and faith,
Their victims confess different religion and ethnicity.

They have now killed fifty peasants in Mpeketon town,
****** them in circles to puncture their virginity
and brutally kidnapping those that are not *****,
Using the AK 47 and the Ak 74 to shoot and ****,
Without reason nor course but failure of mind
Botched down by authenticity of holy diversity
Heavenly packaged in God’s idea of tribe,
Uhm! An African man with a gun is a brute of brutes,
Giving an African a gun is simple mess of the world
In to helter-skelter poise tilting peace higgledy-piggledy,
Killing one another like animals premised by Charles Darwin
As overtly seen in the warring Congo and CAR,
Where Africans **** one another in a stupid dint,
To ape Rwanda or no! To outshine the Jewish Massacre
In the Ammonium chambers of fuehrer Adolf ******,
This stupid Africans baser than wild beasts,
Who told you that your greatness will come
from killing your neighbours; the fellow peasants?
These African men are the modern homoguerrillus,
Which one call cheap war making man
They and **** ! ****! ****! ****! ****! ****! ****,
For no other reason but faith and tribe,
Their victims confess different religion and ethnicity.

Gunshots of the gunmen in Africa are not
A song of the caged bird, no whatsoever,
They are cowardly maneuvers of the weak
As the weak and cowards rarely forgive,
They arm themselves to the teeth
With deadly weapons from Russia or wherever
Only to shoot and **** the old and malnourished
Peasant women, killing the likes of baby Osinya
Shooting a suckling baby to prove your heroism,
These African men are really a Whiteman’s burden,
They **** their fellows from cockcrow to chick roost
For no other reason but tribe and faith,
Their victims confess different religion and ethnicity.
Mayday: two came to field in such wise :
'A daisied mead', each said to each,
So were they one; so sought they couch,
Across barbed stile, through flocked brown cows.

'No pitchforked farmer, please,' she said;
'May cockcrow guard us safe,' said he;
By blackthorn thicket, flower spray
They pitched their coats, come to green bed.

Below: a fen where water stood;
Aslant: their hill of stinging nettle;
Then, honor-bound, mute grazing cattle;
Above: leaf-wraithed white air, white cloud.

All afternoon these lovers lay
Until the sun turned pale from warm,
Until sweet wind changed tune, blew harm :
Cruel nettles stung her angles raw.

Rueful, most vexed, that tender skin
Should accept so fell a wound,
He stamped and cracked stalks to the ground
Which had caused his dear girl pain.

Now he goes from his rightful road
And, under honor, will depart;
While she stands burning, venom-girt,
In wait for sharper smart to fade.
Once it was the colour of saying
Soaked my table the uglier side of a hill
With a capsized field where a school sat still
And a black and white patch of girls grew playing;
The gentle seaslides of saying I must undo
That all the charmingly drowned arise to cockcrow and ****.
When I whistled with mitching boys through a reservoir park
Where at night we ****** the cold and cuckoo
Lovers in the dirt of their leafy beds,
The shade of their trees was a word of many shades
And a lamp of lightning for the poor in the dark;
Now my saying shall be my undoing,
And every stone I wind off like a reel.
John Kuriakose Dec 2013
****-a-doodle-do! ****-a-doodle-do!
Cockcrow! Wake up, you poor humans!
The crazy, heartless sapient-irrationals!
You glug your cocktails in our names,
And slay, roast, and offer us to God,
And atone slyly your un-atonable sins.

Our lovely sickle tails, you used, once,
To concoct the cocktails you gulped;
And coveted our red comb and wattle,  
The bright yellow of our cape and hackle,
The glittering blue of our wing bows,
And the violet-red of the back and saddle.

Oh no! Don’t strip us of our fair plumage
Our sickle, main tail and the lesser sickle,
Our fluff, hock joint, shank and the spur,
To the toes and claws, for you to toil
Hard, to fry--stir-fry—us, **** in your oil,
For your vain cocktail-less cocktail summits.
John Kuriakose Nov 2013
****-a-doodle-do! ****-a-doodle-do!
Cockcrow! Wake up, you poor humans!
The crazy, heartless sapient-irrationals!
You glug your cocktails in our names,
And slay, roast, and offer us to God,
And atone slyly your un-atonable sins.

Our lovely sickle tails, you used, once,
To concoct the cocktails you gulped;
And coveted our red comb and wattle,  
The bright yellow of our cape and hackle,
The glittering blue of our wing bows,
And the violet-red of the back and saddle.

Oh no! Don’t strip us of our fair plumage
Our sickle, main tail and the lesser sickle,
Our fluff, hock joint, shank and the spur,
To the toes and claws, for you to toil
Hard, to fry--stir-fry—us, **** in your oil,
For your vain cocktail-less cocktail summits.
Terry O'Leary Feb 2017
While whispers shush on sheltered shores, as soon the cockcrow quakes,
the seas descry a skittish sky, sense summer zephyrs wake  –
roused passions neath the sunrise pulse, the whitecaps throb and ache.

Along the crests crawl shallow shades the soaring sun effaces,
and rain in streams belies the dreams that fantasy embraces –
the ocean sprays of yesterdays conceal forsaken faces.

The midday sun has slowed its run, a shrinking puddle steams,
between the knells for shattered shells drift wounded seagulls’ screams –
affection blends but sometimes ends, or so it sadly seems.

At dusk a ruddy disk descends, the skyline's furnace burns  
and neath the swells where Neptune dwells, an undercurrent churns –
a seahorse hides and seaweed bides until the tempest turns.

While twilight hosts the winds with ghosts of barbed electric spangles,
a mermaid braves the crashing waves adorned with starfish bangles –
the spirit yearns in twists and turns entwined in rockweed tangles.

As seven stranded ****** scan the dimple-dappled moon,
eleven sultry sirens serenade a lonely loon –
the breakers pound and sometimes sound a melancholy tune.

Soon gales ignite the briny night and rip the skies askew
with zigzag teeth flashed deep beneath a blazing bolt tattoo –
storms, spent, subside with ebbing tides, then all begins anew.While whispers shush on sheltered shores, as soon the cockcrow quakes,
the seas descry a skittish sky, sense summer zephyrs wake  –
roused passions neath the sunrise pulse, the whitecaps throb and ache.

Along the crests crawl shallow shades the soaring sun effaces
and rains in streams enhance the dreams that fantasy embraces
while ocean sprays of yesterdays reveal forsaken faces.

The midday sun has slowed its run, a shrinking puddle steams,
between the knells of shattered shells drift soaring seagulls’ screams –
the beauty wends but never ends, or so it surely seems.

At dusk a ruddy disk descends, the skyline's furnace burns
and neath the swells where Neptune dwells, an undercurrent churns –
a seahorse hides and seaweed bides until the tempest turns.

While twilight hosts the winds with ghosts of barbed electric spangles,
a mermaid braves the crashing waves adorned with starfish bangles –
her spirit yearns in twists and turns entwined in rockweed tangles.

As seven stranded ****** scan the dimple-dappled moon,
a brace of surly Sirens serenade a lonely loon –
the breakers pound and sometimes sound a melancholy tune.

Soon gales ignite the briny night and rip the skies askew
with zigzag teeth flashed deep beneath a blazing bolt tattoo –
storms, spent, subside in ebbing tides, then all begins anew.
Ralph Akintan Dec 2018
Snoring gangling giant,
Slumbering away on a snowy
      night.
Spoil of war unprotected,
Opening ways for ingress of
      worrisome infiltrated
      interlopers.
Remember the lord of Philistine
      Samusini,
Who returned not from the
      seductive antics of his
      mistress,
Perished in the furnace fire of
      frustration,
And drowned in the Laguna of
     no return

Slumbering hindered the move
      of the water.
Howling of devourers enclosed
      your shack.
Heterocercal caudal fins of
      sharks prevented the sailing
      of ships.
Wolfished wailing of tidal waves
      consumed the anchorage
      ground.
And the apparition of foes
      lurked-up in darkness like
      the foehn on the Alps.

Awake before the devastating
      night owl.
Awake from the abyss of deep
      slumber.
Awake before the cockcrow,
When darkness of defeats
Controls the reigns of night.
Snoring gangling giant,
Awake unto light.
Terry O'Leary Oct 2013
I’m stealing through a twilit realm, the ancient pale of Whereis,
passing chambers of an Heiress
(though no need to feel embarrassed)
through a magic mystic mirror hanging curtainless.

A glimpse near naked alleyways (denuded by the moon) ex-
poses Ghosts in gauzy tunics
carving symbols, round and runic,
in distended dingy dungeons of uncertainness.

Down misty streets of cobblestone – ancestral avenues –
patchwork paths consume my shoes
(chasing foggy curlicues
twisting, twirling by in twos,
floating anywhere they choose),
leaving footprints that confuse
vagrant wispy retinues
of the threaded wooden sticks that stalk a Puppet wandering.

Condensed in drops of fantasy, distilled in evening dew,
shifting Shadows I pursue
(wearing faces I once knew,
slipping slowly from my view)
turn their backs to bid adieu
leaving stars to tempt me through
Awful Tower residues
mocking treasures time outgrew
in the birth of old from new
framing pageants in review
midst the visions of the painted past I can’t help pondering.

Contorted candelabra claw the skyline’s walled suspension
caught in twilight’s intervention
– still unlit (in stark dissension),
therefore seething with a tension
in the quiet apprehension
of the Watchman’s inattention
to the night-time’s bold pretension
to her power, not to mention,
to her hyperspace extension
(far beyond my comprehension
of the sundown’s bleak dimension) –  
on exhausted beaten boulevards of foolish fretfulness.

Oblivion depletes me, voiding haste and hurried hassles,
me, a simple abject vassal,
trailing moonlit floating castles,
– fickle feet, but fingers facile
grasping straws and pendant tassels –
as I stumble through the rubble of forgetfulness.

I think I must be dreaming as I seem to see these things,
neath a sky alive with wings
(hear the Nightingale, she sings),
midst the whispered murmurings
soughed by Phantoms clad as Kings
pacing palaces in rings,
while their hapless footfall clings
to the sagging sinking sands of midnight’s splintered splattered ruins.

Entangled in the swirling leaves that spin in dizzy flurries,
(while the wind beside me scurries
as an ermined hermit hurries)
lurk my sleepy woes and worries
(glowing faint’ but growing blurry)
which, when plundered by the demon dusk, I’d left behind me strewn.

The forgery of Multitudes between the Silhouettes
(and discarded cigarettes,
neath the haunted parapets)
mock my lonely echoed steps
         – mock my lonely echoed steps –
(struck like clicking castanets
         – struck like clicking castanets –)
as I lace unlabeled lanes, erasing silence’ sullen treason.

The mossy stones condole with me (within the oubliettes
draped in blood and tears and sweat
sometimes dry, more often wet
quite like drops of anisette
sipped in moments one forgets
self-reproach and raw regrets)
midst the midnight minuets
and the purling pirouettes
of the fugitive Grisettes
(flaunting charms and amulets)
who, in flitting shades of arching bridges, linger longer, teasin’.

Along the When I’m drifting, but a stardust castaway,
weaving, threading by cafés
and deserted cabarets,
just a gauzy appliqué
on the river’s rippled spray,
chasing Fools along the way
through the strands of yesterday,
neath the throbbing peal of sobbing bells in spectral cloisters, quaking.

In belfries, high and haughty, alabaster Knights perform,
riding stiff against a storm,
steeped in cloudlike chloroform,
while the raven skies deform
and my shrivelled shovelled form
(rapt, while bats in steeples swarm
close to candles waxing warm)
hangs in hallowed hallways, hiding, shoulders weary, weak and aching.

Around me hover grinning masks, veiled visages of Queens,
feigning fatal final scenes
of demented doomed Dauphines
(against the scarlet sky they lean,
dreary dripping guillotines),
traced in opalescent ballrooms only tattered time remembers.

The hidden hands of Harlequins (while floating free, unseen
disbursing secrets sibylline,
amongst the manes of Halloween),
tap (on tumbrel tambourines
behind abandoned shuttered screens)
a dirge (with tattooed tones pristine)
for me (a heap in ragged jeans
in these crazy cluttered scenes),
trapped interred in toppled stone chateaus that dismal dawn dismembers.

Rogue breezes pierce, benumbing me, my ears and toes a’ freezin’
(in the Cockcrow’s purple season
as when nightmares should be easin’
and the Zephyr winds appeasin’),
so I reach for  rhyme and reason,
which endeavours leave me wheezin’,
caught impaled upon the jagged edge of early morning’s breaking.

The chill evoking silver chimes of Nodomain start knelling
as the searing sun looms swelling,
and their monodies hang dwelling
in the cloud drifts’ care, revelling,
but the Sandman’s too compelling
and my weariness impelling
– since my eyelids risk rebelling,
when they’ll fall, there’s no foretelling
for the starry sky’s past telling –
as I fade beneath the flaming forge while embers tremble, waking.
This day winding down now
At God speeded summer's end
In the torrent salmon sun,
In my seashaken house
On a breakneck of rocks
Tangled with chirrup and fruit,
Froth, flute, fin, and quill
At a wood's dancing hoof,
By scummed, starfish sands
With their fishwife cross
Gulls, pipers, cockles, and snails,
Out there, crow black, men
Tackled with clouds, who kneel
To the sunset nets,
Geese nearly in heaven, boys
Stabbing, and herons, and shells
That speak seven seas,
Eternal waters away
From the cities of nine
Days' night whose towers will catch
In the religious wind
Like stalks of tall, dry straw,
At poor peace I sing
To you strangers (though song
Is a burning and crested act,
The fire of birds in
The world's turning wood,
For my swan, splay sounds),
Out of these seathumbed leaves
That will fly and fall
Like leaves of trees and as soon
Crumble and undie
Into the dogdayed night.
Seaward the salmon, ****** sun slips,
And the dumb swans drub blue
My dabbed bay's dusk, as I hack
This rumpus of shapes
For you to know
How I, a spining man,
Glory also this star, bird
Roared, sea born, man torn, blood blest.
Hark: I trumpet the place,
From fish to jumping hill! Look:
I build my bellowing ark
To the best of my love
As the flood begins,
Out of the fountainhead
Of fear, rage read, manalive,
Molten and mountainous to stream
Over the wound asleep
Sheep white hollow farms
To Wales in my arms.
Hoo, there, in castle keep,
You king singsong owls, who moonbeam
The flickering runs and dive
The ****** furred deer dead!
Huloo, on plumbed bryns,
O my ruffled ring dove
in the hooting, nearly dark
With Welsh and reverent rook,
Coo rooning the woods' praise,
who moons her blue notes from her nest
Down to the curlew herd!
**, hullaballoing clan
Agape, with woe
In your beaks, on the gabbing capes!
Heigh, on horseback hill, jack
Whisking hare! who
Hears, there, this fox light, my flood ship's
Clangour as I hew and smite
(A clash of anvils for my
Hubbub and fiddle, this tune
On atounged puffball)
But animals thick as theives
On God's rough tumbling grounds
(Hail to His beasthood!).
Beasts who sleep good and thin,
Hist, in hogback woods! The haystacked
Hollow farms ina throng
Of waters cluck and cling,
And barnroofs cockcrow war!
O kingdom of neighbors finned
Felled and quilled, flash to my patch
Work ark and the moonshine
Drinking Noah of the bay,
With pelt, and scale, and fleece:
Only the drowned deep bells
Of sheep and churches noise
Poor peace as the sun sets
And dark shoals every holy field.
We will ride out alone then,
Under the stars of Wales,
Cry, Multiudes of arks! Across
The water lidded lands,
Manned with their loves they'll move
Like wooden islands, hill to hill.
Huloo, my prowed dove with a flute!
Ahoy, old, sea-legged fox,
Tom *** and Dai mouse!
My ark sings in the sun
At God speeded summer's end
And the flood flowers now.
Passing away, saith the World, passing away:
Chances, beauty and youth, sapp'd day by day:
Thy life never continueth in one stay.
Is the eye waxen dim, is the dark hair changing to grey
That hath won neither laurel nor bay?
I shall clothe myself in Spring and bud in May:
Thou, root-stricken, shalt not rebuild thy decay
On my ***** for aye.
Then I answer'd: Yea.

Passing away, saith my Soul, passing away:
With its burden of fear and hope, of labour and play,
Hearken what the past doth witness and say:
Rust in thy gold, a moth is in thine array,
A canker is in thy bud, thy leaf must decay.
At midnight, at cockcrow, at morning, one certain day
Lo, the Bridegroom shall come and shall not delay:
Watch thou and pray.
Then I answer'd: Yea.

Passing away, saith my God, passing away:
Winter passeth after the long delay:
New grapes on the vine, new figs on the tender spray,
Turtle calleth turtle in Heaven's May.
Though I tarry, wait for Me, trust Me, watch and pray.
Arise, come away, night is past and lo it is day,
My love, My sister, My spouse, thou shalt hear Me say.
The ivory of the egotistical lily,

The morning hymn of the pious jenny,

The dazzling ebony African beauty,

The sweet spice that seasons my honey,

Rain thy glaring love once again

Upon my careless dispirited pride,

As I rain these tender tears

Upon this stagnant dry land,



I have tasted thy venial venom

With seasonal ache and repentance,

Now, purge my narrow breath of life

From this wicked roaring hunter

Who fire’s at my forlorn nights,

Do not preserve this deficit of mine

For our innocent image,

Lest the gods of the City of the Dead

Keep close to our naked hut,



Calibrate my disobedience with thy soft wind,

And let not thy fierce storm approach,

Resurrect my muscles from the grave

And cover my bones with the flesh of thy kisses,

Open thy wonderful cataract to stream

From thy tongue into my barren bones,

And seal my cockcrow and thy twilight

In the clouds of thy slender cotton wool,



Come, oh my dear Kabutuwaa,

Come and visit my farm this bedtime

And let us **** the blazing stars mutually,

Set free the promising arrow of my daylight

And the pretty bow of thy nightfall

Via the thick murkiness of this gulf,

Allow me to crawl up thy tree of life

And taste of its couple peach anew,

For my craving lips longs for thy

Indispensable eternal ******.


© PRINCE NANA ANIN-AGYEI
Email: nanaspeaks@gmail.com
Mitch Nihilist Jan 2017
She tears through
her insecurities
on fridays and saturdays,
shameless small talk
with bouncers,
and she dresses to ****,
railing lines at pre drink,
and talking up free drinks
with ***** hawks
circulating the scintillations
of spotlights for victims
of a cockcrow regret,
she picks and chooses
and it’s easy for her,
finding a jawline
in a haystack seems
almost inevitable
when she did her make up
in front of a mirror,
not 3 hours prior,
she fills her empty
bed with cheap cologne
and sweat and gel
to only empty again
not 3 hours later.
Connor Mar 2015
Stagnancy living
in colorless morning.
sunflower sunshine disconsolate
the rooster sings
eulogies and clamored verses
ringing alarm bells in cockcrow
cough drone weary eyes
dew-tied memories of
reverie weepy
aching legs and chest pains
cotton cozied pills crashing
underneath plastic caps
prescription taps
Tylenol Benzedrine
relapse body thinning
cities wearing
ergonomic tragedies
encircling business quarter
daffodil rooftops
steady rain descending onto
varnished sidewalks.

Addicts pirouette dazzled the
hazed-minds dreaming of
Aprils and consistent harmonious
ecstasy visions stampeded
by the brickwork flickered with
lamplight demons overcast this illusory Babylon
trembling flesh retreats into the shadows it came
and nightmares remain similar to days before and after.
Recycled horrors lightning flash abhorrent death
whether they be wearing black suits or black robes
scythe or satchel the wide eyes scour gaunt alleys
for fixes to fix the monotonous life bewitched
with false material variety anxiety deity
Desecration City express way to depression
oppressed people hide away in simultaneous acts of
camouflaging fireballs
spiraling into decadence.

Diamond days few and far between
communal woe reverberates through skins
and skeletons in opening of top story windows
during Winter. Despite the fragrance chaos,
pandemic paranoia,
extinguishing elation,
All bodies continue to be
alone.
neth jones Sep 2021
i draw in a new day ; CockCrow
a spirit substance
                       to devil in
character pulled from the world surround
picked                   
                              ­and plied of its madder details
doing others a favour                              
                  leaving the easy-to-manage material

i am mastered by these firing elements

orbited                                                ­                          
i take on a particularly creative project
with uninhibited frothing
I am a  violent volcano erupting
In the very fiery darkest hour
Bringing down errors
From mountains of fire
Devouring evil at cockcrow.

It's the dawn of a great glory
In  gunpowder power explosion!

All pawns in evil chess game
Come to rainbow rain contrite
As darkness has no hiding place
In emerald golden sundown glory
As trees of darkness uprooted dead!
There is no place for darkness at the dawn of light and her glory.  Come what may the reign of darkness is ephemeral.
Isabellamae Feb 2019
My sleepy eyes
they almost become two full pools
when I see you
My heart, rends.
And when the cockcrow hits
I cry
at the memory.
nivek Apr 2021
up with the lark
a poets wish
Oh how they sing
Ralph Akintan Dec 2018
I experienced experience
I witnessed experience

Swarming like wild bees
Swimming from the brooks
Of outer Marina
Racing into the fountain
Of Islet of Lagos.
Our Lagos,
Their Lagos.
Diverse religionists
On spiritual missions,
Raising up hands in supplications
For open heaven,
For praise and worship.
Some on mundane missions.
Spivs, urchins alike

But this congestion suffocated
Spaces wept for control
Sea breezes searched for outlets
From outer Marina

And wants of oxygen waves
Hands for recognition.
Both faithfuls, penitents , miscreants needed air for survival.
Protestations appealed for audience.
Legs spent and tired ,
Craving for rhapsodic attention

Where are more seats?
Where are more spaces?

Helpless ushers uncaring.

But from the stage roars
Songs of inspirations ,
Songs of supplications
Like war cries.
Sounds from desk to dawning,
Music from dawn into deskiness.
And seat glued me till cockcrow

Night broke into day.
Fading music expelled adherents
Out of arena.
A loud silence now reigned.

Freedom from the fangs of stampede.
I experienced experience
I witnessed experience
We can see the winds flying
on eagles wings in rainbow
colors
The ecstasy of the roaring sea
stretches beyond the viscera boundaries in sonorous voices,
uprooting the trees of sorrow and grief
into the abyss of the charcoal ocean
As sunrise appears at sunset,
bringing eternal eclipse of the moon
of grief
We cannot forget the ravages of the dead cockcrow at midnight, when songs of oppression were made lullabies,
as our liberties were frozen in iceberg of shame and reproach.
Oh! It's the morning of joy in glorious fantasies unending, laying for us red carpets to victory eternal.
Dada Olowo Eyo Mar 2019
Eyes open to darkness,
Sweaty night,
In birthday suit,
Waiting on the cockcrow;

Completing another cycle,
The rise and fall of seasons,
Another rung up life's ladder,
Leaving behind, moving on;

I look at my daughter,
Then at her mother, my wife,
And then at this life,
Surely, all can be better.
I am 39 today. Enough said.
nivek Feb 2019
up with your very own personal Cockcrow
could be a shotgun
back firing Ferrari  
a lovers kiss
the light of the Sun
ejected at last from a nightmare
the Alarm clock (who invented that!)

— The End —