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Michael Marchese Apr 2017
Prometheus ignites to spark this
Molotov to make his Marxist
On swine Fuhrer's Faux News tweet
Hashtag it #GorbachevWallStreet
'Cuz Putin's puppet Pinochet's
Whipped Creme de Kremlin's CIA  
From JFK to Allende
Like Russian roulette ricochet
I'll Trotsky through McCarthy's brains
Leave slain these ****** sugar Keynes   
Discred' the Fed’s six-figureheads
With strikes at dawn more red than Debs  
Still breakin' breads with Mulan Bouges
Makin' men of Khmer Stooges
Seein’ Rouge when Al Spans Greens
Potemkin loan wolf ponzi schemes
Who count the sheep like Philippines
Then Black Pearl Harbor GRANMA’s dreams...

Of Marilyn Monroes in store
Just off-shore ****** who **** the poor
A Glass of Steagall's broken trust
Half emptier than bowls of dust
In rust beltways still spewin’ fumes
As factories become Khartoums
No carbon footprint tax the hint
Of Amazon decays in Flint
Just pop the caps and drown in debt
Like Kent State drinkin' to forget
That cuttin’ class engenders race
Leaves glory, gold and God's disgrace
To slaughter Moor than Reconquista  
From Marti to Sandinista     
With Zapata sharin’ crops  
Till my Mexica heartbeat stops

I'm Pancho infiltratin’ villas
The Magilla of guerillas
In the midst of Congolese  
Same colonies, just different thieves
To me, my breed’s of landless deeds
So how you like ‘dem Appleseeds?
FReeducatin’ caves of youth
Fed Citizen’s United Fruit
‘Cuz now my open eye of Horus
Battle cries Grito de Lares
Che is centered in these veins
So my Ashoka takes the reigns
These Iron paci-Fists pack hits
Like Jimi on some Malcolm ****
Still Hajj mirages I barrage
The Raj with sheer Cong camouflage

Deployin' Sepoys on viceroys
And pol desPots’ in the employs
Of Tweedledums who run the slums
With country clubs of loaded guns
These Betsy Deez bear arms to school
Till no kids fly kites in Kabul
So gas-mask your Sharia flaw
I'll Genghis Khan Sheikoun it raw  
'Cuz refugees are rising
And we're anti-socializing
Subsidizing private party plans
Who take commands from ***** hands
These grand old klans coup klux control
Your diamond minds with mines of coal
An oil Standardized existence
Solar powers my resistance

******* sun of Liberty  
My fear itself is history  
Rewriting wrongs of Leo’s creed
In culture’s blood and vulture’s greed
An alt-right/all-white cockpile   
Stockpilin' human capital
In tricklin’ contests over spoils
Of the cotton-ceded soils
Jingos chained to Cruci-fictions
Swallowin' good Christian dictions
I spit Spanish Inquisition
Trippin' Socrates sedition
Droppin' Oppen's fission quest
For "now I am become death"
'Cuz G-bay pigs in-Fidel's sites
Flew U-2's into my last rites

These Saddamites, I smite Assad
Then spread 'em like Islamabad
Convert for-profit prison tsars
From Escobars to Bolivars 
Like currency in Venezuela
Current police-state favela
Where 9/10th's of your possession's
Worth less than your Great Depression’s
Upscale bail ‘em outs of jail
With Dodd-Frank banks too big to fail
Your FDA-approved psychosis
From Campos’ daily dose of
More defense? Here’s my two cents
These slave wages ain’t excrements
So just say no to Reaganomics    
Got us hooked, but not on phonics

Just that Noriega strain
Of Contras stackin' crack contain
Like MAD dogs who trade weapons-grades  
For Ayatollah hate tirades
On “don’t ask, don’t tell” plague ebonics
Drug crusAID Jim Crow narcotics     
Warsaw rats injected, tested,
Quarantined, and then arrested
Guess the J. Arbenz' lens
Still Tet offends their ethnic cleanse
Still Wounding Knees of Standing Sioux
Till Crazy Horses stampede you   
For Mother Nature’s common ground
My Martin Luther’s gather ‘round
Is hellbound sounds of Nero’s crown  
Let's burn this Third World Reichstag down

Vox populyin’ to remove ‘ya
Like Lumumba then Nkrumah
So some Pumbaa kleptocrat
Declares himself the next Sadat
To hide supply-side Apartheid
Increase demand for genocide
So check your factions in Uganda  
Tune into Hotel Rwanda
Come play pirates with Somalis
Then desert ‘em like Benghazis
Thirst for blood so French Algiers  
It boils mine in Trails of Tears  
My destiny unManifest-
Oppressive Adam-Smitten West
So pay your overdues to Mao
I’ll Mussolini Chairman Dow

Then flood this 9th ward Watergate
With killing fields of glyphosate
I'll redistribute IMF’s
With leftist depth so deft it’s theft
I’ll My Lai massacre these lines
With sweet Satsuma samurhymes
I'll make these Madoff Hitlers squeal
With that Bastille New Deal cold steel
Now feel that Shining Pathos wrath
Drop Nagasaki aftermath
On Nanjing kings and dragon’s Diems
With ****** bodhisattva zens
To show you how I pledge allegiance
With razed flags still rapt in Jesus  
Laosy liars pogrom psalms
Can’t Uncle Phnom my Penh’s truth bombs

On heroes shootin' ******
My fix is un-American
Tiananmen democracies
To Syngman Rhee hypocrisies  
Theocracies drive me Hussein
With Bush league’s mass destruction claim
So I dig laissez pharaohs graves
With pyramids of Abu Ghraibs
Then nail their coffers closed like Vlad
I AM THE GHOST OF STALINGRAD
My hammer forged in winters past
My sickle reaps the shadows caste
By pantheons of penta-cons
Whose Exxons lead to autobahns
When liberal Arts of War and Peace in
Free speech teach my voice of treason
“Fascism will come to America wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross”
-Sinclair Lewis
Mio Seanachaidh Jan 2017
Lack of money is lack of friends; if you have money at your disposal, every dog and goat will claim to be related to you. ~ Yoruba
War has no eyes ~ Swahili saying
There can be no peace without understanding. ~Senegalese proverb
A leader who does not take advice is not a leader. ~ Kenyan proverb
If there is character, ugliness becomes beauty; if there is none, beauty becomes ugliness. ~Nigerian Proverb
Unity is strength, division is weakness. ~ Swahili proverb
Wisdom does not come overnight. ~ Somali proverb
Knowledge without wisdom is like water in the sand. ~ Guinean proverb
Home affairs are not talked about on the public square. ~ African proverb
Show me your friend and I will show you your character. ~ African proverb
Make some money but don’t let money make you. ~ Tanzania
When you are rich, you are hated; when you are poor, you are despised. - African proverb
A man who uses force is afraid of reasoning. ~Kenyan proverb
Traveling is learning. ~Kenyan Proverb
What you learn is what you die with. ~ African proverb
He who is destined for power does not have to fight for it. ~ Ugandan proverb
It takes a village to raise a child. ~ African proverb
Poverty is slavery. ~Somalia
The wealth which enslaves the owner isn’t wealth. ~ Yoruba
Much wealth brings many enemies. – Swahili
You are beautiful, but learn to work, for you cannot eat your beauty. ~Congolese Proverb
A pretty face and fine clothes do not make character. ~Congolese Proverb
Show me your friend and I will show you your character. ~ African proverb
A close friend can become a close enemy.~ African proverb
Daily life quotes
Reece Dec 2013
hatasha hullah - dey
parablah nuh parrah
vey, okay, huttah, ulay
narralah, narrah, nutay

That interim between dreams and consciousness, that momentary lapse of reality
When slave children don't howl and the wild animals lay tamed in sun traps, weary

Your scattered thoughts betray reality
and you
question everything - now waking
Smiling chief, chirping loud
Your body gathered and prepared
under torchlight in dusty tents
Ingesting iboga and that old familiar numbness overpowers
You've been here for a life now, looking back on your life now
hatasha hullah - dey
vey, okay, huttah, ulay

Witch doctor, tribal medicine, fanning smoke from a wild fire
flashing imagery akin to memories of when life was decadent
you remember the taste of stray rain drops on your upper lip on muggy British summer days
and waking on a beach, bloodied as the sand at your feet is the next recollection, how powerful
the act of reflection, as you recall the mirrors of the sea and your torn body weakened and inept
The gathered village chant in unison and splinter groups fall off beat only to rejoin intermittently

Remember the Burmese boy far from home on the Gabon shoreline
and he informs you of your own death,
and asks you why do you breathe still?

hatasha hullah - dey
parablah nuh parrah
vey, okay, huttah, ulay
narralah, narrah, nutay
Oh laa, ley ley lahh ley lah
ley hatasha hullah - dey

On some beaten path lost in Angola you carried two packs, food for the world
but you fell starving and spluttered on the rock that looked like your home
Rebels run wild in jeeps black as night, your supplies strewn on rubble grounds
- hatasha hullah - dey
Taken in a flurry, twittering birds in far off trees betray your trust and fly away
in the opposite direction, and the juggernaut jeep catches air over uneven tracks
You were scared and crying under blindfolded eyes and captors jeered, captivated
- parablah nuh parrah
An orchestrated mass of military garbed children with rifles gather you abruptly
when the car stopped with a rumble
And tied to rusted rigs you're gagged and stripped, bloodied your face now
as they beat you and laugh
- vey, okay, huttah, ulay
Congolese giant man, sword in hand and grimacing through bared teeth
Making bold gestures and speaking some inscrutable language
You cannot answer and fear is now in control, you shiver in the ghastly draft
On failure to answer you must be beaten, your back is lashed, repeatedly
- narralah, narrah, nutay
You remain silent but cry in disparity, after shrieks of horror finally escape your barren lips
Through stinging eyes you assess the surroundings after hours of torture when they retire
to their leather beds of shame and innocence faltered, try and remember how to live
- Oh laa, ley ley lahh ley lah
Months must have passed, survive off insects and morning dew on the muddy floor
This African wasteland, time forgotten, child soldiers and lack of humanity is trivial
Always scheming, recollect the armament and through door-way shack trapped light
you see a clear path, and it is good
- ley hatasha hullah - dey
The pinnacle nightfall anticipated arrives, and your skinny wrists released now easily
(their faltering lack of knowledge and abundant braggadocio betray them)
AK laying in moonlight illumination, a sign of God perhaps, but experience proves otherwise
(How cruel the dreams you had of such a gift)
When they spot you leaving, the night lights up, wild crackle of gunfire, heart beats, tribal drums
(To massacre children, such proficiency, the dreams were mindful)
No lapse in concentration, you may ruminate on objective morality in due time
(Crawling through blood and bodies of children, so pure, cadavers tell lies)
The clearing ahead in giant trees, you run and don't look back, praying for no pursuit
(Another genocide committed by a white man, justified perhaps this once)
Weeks pass and you falter only to slurp rain water from Congolese sipping cups the leaves
(Blacking out somewhere in the Republic, or on a border or who cares, as you died long ago)
- vey, okay, huttah, ulay
  ley hatasha hullah - dey

To awake from hallucinogen dreams, and cruel memories linger, it's painful you agree
Witch doctor still sings, lonesome now as the tribe apply ointments and silently pray
The fire still dances to some incredible song and your scars redacted, physical and other
How incredible the mind feeling fuzzy and that insane dream is just that - a dream
You black out again, a common occurrence but upon waking you're free, no tribe exists
With a sheepskin rucksack full of cassava, plantains and sugarcane and cocoa beans
Months pass and you make it to the North, when you leave Africa your body is new
and your mind is stable, no lingering cognizance or frightful thoughts of a forgotten ordeal

You arrive in Turkey, to partake in ***** with nimble girls
and I see you floundering on silken sheets,
My memories were fresh as the nymph on your lap
I write to you a note, and you turn alabaster, moon faced being
I was there always and saw every moment
Your ideals on morality are hazy at best, and to your behest I detest all that you stand for
Is your afterlife so pure, now that bodies litter the forest floor
and do you believe that I am not (a) God
and is this mere poetry, or an indictment of your folly and a warning to all whom engage
but do you not also see that every reaction was an action taken to your original action
and when all is said and done, do you no realise that from the day you were born
you were born a God and that God was born dead
and this is just that interim between expiration and consciousness, that momentary lapse of reality
when slave children don't howl and the wild animals lay tamed in sun traps, weary

hatasha hullah - dey
parablah nuh parrah
vey, okay, huttah, ulay
narralah, narrah, nutay
hatasha hullah - dey
parablah nuh parrah
vey, okay, huttah, ulay
narralah, narrah, nutay
hatasha hullah - dey
parablah nuh parrah
vey, okay, huttah, ulay
narralah, narrah, nutay
Oh laa, ley ley lahh ley lah
ley hatasha hullah - dey
THIS YEAR 2013; IS THE YEAR OF GREAT DEATHS


Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya; aopicho@yahoo.com)


This year alone world society has lost more that ten great intellectual and political leaders. They have been lost to death in a deeply wounding manner. Human society has indeed been robbed. It is so sad. Three of the leaders have been Nobel laureates and the rest are leaders of intellectual, moral, political and spiritual stature in their respective capacities.
It began without any stampede in early part of the year some where March when Chinua Achebe, a Nigerian and Francis Davis Imbuga a Kenyan, both succumbed to early deaths caused by stroke. Rendering not only the citizens of world of literature, but also African society as well as global intellectual communities to the most desperate bereavement. Thereafter, within short while of the subsequent days, The Venezuelans president and Marxist intellectual, Hugo Chavez also succumbed to death caused by throat cancer. Even though the Pravda, the daily circulating paper of Russia contended that Chavez was poisoned; it is dismissible as only a Russian stand attributed to ideological hangover, because the Pravda also made similar allegations in relation to deaths of Yasser Arafat, Pablo Neruda and Frantz Omar Fanon, but it did not go a head to establish the factuality of this very allegations.
What we know is that human life is in most cases contested for by the three spiritual forces of fortune, fate and death. As decried William Shakespeare in his Romeo and Juliet. This time round in the year 2013, the angel of death has dominantly reigned with its untimely consequences in form of fangled early death of our leaders. Herman Melville will remain classical in his concern in the Moby **** about death that; O death! O death! Why are you untimely?  
Sadder is when the Al shabab terrorists killed the Ghanaian born global literary citizen Kofi Owonor. Kofi Owonor the poet and author of This world my brother was among the people killed in Nairobi during the terrorist attack at the Westgate mall. Of course he had come to Kenya to celebrate in literary festival organised by a society of publishers in Nairobi. This is an eventuality of some month ago. In September 2013, the Irish born literary Nobel prize poet; Heaney Seamus died. He died prematurely when the world society most needed his service to literature and his literary service to human society.
A couple of some weeks ago again the world loosed two prominent artists, political leaders, human rights crusaders and intellectuals. These are none other than Doris May Lessing and Tabuley Rosseuru. Lessing was a white African living in London, literature Nobel laureate and a feminist as well as an anti apartheid crusader. She is known for her firm stand against communist utopia, championing for the  courses against dehumanizing  human behaviors like racisms , but mostly Lessing is known for  her  great literary works like ;the grass is singing, Golden Note book, Dann and Mara as well as so many other works. Whereas Tabuley was an African Congolese , a musician , a businessman , once a husband to Africa’s most beautiful songstress Bellia Belle. He was the composer and the vocalist of African Rumba music. His song Bina Mudan which we in Africa always pronounce as Simbukinya was actually an artistic and cultural bombshell. Tabuley has been a politician, who enjoyed a gubernatorial position of the city of Kinshasa for ten years (two terms).
Most disastrous is the currently trial-some moment for the world community as they all commissarriate the death of Nelson Mandela.Mandella died early decemder 2013 at his home in the Johannesburg city of South Africa. The death of Mandela is an open sore to the society. It is a window for social, political, intellectual and family abyss in Africa. It is indeed a sad moment. But what can we do? For it has already happened. We can only swim in the consolation inherent the wisdom of the Babukusu people found in the western part of Kenya that; Mis-brewed wine behooves volunteer carousers. And truly, I have personally joined the world community to commit a poetical kamikaze in volunteering to drink this sour wine of humanity .May god give us and our leaders in their diverse capacities long live. Amen.
Terry O'Leary Jul 2013
Remember all the Wise Men on their knees upon your yacht?
With orphans on their backs they’d crawled (with others that they’d brought)
Through rubble on the highway sands and residues of Lot.
They came from severed cities selling postcards of your thoughts,
Though offered for a penny piece, not even worth a jot.

They mused
               “How are you feeling? What it is you want, you’ve got.
               The words you scrawl on calling cards: ‘I AM – the others NOT’
               Shun wisdoms of the Seven Seas: ‘Salvation can’t be bought’ –
               Your fathers tried before you and your fathers came to naught.

               “You started out by gelding goats and then by casting lots
               Of bodies to the battlefields, contorted, tight and taut,
               Then wallowed in the wake of trails the dervish devil trots.

               “With marching bands of fatherlands, and drums of Hottentots,
               You lure your legions in harm’s way like giant juggernauts.
               Like Tweedle Dum your minions come (the sober and the sots,
               The troglodytes, barbarians, and mislead patriots,
               The Vandals, Huns and Hannibals and seaport Cypriots,
               The Japanese, the Congolese, Americans and Scots)
               To vanquish bows and arrows, spears and catapulted shots
               Of those who hide in bamboo huts their families, pale, distraught,
               (Their withered wives with dried up *******, their swollen babes in cots)
               Who swoon, engulfed in poison darts and vats of acid hot,
               Consumed by magic mushroom clouds, atomic megawatts.

               “In churches of your deities, your Holy Huguenots,
               Your Imams, Rabbis, Voodoo Dolls and Mitered Lancelots
               Lit wicked kindled candled walls in temples (while we fought)
               (Used pins and needles, magic spells on makeshift mock whatnots)
               And mosques, cathedrals, synagogues have blessed each new onslaught
               With prayers for pipers, puppets, pawns, your rigid armed robots.

               “Upon your knees in golden naves, while peeking through the slots,
               You horded thirty silver pieces, downed a whiskey shot,
               Then crossed yourself and wrapped yourself in furs of ocelots,
               And danced on cleated cloven hoofs in purple polka-dots,
               Then drank His blood from chalice cups with pious afterthoughts.

               “You’ve treated men like mongrels chained, like little flies to swat,
               By doing what you wanted to, instead of what you aught;
               You’ve wiped your nose with dollar bills and paid your serfs with snot,
               But when you’ve paused to preen your pride, you’ve scrubbed a scarlet blot.

               “In ashes of our victories: the diamonds that you sought,
               The crock of gold, the Golden fleece of bogus Argonauts -
               In mirrors of your lifelessness, the evils you begot.
              
               “The haunted winds strew leaves of time across a shallow plot
               Where now, beneath the frozen stones blanched bodies bathe in rot,
               Disintegrate, return to dust to feed Forget-Me-Nots
               Amidst the bane and pits of pain where broken bones lie caught.

               “In fields above the catacombs and tombs of Camelot
               The black and withered tree of Death arises from the spot
               Where oft beneath a bleeding moon you hid your gold in pots
               Embedding doubts neath barren bogs where roots of wormwood squat.

               “While waiting at the river Styx, in twisted time untaught,
               From branches of the gallows tree, in recollections wrought,
               Your soul, a beggar’s blanket, hangs in crazy quilted knots,
               With dangling pearls and diamond studs mid dripping crimson clots
               And gaping wounds with bulging eyes like fouling apricots,
               For wrapped in chains around your throat, the Reaper’s grim garrote.”

Yes, that’s the fate of all your kind, disclosed by Wise Men taught.

But that was, oh, so long ago, by now you have forgot…
Sia Jane Mar 2015
Full Moon

Barefoot; each step sinking in mud
splashes of rain marry with
crimson drops in a puddle
of stormed waves
from an opened heaven

She kneels to the ground
simultaneously glancing
left, right, behind
cheeks blushed, her soul falling
as teardrops - her lowest ebb.

Ripping her cotton dress
she replaces blood soaked rags -
it’s been six days.

This war within herself
at only twelve years of age

Every nineteen days
her body a vessel; a period
of girlhood abruptly ends,
womanhood demurred.

Each & every month
persecuted;
Jesus nailed to a cross.

Amidst war-torn streets
fleeing torched homes
civil war displacing
orphaned sisters –
*****.
As militants continue to
prevail over children’s
innocence

Washing her sin away
red body fluids disperse
in mud, rain, water, soil -
her reflection lost
alongside any remaining dignity

On those same knees
Badriyyah pleads with God
to no longer bring forth
the fertility of conception
each cursed month.

Congolese civil wars
scraped away landscapes
Mother Nature
scraped away internal walls

& month after month
after month after month
this period endures
& a child of the night
stays hidden from sight.

© Sia Jane
The girls name “Bariyyah” in Arabic means ‘resembling the full moon.’
The word ‘*******’ has etymological routes relating to the ‘moon.’
So you have the completion of the synodic month relating to the motion of the moon each month.
"The Worst Period of Her Life" - Bring back dignity to these women. To donate £3 to ActionAid, text KIT to 70111. Having already fled war-torn conflict in Syria and the Congo, these girls and women suffer further humiliation every month as they cannot afford basic sanitary wear.
W Dec 2013
Almost like a mirror to
Look at you. A sort of Alice on the other side
Of the looking glass.
You are a reflection I never thought might exist.
But there are flaws spiderwebbing cracks into the glass,
The picture so minutely cracked here and
There that it might all just
Fall out of the frame.

Words, picked like highhanging fruit,
Stack and
Form the
Edges of your
Mind--
brilliant walls of Buckingham but also the boxes of fruit
(high hanging like the words) floating down congolese waters
and into the heart

--of Darkness? only kurtz knows
but does it matter? still Grand as ever--

They're words I see in myself on my side
And music from Mechanicsburg Anchorage Dar es Salaam
sings down the same Congo we share

But the only cracks I see are with me.
Your words and wit are the envoys,
Celebrated diplomats from the Heart that lies
downriver.
eyes flash and the Fruit is bountiful and
Hail the heart (wherever whatever it is down the River).

The words are strong as the man who sent them
(somewhere in the Heart)
Such strength to speak and shout
Respect commandeddemanded in the fruit

I often wonder if I have it.
And each time I know I don't
Another crack is born.

the tally man sends his beautiful fruit--
strong as everforever
To the world, smileonface and gleamineye--

and you're him
on the other side
at the Heart.
Ignatius Hosiana Sep 2015
I wish we met when her tarmac road was still mellow
Then when she still danced to the Congolese tune "Mbelo",
I wish we met when she could not stare in the eyes
Right when she was too shy to tell any lies,
I wish we met when she was still under her Mama's apron strings
So innocent, when she still trusted human beings,
I wish we met when she did church each and every Sunday
And had no thought of bearing a guilty conscience someday,
I wish we met when she saw the world for her best, not her worst
When the balloon of her ***** wasn't yet burst,
I wish we met when her future was still blinding bright
Wish I'd seen her in the dawns of her life, not the nights
When she knew no whiskeys or beers but only Fanta and Sprite
So that she wouldn't get herself in trouble and drunken fights,
I wish we met when she still had dry “unkisssed’’ lips
When she thought kisses were an unhealthy swap of saliva,
I wish we met when she hadn't developed attractive hips
When she wasn't a depressed Heart-wreck survivor,
I wish we met when she still believed in fantasy and fairy tales
And had a honest fascination for cowry shells,
I wish we met when she flamboyantly wore her natural African hair
When she still thought herself naturally beautiful and fair,
I wish we met when studies hadn't corrupted her mind and stolen all her hours
When she still smiled at the sight of frail petals of red rose flowers,
Wish we met when the movie title that described her ******* isn't “Olympus
Has Fallen”
But probably “Hard Boiled”, “Only the Strong” or “Swollen”,
I wish we met when she had faith in things like weddings, when her soul was
a spring of hope
When she hadn't lost respect for such societal norms preferring to elope,
I wish we met when she still respected danger
And risked not accepting courtesy from every rich stranger,
I wish we met when she believed true love existed in the world
Maybe then she'd believe my each and every word,
I wish we met when she still honestly needed a friend
I’m sure I’d be there to love and care for her till the end.
ConnectHook Feb 2017
♪♫♫♪♫

running fluid, flowing
like love, like life, like blood, like knowing
the living waters from the  throne of God –
it starts slow and it builds
equatorial storms, tropical sadness
as the guitars take you home
in reverberations of eternity
through endless repetitions of longing
through palm-branched alleys and red-dirt gullies
breeze caressing guavas and passion-fruit
past dictators’ mansions
past rusting shantytowns
over ditches running with sewage
into colors too intense to bear
colors to make you cry:
greens unseen in cold climates,
red earth, flowering jacarandas
women walking wrapped in rainbows
huge baskets on their heads
in the blare of traffic
in the madness of African cities
through the Congolese night that calls your name
and the smell of poor people’s food over cook fires
carried on the musical breeze
children smile and beggars crawl in the dust of the street
obscure wars are fought,  false peace proclaimed
while the bones are exhumed
as the Congo jazz rolls on, flows on
like silver sorrow dancing gold in the heart of darkness
past liter bottles of beer sweating cold
on the bar table by the flower’s starkness
lighting up the midday – when those horns come in
on the boat from Cuba, by way of Bruxelles and Paris
blaring triumphant and strong
like a shipment of diamonds and uranium
glittering in the drunken afternoon of a song with no end.
♪♫♫♪♫♪♫♫♪♫
Tabu Ley Rochereau, Pamelo Mounka, Mbilia Bel, Franco & TPOK Jazz

https://connecthook.wordpress.com/2013/06/27/congo-guitars/
I wrote you a folk song, sister.
Think I’ll call it “Caroline,”
after your mama’s mama
and the way she’d
slow smoke a brisket
for fifteen hours,
slapping away at the jaw harp
and kicking chickens.
Man, she had heart.

Nate and I still swing down by Early’s mill
on these summer days away from work,
and hack our way through the rushes
with that Congolese machete
Daddy gave me for my tenth birthday
(the fringes remain intact).
Nate ran into trouble,
and is back in town
for a while.

I’d say it’s about time
we rosin up the horsehair
and saw away at some old gospel staples,
the same way we did
at the fiddle contests
two lifetimes ago,
when the mountain tunes lingered
in the morning mist
far beyond breakfast.

Back when the AT through hikers
crashed at our place and brought stories of the Great Trail.

Back when my daddy wore bellbottomed jeans
and could scale a rock like some sort of deity.

Back when Nate smashed Grammie’s mason jar
of flour all over the road
and got a good whoopin’.

Back when we’d dam up the creek
and dream up images for the trees.

Back when your mama’s mama
prayed to Jesus on our behalf,
and the stars still came out most nights.
Her redwood rosary still dangles
on the mirror by my Hank Williams shrine.

Yes, I wrote you a tune from the heart, sister,
where the memory wells
flow with water from a living rock.

I hope you like it.
Sia Jane Oct 2014
Barefoot, each step sunken in mud
splashes of rain marry with
crimson drops in a puddle
of stormed waves
from an opened heaven

She kneels to the ground
simultaneously glancing
left, right, behind
cheeks blushed, her soul falling
as teardrops - her lowest ebb

Ripping her cotton dress
she replaces blood soaked rags
it’s been six days.

This war with herself
at only twelve years of age
every nineteen days
her body a vessel, confirmation
of demurred womanhood

Each month persecuted,
Jesus nailed to a cross
a period of girlhood abruptly ends.

Amidst war-torn streets
fleeing torched homes
civil war displacing
orphaned sisters - *****
militants prevail over innocence.

Washing her sin away
red body fluids disperse
in mud, rain, water, soil
her reflection lost
along the side of dignity

On those same knees
Chausiku pleaded with God
to no longer bring forth
the fertility of conception
each cursed month.

Congolese civil wars scraped away landscapes
Mother Nature scraped away internal walls
and month after month after month this period endures
and a child of the night stays hidden from sight.

© Sia Jane
**the girls name Chausiku is Swahili meaning "born of night"

"The worst period of her life"
Bring back dignity to these women
To donate £3 to ActionAid, you text KIT to 70111.
Having already fled war-torn conflict in Syria and the Congo, these girls and women suffer further humiliation every month as they cannot afford basic sanitary wear.
wordvango Mar 2016
take into account the entire picture
of the world, men being cruel and inhuman
on the large scale, wars, nuclear annihilation threatening,
genocide most recently in Syria,
in the history looking back
that is what I see, the gas chambers in Germany,
the Congolese under the rule of Leopold,
the Seminole, my peoples the Cherokee mostly dead,
mass murderers, such as
Stalin, Mao, Islam and Christianity,
campaigning slaughter, inhumanity to man,
like a wild animal, the beast is us. Then
let us look at us. We, in our actions, our wanting at all costs to win, our
genetic makeup our striving to survive,
all bred and taught into us just continues it all. And we ask why?
Look at Hello Poetry. For a year a war has been fought. And no one is winning.
But both sides are unable to say enough. To say you too are of my kind, human, And
here, we are supposed to be the best of our kinds, the empathetic feeling ones in this crazy ****** up place we call Earth. ******* it.
Poets fighting each other as reckless as one sided as ISIS against  Bashar al-Assad .  Or Kim Jong-un threatening the world.
I am beginning to like animals
more than people.
They love unconditionally or **** for food.
There is no mistaking, no middle, no rationalizing,
it just is nature. Man is different. He kills because of words and mistaken ideals, no animal does.
Poets , in my ideal, are to use their words for love and peace.
Not mirror the rest of this ****** up world!
Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya;aopicho@yahoo.com)

In the wee hour of the African night
When the light from the full moon
Shone brightly clear on each creature
Even the scorpions, making them visible
As Africa is more near to the moon
Than any other planet of the universe,
I was outside in the cold night shivering under the eaves
Anxiously leaning on the wall of a ruffian thatched hut
Music blowing cacophonously from inside the hut
From which the village disco dance was taking place
In the obvious ceremony in punctuation of elder’s burial,
Congolese music was blowing to apex of its might
As foot-falls of dancers sounded up to where I was
As the disco orchestra hailed the son of the chief
For artful holding of the female dance partner
in majestic tune with the romantic  song
Pangs of jealousy terribly burned my chest
I mused the warmth which the chief’s son was enjoying,
I began walking away towards my home; against all odds
As my home was in another village across the river,
Hyenas are all over the way, but I did not fear
My fear was the infamous Night-runner; Muyomo Omutabani,
He is famed to be a terrible wizard of the foul,
But I rationalized it away that; I’m a man and I will die once
I kept on walking and walking, nearing the river
At which the sound of croaking marshland land frogs got high and high
This informed me that the river terrain is save, no impending danger
I crossed safely on a log of wood lying across the river banks,
From no where, I saw a blurred stall of dry banana leaves at my side
Numerous black cats surrounded the stall, all moving in a cheeky style
The stall also yelled shallow chicken cluck,
The scene was scary and deadly impish to my nerves
It triggered my feared, sending me a half mad with emotions
I took off on my heels, in flight with an Olympic speed
Running towards home, not knowing whether to cry or not
But I resolved not cry, just to run as I kept mum
As my crying would only rattle snakes and hyenas from their sleep,
I gazed back the stall was running after me even in a more maneuver
It is when I realized that the running battle is between me and the wizard
Muyomo Omutabani the village wizard of the foul, some times with the crow,
Diverse chicken cackles strongly chirped from the running stall behind me
Not only to mention the hell like mewing sounds of very many cats,
I ran faster than I have ever did till I got home
The running stall never got up with me
I had to run faster to safe myself from the ever nearing stall
The rumor had it that the touch of Muyomo would make one sterile,
So I ran and ran to safe myself from the curse of ****** impotence,
But I was not lucky neither was I better
New version of fate was waiting for me in my own cottage,
Which I came face to face with in a stark countenance
After I had kicked open the metallic door of my cottage,
That I quickly had to shut for me to curtail my pursuers out,
I wanted to jump into my blanket for total safety
My blankets made of sisal fabrics,
But moonlight coming in on to my bed
Through a hole in the ruffian roof held me back
It was shinning on the ball of coils of something black and glittering,
It was the largest snake that I have ever seen in my experience
It was at on my bed; at the middle of the bed!
Waning sounds of the mewing cats were still faintly heard
From outside my cottage which I had shut myself in
I was divided mentally with no name to label my situation,
Please you name it.
Norbert Tasev Oct 2021
There are roaring nonsense in the dugout cavities of Congolese skulls; cultural barriers are also deliberately dismantled by the puffing tabloid media! In the luminous sense, slowed-down, otherworldly loads reverse all the way down to the playback of low-cost stages! As an unfaithful companion, everyone was sniffed by infected, phlegmatic indifference! It is becoming increasingly difficult to paddle from the prison darkness of a closed blockade to the liberation workshops of literature! Shows sparking about the monotonous, jerky goodness of the show, and thirty minutes is enough to say, "How are you feeling?" - to get around the issue!
 
Grinning silly, chirping idiot kittens are already entangled in the barely livable everyday life, and if a cultural bankruptcy guard shows up, they will kick back into the Stone Age without silence! This is how a consumer, multicultural mass society becomes a self-digesting rust graveyard that is always skillful, small-style pimps pocketing the infected benefits! "Who else would faithfully serve in ivory towers produces a forgotten, lasting idea to throw away, and everyone is dizzy by the disgust of their remaining chivalrous good manners!"
 
It is seldom possible to create the idea of pallorizing the etiquette of tangled behaviors in slums that are sloppier than eggshells, and those who have believed to the death that Man can remain this current money-loving extremist.
Patrick Kennon Sep 2017
Natural uncut light gray diamonds
Fancy gray diamonds
Fancy on the value is the bid range
Light, fancy, intense, vivid
Clear cut the soul bound forest, dark diamonds are cheap
Congolese slaughtered by the heap, life is cheap, wound channels deep
Machetes replace laws in Sierra Leone, eating the hearts of children martyrs
Love of life bottled in 101 Wild Turkey
It hurts to hurt, see? Question intensely, broken fence misery
Calories packed densely, hand pounded corn, hate and bitter scorn
Addicted to violence like internet ****, lay love and the dove is lone
Pigeon drop poetry on your shoulder, cloaca **** sober
Yeah, come on over, let's sip a brew, ride a train, act a fool
Mountains folded up like wool, horns, grab the bull
Close my eyes and act the fool, toil till I boil, sip water out of a skull
Cannibalistic Kabbalah, hash smoking chai wallah
We're all slumdogs here, drink water, **** clear
Whether far or near don't be a stranger my dear
Live life like a deer, let our robot guardians allow us to return to the garden
Lock away the pain, let it harden, more dangerous the the 1st MarDiv
Once it begins you can't stop it, this like keeps me honest
Maybe you don't only get one kid
Pick yourself from the mud pit
Hate it or love it
We must rise
Above
It
the passing of time
When I left my country I first went to Liverpool, met a woman and married.
I tried my handwriting but the woman thought it was stupid, so I stopped writing opened up a café that was ok for some time.
We were both working-class I had been a ****** and used my spare time reading
world literature and had time to see and think, she was not so lucky, she had been
an auxiliary nurse and had no interest in the movies or books.
With time I come to dislike the English way the pub and occasionally a trip
to Alton Towers (entertainment centre) too banal for my taste.
I sold the café took the plane to Portugal it was like coming home, of course
she hated it and it ended in divorce.
For the first time in my life, I could write what I wanted without receiving ironic
remarks. This is how I spend my time now that I’m old writing and reading give the pleasure I need little else matter I never liked throngs of people.
My new wife never interferes with my writing
Only says if I sit doing nothing around, go write something, of course with her being
Congolese She speaks Portuguese and French but not
Much English shall I call this a blessing?
Question put to a Congolese woman, bra size estimate: 40.
   Inquisitor: "Did you see Richard Nixon?"
   Woman: "Eh?"
   Inquisitor: "Are you eating a bug?"
   Woman: "Huh?"
Norbert Tasev Sep 2021
Passages sealed in my deaf ears drum! Tired-smiled, slit failures even bleed deep inside like Twilight, or an infected disease in the room s threatening! With an adult head, everyone is left orphaned! Cheat mouse path is rare if you can help! In the maze of blood vessels, the perceptible Universe slams in unison! Today, pop culture is scribbling pop culture history on lands faded with mud! Examples of idiocy to follow!
 
Witnesses and assassins are already silent on the murderers secretly distributed about the responsible crimes of the World! Bird divination shows otherwise when it can no longer be a free thought! They imagine domesticated beasts and little kings with their own court! And they utopian utopias about the way things work! The chirping voice of the disappointing Goddesses sounds clear in my Congolese heart, "How much are you earning?" - they ask already terribly and modestly and when my lips are strangled by unemployment: saying that in this present age free-minded people need nothing - chirping kittens are already worn off in an accelerated procedure!
 
The echo of lonely vibrations returns forever! Sunyin oson today the bribing gaze: drops of the Redeeming Light fall through his ***** cavity! Missing, fragrant minutes are rare if you can cling to someone who really misses Someone! All efforts have been aborted, as I once tried to help Man stay! My startled insides are still squeezed back by a vulnerable, eternal little kid out of a mother longing for it! My face enjoys superhuman sadness! My property mortality is also less and less a grace to me.
Norbert Tasev Apr 2020
Neither fatherly deserved praise nor the babbling of brownish deer lashes could get us. My friend! Only oily bounces of the overstretched rope nerves, and the prejudiced humiliations of the failed exams and colloquium exams: It was the sinners who could not learn enough! You have recovered in your bravery - I have remained hopeless! - We're still standing

in the uncertain grips of the future, and we cannot know whether our Tomorrow will be spiced with uncertainty of existence? What we can do: We mingled in the crossfire of questions between nodding and good pouting bulls, our persuasive word preached by forbidden taboos! In the imaging, lying tunnels of appearance and hypocrisy, we wrapped Ariadne's threads, and in the fate of our excessive brevity, we were often trapped within the walls of a maze wandering into heirs!

We could have neither our honor nor our credit, nor our courage as a pillar of bridges - for you know well: If we spoke True, Brave, Ingenious, we have cut off our further path! We’ve been kicked into a lot of ordeal, and the ivory legacy of knowledge has been guarded as a choir of guardian angels lurking secretly with scorching eyes!

"Now that we've somehow trampled on the upper brain palletization of mutual betrayal, the ancestor of the compromise flickered." - No secure livelihood, no family, no consolation, motherly kills; swaying in forgiveness: Now, marching among the Congolese mountains of silence, all I can do is observe what he has done with his mutual transgression, his betrayal, in order for Man to have a yew-flowered career.

— The End —