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Rainy nights thinking about Rwanda,
fog seeps out of the woods.
Like smoke, it crawls across the fields.
My head lights attempt to cut through it,
as it intensifies, inhibiting my drive,
but it’s nothing compared to Rwanda.

I arrive at the Mobil,
wait five minutes for the cashier to notice I’m here.
When she does, she hobbles over.
I attempt to buy a pack of backwoods,
my card gets declined,
but it’s nothing compared to Rwanda.

I get in my car,
and have a fit when I can’t find my keys,
but it’s nothing compared to Rwanda.

I begin to drive,
get cut off and curse fellow man,
but it’s nothing compared to Rwanda.

I ***** and I moan,
an entitled little ****,
but I’m alive,


which many can’t say after Rwanda.
Copyright Barry Pietrantonio

I wrote this after watching Hotel Rwanda one night. The title comes from the idea that a motel is a lesser version of a hotel, and my problems are much lesser than the people of Rwandas are, along with many others who experience such brutal violence. Let me know what you think, and if the title works. Thanks!
ISSAI MASHINGO Apr 2014
I remember the rains that day,
A shower of hate that won’t go away,
The day seven of the year ninety four,
When pain suddenly opened the door,
And nothing was ever going to be the same anymore,
With machetes and guns they marched,
Aiming for our limbs to detach,
Sworn they did that no INYENZI would escape their grasp,
They swore that all would experience their wrath,
Genocide it was called but the truth not told,
The rains struck hard smell of rotting flesh,
Cries from a distance heard but ignored,
No one would even dare talk or whisper,
**** the cockroaches was the message from the speaker,
It was the rainy season the beginning of a massacre,
Women and children are alienated from their land,
Refugees in camps away from their land,
The African holocaust had began in Rwanda,
It took a while for the world to ponder,
The ones who had the power to stop it kept quiet,
They gave neither reason nor excuse for their silence,
They waited until we all lost our patience,
It was the rains in Rwanda the day of mourning,
It was the season to prepare for farming,
But I can bet the world saw it coming,
But none gave a **** from the beginning,
And so began the killing,
Brothers and sisters turned enemy,
Neighbors turned into strangers,
**** ****** mutilation humiliation torture,
Tribal hatred fueled by the west,
When will Africa come to rest?
And understand that we are one race,
One love one place one earth,
Let’s have love and peace,
BY ISSAI
I WROTE THIS IN MEMORY OF ALL THOSE WHO LOST THEIR LIVES DURING THE GENOCIDE IN RWANDA 7TH APRIL 1994 REST IN PEACE. IT IS MY HOPE THAT WE CAN MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE BY LOVING EACH OTHER IN SPITE OF OUR TRIBE, RACE, OR COLOR LETS LOVE ONE ANOTHER!!!!!!!!!!
Todd Kelley May 2013
The people call though not in sight,
I see them yet they're no where near.
Rwanda how your children call me,
united, loving, oh so dear.

Bananas sweet and smiles sweeter,
sharing all of the little they had.
I call in my heart to the children of Rwanda,
with your memory I'll never be sad.

I could tell a hundred stories of love and friendship,
nineteen years and still in my heart.
Better the gorillas of Rwanda are given birth certificate
Within a brief while of their visiting the earth,
Their security is guaranteed by the state machinery
Basking in the full confidence of three meals a day,
Not wary of political repression based on suspicion,
They have a national day in their honour
Fully agitated for clean environment
By the political incumbentcy,
They are now the first class citizens
As the Rwandese citizens of human origin
Of varied political stand suffer under agony
In prisons and exiles, jails and hideouts
On the run for ever for fear of their lives.
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
Adrianna Perez Jul 2014
April 5th 1994- Kurt Cobain dies
April 6th 1994- The President of Rwanda Dies
April 7th 1994- Kurt Cobain's body is found
April 7th 1994- A genocide begins.
Neighbors take arms against neighbors
People he once shared a sandbox with now hold a machete to his neck
Heads roll- literally
Babies cry out to their mothers who lie there choking on their own blood
Girls who 2 days ago were playing house with their dolls, now take care of their whole family
Screams of pain from girls who's innocence is taken from the man who used
           to bounce them on his knee.
Gathered in the place where God is supposed to be
Hundreds are murdered ruthlessly.
Guns not pointed at their heads
But clubs that smash them in.
Achilles' heels slashed
These men drink and feast and sleep
Over the screams of their victims
Babies born 9 months after these men took something that was not theirs to
           take
A physical representation of all that is evil and hatred and pain
She tries to love them anyway
But she sees him in them
He has daddy's eye
She has her fathers nose
She sees them in the way he looks at her when he's hungry
As if she is just there to quench that thirst with her body.

The whole word is split in 2
Nobody is Rwandan anymore
You are Hutu or Tutsi
Short or tall
Human or vermin.
The dead among the living
Sometimes I can't tell which is which
Until I see it
That sparkle of hope in that one man's eye
Because the human spirit will never die.
The father of his best friend tortured and murdered his mother on their
           front lawn.
Orphaned and afraid,
He cannot stop
He cannot slow down
He cannot give up
Because ***** Kurt Cobain
he has to tell the story of what really happened that day
Rwanda April 7th 1994
This is a spoken word poem that I wrote about the Rwandan Genocide that began on.... you guessed it April 7th 1994. Because it's a SPOKEN WORD poem I will eventually make a video of me SPEAKING it and post the link right here--->>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKMoL-SXMDc
SassyJ Jan 2016
Human directives, veracities unverified  
Bellies belching with anger, murderers
Udders dripping hate, foundling banters
Hunters striking the hungered, unfortunate
Glare sight to seek the truth, hold me lets sink
Tear motions and debates of inequality

My Dafur, the realm of the fur, demise
All armed in Sudan, the arid, a battlefield
Emergency alarms sirens from 2003
The indefinite complications and hunger
A land of the displaced, starving nomads
Hear me out in these non-dissolving conflicts

Guantanamo bay detention a prison vicious
A base for “war in terrorism”, reciprocal laws
Inhumane human interrogations persists
A breach, a revolt, the hunger riots devolve
Force-feeding, torturous measures applied
All undressed, humiliated, genitalia exposed

A Rwanda slain in divide and rule
Civil clashes, mashes, all trashed
Swaying war rapes, tapes, the raves
Machetes slashing necks and hands
A lust of power, a genocide slaughter
The Tutsi slewed and unsewn from a patch

Autocratic regime boring divisions
Territorial ethnic cleansing, a holocaust
The oppression of Jews, Romanis, Poles
Homosexuals, the disabled and mentally ill
Indifference pooled in pits and camps
The institutional social indoctrination

The honor and killing to expose shame
The violation and dishonor of moral fabric
For what is “good”, “bad”, fixated moral values
Buried waists and head, awaiting stones to hit
Confessional secrets of only what lays within
A torment watching witnesses, all dangling

Marxists calls ships to stow ashore
Masses kidnapped, confused in deceit
Invalid contracts awaits signatures
The white immigrants to be enslaved
All aboard, now abroad to revolve labor
Wage packages taken to pay for freedom

Humans bought and sold to be owned
Slaves yorked and counted as assets
Bounded to serve plantations and homes
A human, non human, a chattel, a slave
A debt *******, offended and *****
Untamed and made to obey a master

A falling global strings unturned
Tunes strumming hate, war and pain
Human trafficking, violence, inequality
Child abuse, civil conflicts, capitalists
Commercialism, zero hour contracts
For if we have no rights, I have none
For if we have no peace I have none
We are in it together.........
So much inequality in the world before and now. Why can't we live in peace.
Stanza 1: Introduction to human autocracies
Stanza 2: Dafür (Sudan) ongoing civil war and people are dying of hunger.
Stanza 3:Guantanamo bay detention. The prisoners of "war in terrorism" are treated in an inhumane way. Who is the terrorist now?
Stanza 4: The Rwanda genocide where divide and rule led to civil war. Tutsi the fewer in numbers were killed by Hutu's.
Stanza 5: Honor killing where people are buried in pit and have stones thrown to them.
Stanza 6: Indentured servitude where white people/ caucasians were forced to sign contracts and then shipped as slaves to various locations worldwide. The wages earned were used to pay for their freedom.
Stanza 7: Slavery of black people. Sold and yorked as labour force.... owned as an asset.
Stanza 8: A failing global world where inequality is everywhere (disease, hunger, child abuse, human trafficking, violence, war.....) For if we have no peace I have none, If we have no rights I have none!!!
Max Neumann Dec 2019
Afghanistan needs hellopoetry
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Angola needs hellopoetry
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Congo, Republic is in need of hellopoetry  
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Why? Because people from all over the world have found something here: a place of belongingness.

Please note that I am just a poet on hellopoetry who loves this website sincerely. I am not affiliated or personally related to the founders of hellopoetry.

I rarely ask to get my poems reposted, but I would encourage everyone to spread the message, possibly even outside of hellopoetry, for new active users and possible contributors.

It would break a lot of hearts if hellopoetry wouldn't exist anymore.
Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya;aopicho@yahoo.com)

Here is a toast for valentine
Valentine in all seasons perennial
Where angst of money for love  
Cradled utopian capitalism,
It is once again in the city of Omurate
In the south most parts of Ethiopia
On the borders of Kenya and Ethiopia
Where actually the river Ormo enters Lake Turkana,
There lived a pair of lovers
With overt compassion for one another
The male lover was an origin of Nyangtom,
A cattle rustling Nilotic kingdom
While the female lover was a descendant of King Solomon
The Jewish children which King Solomon aborted
Because their mother was an Ethiopian African
They now form substantial part of the Ethiopian population
Their clan is known as Amharic, they speak subverted Yiddish,
These lovers were good to one another
Sharing secrets and all other stuffs that go with love.

Both the lovers were fatherless
They had lost their fathers through early death
They only had the mothers, who were again sickly
Their mothers coughed a whole night with whoops
And when in the wee of the night, when temperatures go low
The mothers breathe with wheezing sound
Like peasant music from African violin,
They didn’t eat with good appetite
They always left irritating chunks on the plates,
But they all puked mucus from their mouths
And of course with a very sickening regularity.

The menace of sick mothers intervened with love freedom
Among the inter-compassionate lovers
They did not have time for real active love
I will not mention recurrent missing of ceremonies
Fetes that are bound to go with valentine day
The lovers were bored to their teeth
They don’t knew when gods will come to unyoke them.

Especially the male lover, was most perturbed
His mother looked sorriest
With a scrofulous look on her old aged African face
She looked like a forlorn erstwhile cattle rustler
She ever whined in pain like a trapped hyena
Her son the male lover even began apologizing
To the female lover for such environmental upsets
Hence an African proverb that;
No love is possible with impaired judgment.

One day in the wee of the night
With no electricity nor any source of light
Darkness engulfing each and every aspect of the city
Confirming the hinterland of Africa
The female lover woke up from the sleep
And she never heard the usual wheezing breathes
That her mother often made in such hours,
Feat of suspicion gripped her
She jumped out of her bed to where her mother was
On feeling her, she found her dead, cold like a black member
She was already past the rigor mortis stage of death process
African chilliness had frozen her like a poikilothermic creature.

She wept but not in the uproarious groan
In that instinctive Jewish shrewdness
She did not announce nor inform her lover of her mother’s death
She only washed and groomed the cadaver of her mother
She made a headscarf around the head of dead mother
She even placed reading glasses on her face
On her mother’s dead torso she wrapped a dress
The most expensive of all bought from Egypt,
In the same wee of the night
She carried cadaver of her mother on her shoulders
The way a poor Nigerian farmer would carry a stem of banana
And walked slowly by slowly for a distance of a hundred kilometers
Down ***** into Kenya towards the city of Todanyang in Turkana County
Todanyang was a busy city, but silent and minus people in the night
The king of this city was called Lapur the son of Turkanai
And the law that Lapur passed in this city was archaic
It was; an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a Jew for a Jew
A pokot for a pokot, a samburu for a samburu
It was simply the law with nothing else
Other than clauses of measure for measure
And clauses of *** for tat instantaneously administered,
On reaching the market she placed her mother standing
Being supported on a sign post at the bus stage
In pose similar to that of an early morning traveler,
She sat a side like a prowling spider awaiting foolish fly
They way an African ***** exposes its red ****
And when the hen comes to peck
It traps and closes the head of the hen
Deeper into its ****,
At that bus stage there was a hotel
Owned by a Rwandese refugee
From the foolish clan of the Hutu
He had ran away from the genocide
In his country, he was also the perpetrator
And thus he was a runaway from the law *** hotelier
His name was Chapuchapu, meaning the quick one,
When Chapuchapu opened the hotel for the early customers
The female lover walked into the hotel
With innocence on her face like all the Jews
She placed an order for two mugs of coffee
And two pieces of bread
When Chapuchapu had placed food on the table
The female lover shrewdly instructed Chapuchapu
To go and hold the hand of the woman standing at the sign post
To bring her into the hotel for morning tea,
Chapuchapu in his unsuspecting charisma
With a mad drive to make money that morning
He dashed out as instructed with his foolish notion
That the customer is the queen, which is not
He grapped the standing cadaver with force
On pulling her to come along
The cadaver tumbled down like a marionette
Everything falling away; headscarf and glasses
Chapuchapu was overtaken by awe
The female lover was watching
Like the big brother in the Orwellian satire, 1984.
When the cadaver of her mother fell
She came out of the hotel
Screaming like a hundred vehicles
Of St John Ambulance
And two hundred Kenyan vehicles of fire brigade
And three hundred Kenyan cash transfer vehicles,
She was accusing Chapuchapu for being careless
Careless in his work that he had killed her mother,
Swam of armed humanity in Turkana loinclothes
Began pouring in like waters of Nile into Mediterranean
Female lover improved the scale of her screaming
Chapuchapu like a heavyweight idiot was dumbfounded
Armed people came in their infinite
Finally king Lapur arrived on his royal donkey
That his foot soldiers had only rustled
From Samburu land a fortnight ago,
The presence of the king quelled the hullabaloo
The king asked to find out what had happened
Amid sops the female lover narrated how
Chapuchapu the hotelier had killed her mother
Through his careless helter skelter behaviour
The king sighed and shouted the judgment
To the mad crowd; an eye for a……….!?
The crowd responded back to the King
In a feat of amok value;
For an eye you mighty Lapur son  ofTurkanai,
The stones, kicks, jabs began rainning
In volleys on an innocent Chapuchapu
Amid shouts that **** him, he came here to **** people
The way he killed a thousand fold in Rwanda.

The sopping female lover requested the king
That his people wait a bit before they continue
Then the king waved to the people to stop
Chapuchapu was on the ground writhing in pain
When the King asked the female lover what was the concern
She requested for pay from Chapuchapu not people to **** him
Chapuchapu accepted to pay whatever the price that will be put
Female lover asked for everything in hundreds;
Carmel, money, Birr, sheep, goats, donkeys, cows
Name them all they were in hundreds
Chapuchapu and his family were saying yes to every demand
And they rushed to bring whatever was said
The payments exhausted Chapuchapu back to square zero
The female lover carried everything away
The cadaver of her mother on her shoulder
She disappeared into the forest
and buried her mother there.

When she arrived home she found the male lover
He looked at her overnight change in fortune in stupefaction
He didn’t believe his eyes, it was a dream
Sweetheart, where have you gotten all these?
Questioned the male lover
Sweetie darling there is market for dead women
At Todanyang in the Turkana County of Kenya
I killed my sickly mother and carried her cadaver
As a trade ware to Todanyang
Whatever I have that you are looking at is the proceed,
Can my mother fetch the same? Asked the male lover
Of course yes, even more
Given the Africanness of your mother
African cadavers fetch more than the Jewish ones
At Todanyang market,
The male lover was now overtaken
By strong urge for quick riches
Was not seeing it getting evening
That day for him was as long as a whole century
He was anxious and restless more tired of a sickly mother
When evening fell he was already ready with the butcherer’s tools
He didn’t have nerves to wait till the wee of the night
As early as eleven in the evening he axed his mother’s head
Into two chunks of human skull spilling the brains in stark horror
Blood streaming like a rivulet all over the house
The male lover was nonchalant to all these
He was in the full feat of determination
To **** and sell his mother to  get the proceeds
With which he could foot the bills of valentine day.

He stuffed the headless blood soaked torso
Of his mothers cadaver in the sisal bag
He threw it to his bag
And began going to Todanyang
The market for human dead bodies
He went half running and half walking
With regular whistling of his favourite poem;
Ode to my Jewish lover
He reached Todanyang in the wee of the night
No human being was in sight
All people had gone as it was late in the night
He then slept in the open with dead body of his mother
Stuffed in the sisal bag beside him
Wandering night dogs regularly disturbed him
As they came to bite at smelling curdled blood
But he always scared them away.
As per the male lover he overslept till five in the morning
But when he woke up he unhesitatingly began to shout
Advertising his ware of trade in foolish version;
Am selling, the body of my mother, I have killed,
I killed her myself, it is still fresh, come and buy,
I will give you’re a bargain price,

When the morning came
People began crowding around him
As he kept on shouting his advertisement
Also Lapur the king came
He was surprised with the situation,
He asked the male lover to confirm
Whatever he was shouting
The male lover vehemently confirmed,
Then the law of an eye for an eye
Effortlessly took its course
Lapur  ordered his people, in a glorious royal decree
To stone the male lover to death
And bury him away without ceremony
Along with his mother in the sisal bag
In the wasted cemetery of villains
The same way Pablo Neruda
Had to bury his dead dog behind the house,

On hearing the tidings
About what had befallen her lover
The female lover had to send out a long giggle
Coming deep from her heart with maximum joy
She took over the estate of the male lover
Combined with hers,
All the animals and everything she took,
She made her son the manager
The son whom she immaculately conceived
Without any nuptial experience in the usual Jewish style
And their wealth multiplied to vastness
And hence toxic valentine gave birth to capitalism
Andrew Parker Jul 2018
Bones for Breakfast
July 2014

Bones are like peanut brittle.
Gnawed on til toothless,
by us old mangy mutts.
Tastes sweet tender as a drop 'o dew,
Feels soft in a bride's whisper, "I do."
But speaks crunchy crackles of Tic-Tac language,
instead of ******* out bad breath breathe shards in.

Although bones may break,
become buried under archaeologists' noses,
slip through crevices cracked and crumbled.
They were once anything but brittle,
covered only by skin yet to be bruised,
backs yet to be battered,
blood yet to be spilled,
faces yet to witness the history yet to be written.

I do not believe we are supposed to eat bones,
but we break them down into shreds of paper-back tidbits,
consumable by children during the snack time called 'history class.'
Our teachers are creating cannibals,
consuming culture on textbook platters,
but pay no mind while wearing bone bibs,
they leave out the thickest cuts of meat and just eat the ribs.

History is a living thing, dressed to deceive those who blindly believe.
I remember reading George Washington's claim to fame,
"I did not chop down that cherry tree."
But Mr. President, what about your enemies?
Because every revolution needs people to die for the revolutionaries.
Ain't that a sweet piece of cherry lie pie?

I learned Genghis Khan sure got it on with many women,
but didn't read about Alexander the Great's great ***,
much of it involving a same-gendered mate.
Wait, was that a mixture of patriarchy and hetero-normativity?
Words that weren't worth the pennies to print?
Who hired these fact checkers for the publishing industries?
I'll give you a hint,
Learn who has the most to gain from condemning intellectual content and corrupting it with a corrosive lack of social conscience.
As textbook reps tell professors, "Buy our books with cute new features."  But since when was that what made good teachers?
And so, these chapters get served to us on poo poo platters,
passed off to be refreshing as fresh mint pours in for corporations like Pearson Education.

I surveyed the lay of the land in Egypt,
purveying the literature of pharaohs.
Pyramids meant to portray a portrait of powerful people,
not a foolish riddle.
"Who built them," we ask.
But not of curiosity for whose backs broke building.
Its whose bones mummified beneath are made into mythological creatures along with Sphinx features.

I was taught the Holocaust was a unique horror story,
along with the catch phrase "never again."
Yet those 600 pages neglected to educate about the "re-education campaign" against the Cambodians.
Where was I to learn of the Rwanda civilization's tensions and exterminations?
Perhaps those pages were buried in the mass graves and dirt ditches, deserted and desecrated like the indigenous individuals we now call Native Americans.

Tell me more about art again.
It conveys a message about the historical humans experience,
but I think that message got lost sometime in the Renaissance Period.
When men had beards and wore colorful clothing,
but now that is either unprofessional or deemed gay as a bad thing.
When women were depicted full-bodied as that meant social status,
but now they are painted in photo shop with air brushes and slimmed slick.
We've created a glorious new empire of gastrointestinal bypass Groupons, and have either **** out or surgically removed all the bones we swallowed to get here... So, who's ready for lunch?
nyant Feb 2018
Algeria a rich land poor people,
Angola seems to have kings,
Benin is blessed with voodoo,
Botswana blood bulls diamonds,
Burkina Faso can't cope coups,
Burundi twelve years a slave,
Cape Verde has half a million,
Cameroon got cocoa,
Chad's lake is shrinking,
Comoros has under a million,
DRC is third largest,
Congo is it's neighbour with capitals facing,
Côte d'Ivoire has few elephants,
Djibouti's on the horn,
Egypt has mummy's,
Equatorial guinea struck oil in 95 but didn't loose change,
Eritrea has 5000 running annually,
Ethiopia's great rift is pretty ******,
Gabon is subject to black gold,
Gambia got a peace of it after 65,
Great Ghana oasis of peace,
Guinea is diverse,
Bissau too,
Kenyans have beautiful smiles,
Lesotho is SA's baby,
Liberia oldest republic,
Libya needs liberty,
Madagascar where are the penguins!
Malawi has warm hearts,
Mali is 8th,
Mauritania is 11th,
Mauritius marvel,
Morocco fine leather,
Mozambique keeps the dugongs,
Namibia Windhoek ah,
Niger after a river,
Nigeria makes zuma rock,
Rwanda listen,
Sao tome and principe 2nd smallest,
Senegoals,
She sells Seychelles,
Sierra Leone free?
Somalia loose,
S. Africa reign,
South Sudan independent?
Sudan - black,
Swaziland more than solo men,
Tanzania trade,
Togo up down,
Two knees yeah,
Uganda teacher come simeon,
Zambia's peace?
Zimbabwe got rid of Mugabe.

Always thought zed was co.za but we're actually co.zm,
so what's zim?

One way we'll loose change is when the overseers begin to acknowledge the under looked.

-nyanta
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.
Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret,Kenya;aopicho@yahoo.com)
This essay is based on the observation research that had been carried out  by a social research firm in  Eldoret, Kenya, in the preceding six moths, which has been concluded on 30th January 2014.I the writer of this essay was among the lead team that carried out this study.We unobtrusively observed two thousand University graduates from east African states of Kenya,Uganda,Tanzania,Rwanda,Ethiopia,Sudan,and Burundi plus a few form some parts of Congo .Our target population of two thousand graduates was used under the guiding assumptions that it would help the study to arrive at water tight social conclusions.Our problem of focus was that ;why are male graduates in east Africa not marrying fellow graduates but instead go for marital partners who have substantially lower education qualification and even academic achievement.
The conditions of serendipity was also encountered and taken care of , when we also deviated from the natural social settings and charted with our digital social media friends who were approximately two thousand as well.They were digital social friends from Facebook and twitter digital social platforms. We  posted a thread in question form that ; if you were marrying today , would you marry a girl you graduated with the same year? Eighty percent of the responses to this thread was no , only twenty percent was yes.
The actual situations in an empirical experience is that male graduates prefer marrying ladies who stopped schooling in high school,and male high school or diploma college graduates prefer marrying ladies who don’t have clear high school education.And male primary school leavers prefer marrying ladies with inferior social positions like those who come from poorer families or from different tribal communities that are geographically, economically or culturally disadvantaged.
And in case where a male graduate dares to marry a fellow graduate , the dominantly observed social behaviour in this juncture is that ; the boy will go for the girl in a different school or faculty that is perceived to be inferior within the university academic climate.Like a student of medicine or law will go for a girl doing education or any University course perceived to be inferior.But the observation  produces insignificant cases of where a medicine student daring to marry a fellow medicine student.The minor cases of where a medicine student dares to marry a fellow medic will only take place in a social fabric that the male student at fifth year level will go for a girl in first year.Still there is a social tilt.
When we asked for reasons in a non-obtrusive manner from our unsuspecting respondents.We got both positive reasons and negative reasons.The positive reasons our respondents gave are that in most cases girls who don’t make it to the university happen to be more beautiful or their physique is more sexually appealling than those ladies who make it to the university.when we projected this type of reasoning , we also found that ladies who are in schools like education,journalism or any other school perceived  inferior in the cultures of the University are again more beautiful and more socially enticing than the girls doing University courses like law ,medicine or engineering.One of the respondents made a socially outlying remark by saying that girls at the polytechnic or certificate colleges are usually light in the skin,**** in character and blessed with big or pronounced bossoms than ladies at the university.
When we asked the negative reasons , our respondents argued that  ladies from the university are not controllable,neither are they prepared to be controlled come even the marriage. Further argument for these behaviour by male  graduates is that the University ladies are sexually exhausted,As they usually stay with a man in the hostel or in the cube during the four or the five years of their live at the University. Some even live with different men interchangeably, after which they divorce those many on the graduation day.Another response is that University ladies have a proclivity towards social hangout behaviours like smoking ,pinching or revving in the wine spree and loving the pocket but not the owner of the pocket.
This social phenomenon have imperative concerns that there is high level of genetic mismatch through marriages in east Africa or any other part of the world which east Africa can be socially generalizable to in such particular socialization.Graduate ladies are often forced to marry as second wives , or marry non graduate husbands or stay as a single mother but playing a mistress somewhere, a social behviour described as mpango wa kando or chips funga in the the east African Kiswahili parlance. Such social encounters have a long term consequences of fettering the genetic potential of the family in terms of  academics.When we conform to a warning by an eminent American psychologist that ; ninety percent of academic brilliance is contained in the genes but not influenced by environment we then obviously concur with the findings of this study that if a graduate marries a graduate there is a guarantee for academic performance among the offspring , but where a graduate marries  a non graduate ,  academic performance among the offspring is either mediocrous or probabilistic.The findings of this study also fall in technical tune and intellectual tandem with the observations of Lee Kuan Yeow in his book; From the third world to the first world in which he pointed out that; failure by the male graduates from  Universities in Singapore to marry the fellow female graduates was an impeachment to development as the ultimate consequence of these social behaviours is unnecessary inhibition of good genetics at a macroeconomic level.
The conclusive position of this study is that University leaderships in Africa, with a particular focus on east Africa, must inspire new University culture that has a turnaround effect on this behavioural status quo.The reality is that male graduates behave like this out of a dominance syndrome not out of anything technically worthwhile.Kindly , let our graduates change their marriage behaviour so that we can substantially protect our genetic advantages.

References;
Lee Kuan Yeow; From Third World to the First World
Alexander K  Opicho, is a social researcher at Sanctuary Research agencies in Eldoret, Kenya.He is also a lecturer  for Research Methods in Governance.
T-to see
R-Rwanda
A-Africa from afar can
V-veer you away from the troubles they faced.
E-even
L-love can not save any of us now.
Hope you loved it I wrote it for school.
Ellis Reyes Apr 2013
These words are a sock, soft and warm from the dryer
butterknife
palpable
lullabye
maroon

These words are bits of glass, attacking my ears:
Yaw
Ketch
Blurt
Epizeuxis
Jactation and
Mauve

These words are brass-knuckled fists to the face
Mogadishu
Rwanda
Desert One
My Lai
And
Nine One One

These words are a sneaky cat, slithering here and there
Mystery
Secretive
Lurking
Sly
Shadowy

These words are unknown to everyone but me. Private words for private thoughts.
Uiyak
Jackassdom
Nothingofanyvalue
rusty shacks Feb 2014
We as the United States generate hate
by overstepping our bounds
moving our military into other nations
The real root cause to drill oil in the ground
Cause we need oil to move
our economy - so we ignore
other countries rights to autonomy
Because we're America bringing freedom
to the world - yes please understand
We'll help out Libya and Iraq but
not Rwanda or Sudan - its the American plan -
We bring freedom if you've got something for us
So please adore us, give us
your natural resources - then we'll
destroy your country and be its only
recourse - we use force to get
what we need even if it means
making more die and bleed -
so cut the real TV feed and let
the American media propaganda proceed
Ryan Bowdish Jan 2013
Melting madness and shimmering isles
The bubble-gum boils in drug pedophiles
Let's teach the East to love Western style
We come in with strap-on's and pillage with smiles
The rest of the world watches their watches
People keep saying we're at hour eleven
We're changing the design on our gold lockets
From a heart to a blackjack, Seven Seven Seven!

The college boys assure you that they know the lyrics
And the meanings behind them for they've been enlightened
They swarm out like locusts and pretentiously parrot
Verbatim the textbooks they read when they're frightened
That they'll die with nothing to show for their efforts
They want everyone else in the world to remember
That they did exist on some scale of importance
Even though we're just spun yarn of grass, dirt and oceans

Intelligence streams the consciousness seeds and conscientious objectors it seems
So pardon me for the fallacy of pardoning tyrannical dictator queens
It seems these days to be discovered you need to cheat on your spouse or your lover
You'd think that with all the war crimes we've seen we would have hung at least one or the other
We've got two parties, so pick one or scram! (Look at them squirm as fast as they can!)
They're starting to think for themselves again! Quick, strangle the market and feed this man
Acid and bath salts and give him some tear gas and send him on in to disarm the smear traps
And **** everyone so we'll jump to conclusion with no where to turn, the final solution!

I'm drunk again and we're falling in, the shoreline is riddled with explosions
We don't speak of the war, we have no comment, we're almost out of original content
We're frantically searching for a brand new contest to prove that our nation is still the best
Whether you're China, Russia, Israel, Pakistan, the U.K., or India, the U.S. or Japan
Let's take all the gangbanging **** out of Oakland and drop them in to the Atlantic Ocean
Or better yet, set them loose in Uganda, let's see how long they last in Rwanda.
I'm done with religion and socialized medicine, this aristocracy of pull and deception
So for once in our lifetimes, let's seek a vision, because God knows people can't make ******* decisions.
the first half: http://hellopoetry.com/poem/the-world-raps-1/

When I put these together they should hit about a 5 min 30 second full hip hop song.
JOJO C PINCA Dec 2017
sinusunog na mga bahay,
sinasamsam ang mga ari-arian,
sinasaktan pati ang mga bata,
ginagahasa ang mga babae,
at pinapatay ang mga lalake.
ganito araw-araw ang kanilang sinasapit,
hindi sa kamay ng mga tulisan o rebelde,
hindi sila ang salarin sa pang-aapi,
kundi ang estado at militar ang pasimuno.
sila ang pasistang halimaw na naninibasib,
pagkat gusto nilang maubos ang mga Rohingya.
hindi daw sila taga Burma,
latak daw sila ng mga Arabong dayo,
kaya kailangan na sila'y malipol.
walang magawa si Aung San Suu Kyi,
pati s'ya hawak sa leeg ng militar.
walang ginagawa ang Amerika at UN,
palibhasa wala silang mapapala sa mahirap na bansa.
isa na naman ba itong Rwanda,
o katulad sa Gaza?
walang gustong tumulong sa kanilang walang pakinabang.
maramot ang saklolo sa mga madaling maloko,
hindi kinakalinga ng langit ang mga tunay na api at kapos palad,
sapagkat ang mata ng kasaysayan ay nakatuon lagi sa Europa
at sa mga bansang masagana.
Aidar Omar May 2022
Africa is beautiful and beautiful is usual in Africa
Continental wonderland of love this is Africa

What's in Africa? What's there to see?
I asked myself on the New Year's eve
I thought that I was good in geography
But I didn't know Lagos or Nairobi

I might be ignorant, I have to admit
About Africa I knew just a little bit
The great Sahara - sands of mystery!
The Nile river - so much history!

Africa is magical and magical is usual in Africa
Continental wonderland of joy this is Africa

Namibia, Nigeria, Niger, Angola, Algeria
Burundi, Benin and Libya, Lesotho and Liberia
Burkina-Faso, Botswana, Guinea-Bissau, Ghana
Djibouti, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Uganda, Rwanda, Gambia

I saw a film on Serengeti Park
A one of a kind, a must-see landmark
I watched a documentary on pyramids of Giza
They're much much older than Mona Lisa

I heard that oldest coffee plants
Take their roots in Ethiopia's land
And that samba, rumba, funk and jazz
Take their beats from African drums

Africa is beautiful and beautiful is usual in Africa
Continental wonderland of love this is Africa

Cameroon and Congo, Malawi, Mali, Morocco
Côte d'Ivoire and Kenya, Mauritius, Mauritania
Tunisia, Tanzania, Eswatini, Eritrea
Sudan, Senegal, Somalia, Sierra Leone, South Sudan

You can travel around cities of Africa
Like Cape Town, Cairo or Casablanca
If you're in love or plan to be
Go to Zanzibar, feel that ocean breeze!

Climb up mount Kilimanjaro
Watch the zebras cross the Masai Mara
If you're adventurous, you're a dreamer
Take a wild trip down Zambezi river

Africa is magical and magical is usual in Africa
Continental wonderland of joy this is Africa

Comoros, Chad, Cabo Verde, Democratic Republic of Congo
Ethiopia, Egypt, Guinea, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and Togo
Madagascar, Mozambique, Central African Republic
Sao Tome and Principe, South Africa and Seychelles

Africa is beautiful and beautiful is usual in Africa
Continental wonderland, I'm on my way to Africa!
kylie Apr 2013
to: her
from: me

i may not like you but i love him,
so i'm writing this to you to ask
that you be patient with him
and kind to him
and never take him for granted.

you don't love him like i do
and i know this because
you don't know how he likes
his coffee (black), or what his
favorite movie is (hotel rwanda) or
why he's afraid of airplanes (his
sister died on 9/11)

please do not get frustrated with
the fact that he can't take a compliment or
that he might forget your birthday or
that he will put his family before you
in a heartbeat.

please do not think that because
he doesn't ask where you are or
seem interested in going out or
spend every moment with you,
that he doesn't care about you.
he is an introverted mind with
a breathtaking soul and you will
be surprised by how quickly
he will make you forget the name
of any other boy that you have
ever been with.

the last thing that i think you
should know is that he has a
very fragile heart and you
cannot fix it no matter how hard
you try. so do not try to rid him
of his repressed memories and
reoccurring nightmares. promise
him you'll never leave

and do not break

the promise

like i did
011
there is so much about life he does not understand powers influences insights secrets repetitions patterns relationships mysteries so many things to learn remember so many things to forget every morning he wakes with hope faith no matter how challenging threatening or bleak the odds he feels confident in the possibilities optimistic in his abilities desires believing in his quest for love success happiness yet every night alone in his empty room he comes undone again

Dad’s dying generates beginning of Odysseus’s awakening from his long deep stupor Dad was so heavy-handed intimidating his reign of terror is done next several years blow by like chilling numb wind off lake michigan dreams seem more real than existence Odysseus continues painting writing bartending drives Farina to beach daily it takes a while for him to realize he is freed of shackles Dad’s tyranny and it is all right to answer to himself alone in june 1994 news reports genocide of 800,000 people murdered in rwanda in july Odysseus feels trapped in identity he can no longer endure after struggling for years to achieve stature as accomplished painter he realizes he is nobody perhaps simply troubled artsy son of well-to-do Chicago socialites Jenny and late Max Schwartzpilgrim his discontent goes beyond family he feels shame disappointment with himself desperately needs to make changes to his life knows he cannot do it in chicago weary of all the sins damage he has made suffered in that city he wants to find somewhere less corrupt stressful more down-to-earth knows all to well how to get in trouble wants to find someplace where there is no trouble somewhere quiet dull preferably beautiful Odysseus liquates ashes to ashes clears altar of every dust flake sells paintings art supplies books music cassettes clothes vintage collection other possessions at sidewalk sale makes out with nearly $6000 whatever he does not sell he gives or throws away he is used to giving or throwing himself away he is 44 Mom protests but her disapproval packs no punch without Dad he says his goodbyes to family friends packs up toyota and with Farina steers away from chicago he leaves behind many destructive friends acquaintances people who will never dig their way out of wrecks they are buried in leaves behind history of minor misdeeds abuses disappointments scenes happenings he feels shame regret about he leaves behind practice of familiar patterns certainties faces names who recognize his talent problematic self never again will he benefit from questionable reputation nor will phone ring many times daily and never again will there always be someone to meet up with or gathering to go to he leaves behind support system of loving family friends fans whom he will miss greatly he lets go the character he was to become someone different hopefully better they drive on aimless odyssey without thinking searching with no place in mind listens for scenery to call to him inwardly the journey is the meaning he drives up streets down alleys through 4 corner towns bypassing most cities whenever he sights a lake he pulls over treats Farina to a swim sometimes swimming together they sleep in tent or stay at inexpensive motels that allow dogs while driving he often feels overwhelmed by diverse raw beauty of American landscapes lush forests spectacular mountain ranges sweeping valleys winding 2 lane highways along coastlines he points out sights to Farina but ultimately he wishes for another pair of human eyes beside him
Michael R Burch Mar 2020
Holocaust Poem: "On The Slaughter"
by Chaim Nachman Bialik
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Merciful heavens, have pity on me!
If there is a God approachable by men
as yet I have not found him—
Pray for me!

For my heart is dead,
prayers languish upon my tongue;
my right hand has lost its strength
and my hope has wilted, undone.

How long? Oh, when will this nightmare end?
How long? Hangman, traitor,
here’s my neck—
rise up now, rise and slaughter!

Behead me like a dog—your arm controls the axe
and the whole world is a scaffold to me
although we—the chosen few—
were once recipients of the Pacts.

Executioner, my blood’s a paltry prize—
strike my skull and the blood of innocents will rain
drenching your pristine uniform again and again,
staining your raiment forever.

If there is Justice—quick, let her appear!
But after I’ve been blotted out, should she reveal her face,
let her false scales be overturned forever
and the heavens reek with the stench of her disgrace.

You too arrogant men, with your brutal injustice,
suckled on blood, unweaned of violence:
cursed be the warrior who cries "Vengeance!" on a maiden;
such cruelty was never contemplated, even by Satan.

Let innocents’ blood drench the abyss!
Let innocents’ blood seep down into the congealing darkness,
eat it away and undermine
earth's rotting foundations.

Al Hashechita ("On the Slaughter") was written by Chaim Nachman Bialik in response to the ****** Kishniev pogrom of 1903, which was instigated by agents of the Czar who wanted to divert social unrest and political anger from the Czar to the Jewish minority. The Hebrew word schechita (also transliterated shechita, shechitah, shekhitah, shehita) denotes the ritual kosher slaughtering of animals for food. The juxtapositioning of kosher slaughter with the slaughter of Jews makes the poem all the more powerful and ghastly. Such anti-Semitic incidents prompted a massive wave of Eastern European emigration that brought millions of Jews to the West. Unfortunately, there have been many similar slaughters in human history and the poem remains chillingly relevant to the more recent ones in Israel/Palestine, Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo. Keywords/Tags: Holocaust, poem, Bialik, translation, slaughter, massacre, God, prayer, executioner, hangman, blood, innocents, justice, false, scales, injustice
The fearful python had swallow
Our fearless inner fellow,
See and hear the waves
Marching in their endless ranks,
Smashing blood against the
Rocks at the Burundi cliff,
Will the fog of despair and wail  
Hung over Rwanda for long?

Hmm, the emotion of this moment
Has swallowed our African thought,
Oh no, this curious season
Has caused us to reason,
Will our rain be pain?
Will our pain be gain?
May be, when the rain fell on the
Leopard skin, it washed off its spots,

Behold, the endless umbilical cord
Of Africa has every reason to bleed,
For the bitter sword had
No respect for our mother’s womb,
Will our sorrow be fate?
Will our fate be hollow?
May be, when the frog in front fell,
The others behind did not take caution.


© PRINCE NANA ANIN-AGYEI
Email: nanaspeaks@gmail.com
ilkka sipilä Dec 2012
I can see them
Dancing in their fancy clothes
On the amputated arms and legs
That built their country

An unimaginable pain
Impossible to understand
By someone like me

The rich and prosperous
The westerners and the UN
With the help of media
Publish propaganda which we –  
Arrogant and naïve –
Believe
And think our government is honest
Purely because it’s stable
And most won’t even be able
To locate Sierra Leone
Or Rwanda
In the index of an atlas

And this stupidity of
The age of unnecessity
And overflow of emotionless objects
Slowly kills me

And one finger after another
I feel those masters of the third world
Hack and saw them off
But they’ll never get my spirit
And my heart
And these words will resound:
Down with lies and hatred
Down with money and policy
Down with exploitation and death
Now feel my love reach out to you
Joe Butler Nov 2010
Is it?
Is it really too much
To ask
That we have a world of peace

A world without violence
No guns
No bombs
No soulless military machine
Grinding ever on
Leaving only desolation in its wake

A world without war
A world not driven by the cruel whims
And made desires
Of politicians and generals and tyrants

A world where people can simply coexist
Where love and understanding
Can flower
A place where children can be safe
And grow up without fear

No more genocide
No more tragedies like Darfur, Rwanda or Palestine
No more refugee camps
No more walls

When will people wake up
And realize our shared humanity
Binds us in ways more numerous and profound
Than ever our differences could be

When will enough be enough
When will we rise in a mass satyagraha
For peace
To end war for all time
We can do it
We must do it

Is it really too much to ask?
Mateuš Conrad Dec 2019
.the better part of a Friday night

grim.. times... what better way to pass a drinking session than to translate some Horace... i see no other worthy time-consuming scoop of any events to follow, this:

humano capiti cervicem pictor equinam iungere si velit et varitas
inducere plumas undique conlatis membris, ut turpiter atrum
desinat in piscem mulier formosa superne,
spectatum admissi risum teneatis, amici?
credite, Pisones, isti tabulae fore librum persimilem,
cuius, velut aegri somnia, vanae fingentur species,
ut nec pes nec caput uni reddatur formae.
scimus, et hanc veniam
petimusque damusque vicissim;
sed non ut placidis coeant inmitia, non ut serpentes
avibus geminentur, tigribus agni.

some first reading... sounds like chasing a chimera...

with a human head on a horses' neck: should a painter
tie the two together on a whim, and other limbs
collected from everywhere: puff up duck feathers into
a pillow or a bed cover - from "nothing"... hey presto!
that a beautiful woman from the torso up with a
fish's black tail below to boot...
on exhibition: would you, friends,
not burst burst out with laughter? believe: Paisans!
similar to this image will be the book:
in which as in an ill man's dream, in delirium,
the head and the feet belong to different
forms
i use this law and i recommend others to use it too,
but not to equate gentleness with a wildness:
with a bird a serpent, a lamb with a tiger...

angels and mermaids... what is no less or... no more:
improbable? perhaps neither...
but in the guise of monotheism... everything is still
somehow sensible...
where there was: half and half...
what angel of monotheism is a half and half
when contending for existence among unicorns...
mermaids or centaurs?
a chimera and a cyclops... **** with a minotaur...
but... such events of monotheistic grandeour are...
supposedly the better respected...
for all the respect i gave unto Knausgård -
because it comes from monotheism:
an angel is to be seen as more than a mermaid...
perhaps... if the angel is of my form...
has the wings... but for its mouth?
a pecker mask... a 50:50 share ratio of...
what a racial "mongrel" would otherwise burden his
shadows with...
a pecker mask akin to those masks
worn at the Venice carnival:
doctor doctor black plague masks...
with a muffed-up speech... as if shouting into
cotton puffed up...
esp. cotton candy...

and this is a sort of friday where i'd much prefer
translating latin... god... where did all these modern
prepositions and conjunctions from from:
into the fore?! there's only one song of worthy summary...
the specials - ghost town.

- Autorank Total 10 ( higher is reduced to 10 ), professional similarity 10 (of 10), concrete vs abstract 2 (of 2), noun/verb/etc order -0.7 (of 1) -

poetry and order... yes...
yes... very much akin to rhymes...
and very formal language...
but this is hardly a "micro-aggression",
on my part...

it's funny that i never paid any attention to this detail...

hoc erat in votis

i was never into brian jonestown massacre, more of a dandy warhols' fan, but then brian jonestown released the album aufheben and pawns of the palette started picking up not only seminal citric acids and kashmir's spices, but sharp grooves of some distant geography, which of course, all in all: to my liking.

there's nothing like listening to the opening
track of the aufheben album (panic
in babylon, instrumental) and reciting a
bit of horace; should i be accused of sounding
pompous, here's horace himself

    hoc erat in votis: modus agri non ita magnus,
    hortus ubi et tecto vicinus iugis aquae fons
    et paulum silvae super his foret. auctius atque
    di melius fecere. bene est. nil amplius oro,
    maia nate, nisi ut propria haec mihi munera faxis.

    it was the aim of my wishes: a snippet of arable land,
    a garden, in the vicinity of my house a source of
    fresh water and a grove upon a ***** of a hilly eminence.
    the gods beyond their intentions bestowed upon me
    the loot of my thus lived fate. i have enough!
    i do not implore for more either in this heart of mine
    or among incense or blood of sacrificed bulls at the altar
    where worship is prescribed unto them, but only give me,
    son of May, the chance to use these bestowals.

(translated from polish, and, as would be expected of me,
involved in translation, adding something of my own,
as you can see, the latin prepositions and conjunctions
are reflective of the number apparent in the english language,
but it's hardly a concern with other words,
awaiting a unanimous - not necessarily an N between
two vowels, or because of H, as is exampled by
a great alphabetical distancing of the vowels,
or simply because of the latin tongue-twisters of
the grapheme æ and œ - awaiting a unanimous
decision of the compound words stalled by the hyphen
form, e.g. light-bulb / lightbulb (underlined as a spelling
mistake) by the oxford dictionary committee...
but let's not get as crazy as german spelling
glue... it would make james joyce pale even by finnegans
wake standards of the 100 letter word... i know... english
is a language spelled like shotgun shrapnel, and german is spelled
like a wedding cake or scottish fudge, thick and bulging;
what was i going to say? i took a step into the heraclitean
river and the river took me elsewhere, the ice cubes
in my whiskey citric barley are melting, and i dream
of venice being the modern atlantis along with the maldives).

elsewhere in a grammar lesson:

people think the pinnacle of poetry is coupling
adjectives with nouns, but of course,
given adjective & verb coupling is commonplace:
and when they say poetic v. practical,
they then say the hidden practicality of poetry
via, e.g. 'nicely said;' but of course!
we need a sombre musicality of the tongue
with so much dead machinery around us!
the elders complain about headphone "zombies,"
marching like urban myth lemmings on zebras
toward death... but have you actually listened
to those mechanical sounds on concrete?
horrid! when was the last time you heard an owl's
call in the dead of night in a forest? me!
about a year ago: three by my count.

- Autorank Total 9.9, professional similarity 10 (of 10), concrete vs abstract 2 (of 2), noun/verb/etc order -0.1 (of 1), cliches -2 (of -3) -

the Cyber Pavlov Experiment

and my favorite "poem" in this ranking system,
which, i guess is an a.i. calculator...
i'm most interested in the professional similarity,
i can understand the concrete vs abstract ranking...
but the noun/verb/etc order?
in poetry? again... this is not a "micro-aggression"...

so, i'm on this page, and i meet my ****** pusher,
sure as hell he's pushing ******,
although it's digital, the site / street corner?
allpoetry.com i get to publish 2 poems,
but can't publish more, i have to comment,
and comment positively,
'allo comrade Stalin! then comment on
2 poems, and get this message:
Congratulations, you've achieved level 2,
and are now an "emerald cat"!
To reach the next level you need:
7 x comments, 1 x enter a contest, 1 x favorites,
1 x edit an item. • What are levels?
i am not playing candy-crush saga!
i'm not! i'm not even kidding you,
what is this ****?!
we've been ****** by paedophiles
anonymous?!
                      please get me off
this ****** grid of the Cyber Pavlov Experiment...
likes and comments and saliva and cookies...
    or premeditated minority reports -
  akin to Orwell's thought crime gestapo -
    god it sounds **** when said: g'eh'sh'tap'oh.
                    or how to use the internet
akin to deciphering and censoring established
media outlets...
                              obviously social media
can't replicate socialism, it's a media outlet,
                  but it can for sure ******* with
all the little capitalistic mind games that lead
to nothing but the Pavlov experiment -
            and that was with dogs...
try that with a ******* Gorilla and i'll watch you
cradle prosthetic limbs while
he rips your original limbs off like he's playing
                a harp:
            then you can rhyme: twinkle twinkle little thumb,
    how i wished you were attached to my hand to my arm
to my torso...
                        that's the same story
we had recently concerning a Mr. Kumbuka...
  who escaped enclosure, and proved the a.d.h.d.
        complex correlation with exposure to
sugar... ****** drank 5 litres of concentrated blackcurrant
squash replying: i'm mad at the keepers for keeping
me on a diet! i do king kong and you do the frenzied
blonde maiden.
              it's still a concern for me that they herded the poets
into an area worthy of zoological inspection,
                meaning that they base their worth on
    deplorable points system: like they're immigrants
waiting for visas to Canada -
                          comment, like, blag and blabber your
way into that new country, known to all of us present
              as Si S / Silicon State... by my count that's
the 51st, or the secular version of the Vatican.

- Autorank Total 2.3, professional similarity 1 (of 10), concrete vs abstract 2 (of 2), noun/verb/etc order -0.7 (of 1) -

but now... i'll just post the most "pop" poem from
here-on-in there... for that hard-on autorank...

clues as precursor:
- Strong words: army, audience, beef, box, brick, canvas, cubes, eating, fan, fares, football, lines, match, minced, outside, people, poem, poets, river, scrabble, scroll, short, slab, song, steak, striking, stripes, tartar, tomatoes, wave, writing  
-Weak words: albeit, always, answer, any, bad, be, become, bothered, circa, coherency, could, critic, deliberate, effect, eh, elsewhere, enough, escape, event, form, gather, get, had, happen, hardly, impact, intent, international, invent, long, merely, mind, modest, national, never, nice, nothing, perhaps, personally, presume, question, rarely, reason, recluse, repeating, repetition, somehow, sometimes, started, subconscious, subsequently, succumb, tender, thinking, translation, treat, understand, version, very, want, was, well, what, will, worth, would
- Cliches: to be a, i want

****... too early for an autorank...
so here's a pre-scriptum i wrote for...
what i wanted to feed the autoranking system...

this poem has circa 11 thousand views, "elsewhere"...
and i just... would like... to see the score for it...
the very and repeating: twist on the rotten tomatoes' score
"leverage" between audience and "critic" scores...
i gather that the autorank on this canvas is not...
somehow "deliberate"... i presume i have this slab
of minced beef... and when i put it through...
i'll get... a nice cubism version of a ripe steak: medium rare...

then again: i was always a fan of rare...
mind you... it's never raw, it's not tartar cubes...
it's rare... like the person eating... a rarified recluse example:
like a recluse of a rarified worth of all examples given...
this noun/verb/etc. "coherency" score...
perhaps this a.i. scrutiny hasn't bothered to answer
to no asked question... people can still "un-scramble"
or... un-scrabble bad grammar and understand it...
nothing ever has to be: brick on brick like a long
winding river...
it sometimes can arrive at us...
"lost in translation"... some people speak some
languages with no ill-intent...
they just can't escape the pedagogy rubrics of
subconscious grammar layer upon layer upon layer...
is this... a reason to subsequently rhyme?
personally? i treat rhyme as a phenomenon...
a phenomenon that has to happen rarely...
and when it does: it has to be a striking "pose"...
but enough of the pre-scriptum...
i want to see how this poem fares in the autorank filter...
albeit, this given: this pre-scriptum will have had
an impact on the score...

line repetition, eh? the lines are too long or too short?
what was that poem... when you could somehow
invent: "thinking outside the box" of any form,
or when tender poets started to succumb to the cascade
effect of writing - to merely fill-up scroll speed and space?
it's hardly an event like the mexican wave at
a football match... or how...
the white stripes' song: seven nation army
has become the international... well... that's modest...
the national (english) football clubs' anthem...
when a goal is scored... or whatever you like, otherwise...

or cliches... really?!
how about... oh... i remember this one most fondly...
visual poetry...
fallen... by... jörg piringer...
and unlike any modern painting...
this one really does require a description,
as cited on poetryfoundation.com:

/jörg piringer works in many forms, including visual, digital, and sound poetry, as well as music. In "fallen," piringer combines a visual sensibility with computer programming skills to tumble text from the English translation of The Communist Manifesto into a pile at the bottom of the page. The result is a mass of letters stripped of their original meaning and representing the failure of an idea./ Geof Huth

and no, by no kind reprint...
perhaps modern painting is what it is...
because... there's an alternative, like fallen?
if you can "paint" with words in adverts...
and paint i imply: stress the psychological impact
of coca-cola written in circa: formal scripts -
(why no italics? you can't... just can't,
write a colon and in italics after...
the colon represents emphasis,
as does the italics... tautology or something -esque)
derived from 17th century handwriting...
or... say... volkswagen... written in blackletter &
lombardic scripts... esp. circa 1935...
while all the propaganda posters were on
display...

given all of this? well... do i have to somehow:
bemoan how terrible modern art is?
cubism is not cricitißed - but dada is -
or let's call it... the most bloated
menu of culture citationand)
Barnett Newman painted this masterpiece,
‘Onement VI’, in 1953.
it sold for close to US$44 million...

i can't say such painting is "good" or "bad"...
after a while you just have to call a spoon a spoon...
a knife a knife, a table a table...
onement vi? blue canvas with a straight line
down the middle; form? rectangular...
and that's when thinking can take place...
i gather than modern art is trying to depict:
primodial man acquiring geometry...
after all... only recently i cound the difference
between the western man and slavs...
how the afro-european now lives in germany
and the west... including italy...
and how the indo-european lives east of germany
in some parts of scandinavia and greece...
a totally new discovery...

but... but... i can compensate for modern art...
with what is visual poetry...
if jorgen schmoorgen can do an abstract of a communist
manifesto... here's my take on...
John Constable... because... frankly...
i have yet to properly deal with this particular piece
of writing - as it's fresh... to subsequently aspire
for... a j. m. w. turner... not yet... not yet...
as ascribed to Juba...

the poem itself is... good grief...
always the same with me...
i go to kenya and i'd want to **** all the ivory
beauties...
a mother is in hospital and all the nurses
are black and i'm like...
what a clean and sterile environment this
is... unlike my today which began
finding an acne dot on my little richard...
(i get the joke... spotty ****)...
having to defrost a fridge freezer in
the shed because:
'z przybytku głowa nie boli'
oh yes it does...
not when what someone deems to be
"enough" do you have to count the trivial...
unnecessary things...
which is not a shame regarding my ***
winning a pulitzer price for... never mind...
i claim lack of sun...
black privelege... impeccable skin...
and... ivory beauties...
n'est ce pas?
alternative i have found an outlet to...
it's become brutally boring...
*******...
i found it... in... japanese gravure...
i had to... esp. when 1970s italian *****
classic died... and everyone is doing
this act older than beer and the giza
pyramids... phellatio and you're like:
so when did the ice-cream dream go away...
the peeling the banana...
and all this ******* gagging begin like
there's everyone with their third tonsils
removed... where mouth is no different
from *** or **** to be RAMMED!
lucky for me i still have my third tonsil...
which means i can drink cold beer in winter
and not get a soar throat...
- lucky for me i still have my *******...
god... if i didn't... i don't think i'd have
the "moral compass" to "get away with it"...
unless i was a woman with a web-cam...
in which: it almost becomes akin to reading
a book... it's like: it's there for the sole use of
pleasuring yourself or... as i like to call it on
throne of thrones (the toilet)...
first you do the no. 1, then the no. 2...
then you start doing the no. 3 to see...
whether you've done no. 2 completely...
it sometimes happens that having an *******
dilates the **** to the point where:
there's a shady **** loitering in the "back"
somewhere... which would explain ****-erotica...
in reverse to the act of ****-erotica of being
penetrated... i.e. in this scenario...
finishing doing a no. 2...
after that? downhill a quick side-step for
a no. 4 in the shower - baptism...
but... yeah... the men that shame men with
regards to *******?
they must be circumcised men...
shaming other circumcised men...
i think to think how a circumcised man
could shame an uncircumcised man for this act...
that's like... circumcised women...
shaming uncircumised women...
for jerking off with a web-cam...
uncircumcised women and...
explosive libido... whatever the stereotypes
are... circumcised men...
uncircumcised men...
there has to be a: a priest a rabbi and an imam
walk into a bar joke around here somewhere...
i'm trying to find it...
but i have found that: circumcised men
shame other circumcised men over *******...
while the uncircumcised men are like...
if only i were a woman and had a webcam...
if society had a niche consumer base for that...
"sort of thing"...
i'd be making money from one
genocide of a fraction of myself ever so often...
i.e. it's killing when the ***** is owned
by a woman (sensible... sensible...
i don't mean the former chinese 1 child
state policy of: statistics at all costs...
even at 8 months old)...
but if that's the case...
then a session of hanky-panky...
sterile... washing under the ******* etc.,
i'm practically doing erotica-genocide
slim film no. 3890... ever since it started aged
8... when i discovered Onan...
way before the white nation army came out
from the hades of the *******...
how the ******* of ***** has nothing
to do with the ******...
the muscles and nerves are wired so to the brain...
that i'm pretty sure a castrato feels
the same...
**** chicken shaming...
it must be circumcised men against
circumcised men: ******* missing olympics...
no wonder... you peel a ******* potato...
you have to throw it in some water
to prevent it from darkening...
that's of course: prior to cooking...
so you have to find the ****** cushion
brigade from time to time...
a "sword" without a "sheath"...
rust or egomania or: motivational talk talks...
because Kant was never going to be my:
bachelor of the year for the 215th time in a row...
kierkegaard famously didn't marry...
erectile "dysfunction":
not a real problem in my own company
or in the company of prostitutes...
but a serious ******* problem among
the "free women" of western europe...
it's like one of those vague "superpowers"...
women speak of turn-ons and turn-offs...
yeah: i too have my limp switch too...
somehow... this "thing" is not automated...
it's not like spam-mail... it doesn't always:
"rise to the occassion"...
the mood swings of my *****...
i'm starting to think that perhaps neurology will
explain more about my brain
than my suma summarum will ever tell me
about this excess of the 21st digit (which
of course includes the 10 precursor toes)...

as i haven't read marquis de sade in a long while...
and i'm not touching any modern erotica,
and ******* bores me
and how japenese gravure is the next best
all-spice of brain fever...
and how: if this little harlot went to sudan
for her nitty-picking a tartan lover,
or if she decided for rwanda...
i have to guess the fiction and fantasy...
for me, at least... has to rely on...
a bull in a porcelain shop...
or as the kama sutra says:
a rabbit **** is hardly going to ****
an elephant ****... lengths and depths...
all round!
which makes you wonder...
genghis khan must have been...
or has to be... the ***** envy shitlord
of a whole lot of people with the surname
Khan in pakistan.
Singularity.

Not wanting to assimilate
No need to ingratiate or even to populate.

In the alone wearing my clothes which are home to me are these things that are known to be,
my truth.

No one but one where one can be one and one can be true to oneself.

Selfish is singular too,
another one that is one and so true.

Here on the Central line there are twenty minutes, enough time to write and more than enough time to open my eyes and be overcome by the plight of us all.

On the tube wall, Rwanda, the fate of the elephant, the panda, the children, who wills then misfortune on women and always the children who suffer.

The next stop is my stop, how lucky to get off, but the world turns slowly for some,
if time is the gun,
It
is already smoking.
I had a nightmare
There were Al-Qaeda babies crawling in my room
With turbans on their heads
I know it sounds racist, it's awful, totally sick
but you gotta believe me
These Johnny Jihads were glowing in the dark
And I sensed bombs in their brains, saying gooooo geeeee gaaaa-gaaaa!
I've never been so terrified in my life
I had to leap over them, they were so ******* real
Any moment they'd explode
in a thin blood step of suicide
and Al-Qaeda day care
It wasn't just that
I knew the evil they'd become
Let me tell you how I got in this awful mess
I had this crazy idea
about confronting evil
Rwanda, genocide, all that ****
In all the books I could find
I thought I could make peace with the world
If I just cried my guts out
ship-wreck some snot mess, you know what I mean
Well, I guess the joke's on me
I needed a nightmare to tell me
There's no truth in evil
There's nothing to find
When it's all an illusion to begin with
Just like that nightmare
What a lesson that was.
I'll always remember those Al-Qaeda babies
They really saved my life
As twisted as that sounds
It's true
And yes, it's a true story
If you don't believe me...
Then God help you,
And you'll meet those Al-Qaeda babies.
Best waking nightmare of my life. Got a poem out of it.

I wonder if anyone will laugh at my sick sense of humor. That'll be fun to see.
Youdont Needthis Jul 2017
A smile is knowing
The dark crease of a well-arched spine
The dewy white lotus petals
The sad title of concubine
The blue glass so plainly beautiful
With its cold smooth sides
A blown vase that sits precious
Atop a dead deer's stretched hide
The hallowed ***** of a portruding illiac
And the decadent crust of a sweet fruit pie

On a black vinyl stage floor
In a room filled with echoing cries
The reverberance loud and hollow
With ears ringing opened wide

The bends of her young tendons
In her ropey pale limbs
They flex and harshly twitch
How a scared and hooked fish swims

The cyclic orbits of planets and lifetimes  
A ballerina's pirouette spins

Now the tarlatan and muslin gets torn to shreds
And the blinding stage lights quickly dim
The wet heat of a hungry tongue
Slaps upon her sweating skin

The audience simply does nothing
Just like the tall plant stalks of the green motel
Or the muddy vines in swamps in Rwanda
Or white wallpaper in the locked rooms of certain hells
The diseases that squirm in tainted waters
Of Liberia's ***** wells
The missing limbs of wartime amputees
Reflected in the golden glint of spent brass shells

Amidst the screams of
NO
STOP
NO
It yells the words
GO
GOD
GO

Through the grinning lips of the manifest destiny
And the arms of Khmer Rouge's killings
Its legs are formed from the many faces of lynch mobs
Its hands are hewn of American prison facilities and county jails
It's dripping deadly doses of fentanyl in local ****** shipments    
And ****** dancers
GO GOD GO GO GOD GO GO GOD GO GO GOD GO GO GOD GO GO GOD GOD GO
Harold r Hunt Sr Aug 2014
Why must I Die
Today I see babies born
Just to be torn and killed.
Thousands of young and old
Yelling why must I die.
I did nothing wrong.
Is it hate or is it joy
They don't know the fate.
Rwanda 's genocide killing all those that stand.
Swing clubs and machetes. Cutting them all down.
But they don't know why i must die they think.
The blood rolls in the streets.
Who can stop it we want to know
Peace is the answer not the dope.
Babatunde Raimi Sep 2019
Please i need help
Don't leave me like this
I can't sleep
They say it's sleep-onset insomnia
But from the beginning
It was not so

Maybe it is psychological
Their pains in my heart
With pictures of them
Begging for their lives
But i still cannot sleep
And from the beginning
It was not so

Their bulging eyes
As they take their last breathe
To a journey of no return
Their offense
Victims of a failed system
But from the beginning
It was not so

Why are brothers killing brothers
Brothers killing sisters
Sisters killing brothers
Wiping out communities
For the glory of what?
Where is our morals?
The spirit of comrado?
But from the beginning
It was not so

Though obscure
We need to ask
Where are the jobs?
Who has the reins?
That has stagnated Africa
Black people, black mind
A phrase that depicts backwardness

Even the Heavens have Guardians
Nothing passes their sight
They have been enfired
To neutralize aggressors
But, can my brother be an aggressor?
Trust at your peril
That's where we find ourselves

In the Jungle
It's "No man's land"
Where the strong prey on the weak
As long as you are powerful
Or seemingly untouchable
You are licensed to ****
Africa bleeds
Yes, Africa bleeds.

Each time you strike
A wife looses a husband
The children; a father
The family; a breadwinner
The Community; a philanthropist
The nation; an Ambassador
Africa; an illustrious son

Stop cattle rustling
Stop political machinations
Stop hate speeches
Especially From the altar of religion
The internet inclusive,
For it is divisive
Stop the killings
That Africa may live
And not just survive

Break the walls
Let's build bridges
Open up your enclosures
That i may come in
And dine with you
That is how life was programmed

To achieve our SDG's
Our ******* is prime
That your people be my people
My people, your people
That we may give the boy child a life
And the girl child a voice
And build the Africa of our dream

The carnage in Rwanda
Aparthied in South Africa
Insurgency in Libya
The killings in Nigeria
Mirrors the travails of Africa
Rooted in corruption
All must stop now

How did we get here?
A people divided
Along ethnic and religious lines
Detached along tribal and economic
But from the beginning
It was not so

We are tired of bloodsheds
We demand peace
The white on the Nigerian flag
Invisibly tainted in red
Being the blood of the innocent
But surely, nothing lasts forever
For surely, justice will be served

Stop saying "Kafasasu"
As our heart bleeds
When you open up our brothers
With your knives and weapons of mass destruction
Sending them into a journey
A journey into the unknown
Oh gods of our ancestors
Where are thou?

The God of our creation
Send us a Moses
That will lead us from where we are
To where we ought to be
Our promised land of peace and unity
Equity and justice
That we may return with offerings

Stop the rustlings!
Stop destroying our crops
No life should equate that of animals
No animal should be silenced unjustly
Why do you think prayers are said
Before any animal is slaughtered?
The act is sacred
Friends, we are all animals
In different shades and sizes
But place premium on life

Once i saw a documentary
Featuring a helpless Antelope
Feeding her young
Until a pride of Lion approached
As her young sprinted
The mother waited and sacrificed
A sweatless feast for the Kings
But the Eagle watched
She could have helped
Enough of nonchalance
Get on and be engaged

Praying for Africa is a beginning
Taking conscious steps is progress
That the Creator may hear our voices
And have mercy on us
Let my people be your people
Give me a damsel from your clan
I will give you a Prince from my tribe
That we may unite

Refuse to be nonchalant
Refuse to be intimidated
Especially on the part of justice
Let us come together
As a people of one race
That we may build Africa
And the world at large
Not by the sword
But the strength of our unity
For all these ills
From the beginning
It was not so

Babatunde Raimi (c)
Author/Life Coach/Poet
Christian Gentry Jan 2013
Never Say its over,
Never say its done,
You don't want to be the one,
That has to go the parents and tell
Them that it was their children who were hit and fell.

Never Forget,
The past is never just behind us
History is never just history, thus
Why do we have tragedies
That saying is a Flacie
Rwanda. Congo, Tibet, all cracks,
Proof, that we must always look back.

Never Say it just happened then.
Even now in a world that contains,
Many marvelous wonders it remains,
In places like Syria, and Darfur.
There are always people slaughtering the poor
It persists even today,
We must never stray,
In memory to those who fell in the millions
To those who **** innocent civilians.

Never Say, its over.
Never say we’ve won
There is never a time it is actually done.
Perhaps there will be a day.
When love will emerge from the frey.
Josh Koepp Dec 2014
Here
I made a video right here to help you understand
Well i mean, you technically made the video...
I just uh...
Borrowed it?
I can see that you're...mad
But you know now right?
Please
Sit back down, you can wag your finger after
This is important

This is a video your child took of you mowing the lawn in 1994
Her big strong  parent, fumbling with this heavy-as-hell-is contraption
That sputters, and whirs, and kicks back
But like some superhero you...start to shove it along, and conquer the beast
And it sprays curiously alluring smog, that like a well behaved child, she knows not to breathe in,
Knows not to touch because she's not old enough
Or strong enough to pull that chord to trigger the bells and whistles
That she, nor i, nor probably you understands.

But i digress...

So here you are, with your child on the stoop, taking might i add some
Fine, stable footage you should really enroll her in some classes,
And you traveling around your suburban front yard, chasing away a squirrel with the lawnmower, harmlessly of course
And laughing with your daughter
Talking to your neighbors over the roaring engine,
Emptying the bag of fresh cut grass into the bin...

And that's where the battery died
No! Don't leave yet
I want you to watch again, listen again
Here...
Listen closely...








Did you hear the grass screaming of their judgement day, beneath the lovers kissing each other goodbye, wrapped around each other, as we hold hands, still entangled in  the mass graves you made for them

Beneath the ants cowering in their homes, begging their laborers to come back inside before they are noticed, before they are eviscerated and the foreman is forced to pay settlements

Beneath the subtle sound of your daughter breathing deeply of the sweet smelling gas that you told her to stay away from, that we learned to be repulsed by, that she has been told to be repulsed by

Beneath the...
Here, i'll rewind again
Here
You see the label on the lawnmower?
That manufacturer? That bar code? That order number? That factory? That steel purchase? That mine?
Did you hear the songs of the forced laborers there, the modern slaves that bear striking resemblance to the songs you learned in high school history class, except softer, pushed under the magazines

Beneath the squirrel complaining to the squirrel police about dangerous and disrespectful conduct it's neighbors have been performing when he comes to say hello and finally meet someone in the neighborhood, that he's lived so long in, just to be told it's not "Illegal,"

Beneath the slightly offensive joke you made towards your black neighbor, who missed the punchline over the roar of the engine, when you asked him why he was so light skinned, and whether that was a "slavery thing,"

Beneath your child hearing everything

You didn't yet...
You made that happen, didn't you?
This isn't me judging your character
I don't blame you "O' causer of destruction"

You were not given the tools i was given
And similarly i... was not given the tools you were given

You were given a lawnmower, and a camera
A beautiful daughter, a home, a job
Gas! The ability to live where you want!

I...well...
i was given the opportunity to talk to the grass...

And well...

In 1994, that same year, in Rwanda an atrocity was committed, a genocide.

And the characteristic machetes used to massacre the Tutsi people
Contained the same steel blend, from the same producer
As the blades in many lawnmowers at the time.

This isn't a conviction
I did this because i wanted you to know and be okay with being complicit because you exist a certain way
Innocent because you never knew, and couldn't have known

Because we love you
Because we need you
Because we need you to know now
Andrew Dunham Jun 2015
I think of you when I’m on the toilet.**
Okay.
Maybe that wasn’t the best place to start
I think of you when I’m walking too
Wishing you were taking the same route
By coincidence
But hoping that it was by choice
I think of you when I make breakfast
Cause I would gladly make enough for two
When I have nothing better to do
I count the hair on my forearms
And I wish you were here to help me count
I was never really good at math
Or science
But I’m really good at thinking
I swear
And I’m pretty good at grammar
Because you
Are the person
About whom
I have been thinking much lately
I ponder you like politicians
In Astana
Ponder budgets
Like artisans in Rwanda ponder baskets
Like the UN ponders nations
Like farmers ponder precipitation
I roughly calculate
I could have solved around 200 Rubik’s Cubes
Give or take a few
In the time it took
to figure out you
So now I’ll chew my fingernails well past the white part
Even though you can’t stand it
Because I don’t want you thinking that I’m thinking about you

— The End —