DRA
Poetry with an African Sting
FT
A sneak peep into a spirited Africa
Mowarin Christian Ese
Published by FastPencil
DRA Copyright Š 2013 Mowarin Christian Published by FastPencil 3131 Bascom Ave. Suite 150 Campbell CA 95008 USA info@fastpencil.com (408) 540-7571 (408) 540-7572 (Fax) http://www.fastpencil.com
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior consent of the publisher. The Publisher makes no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any commercial damages. Printed in the United States of America. First Edition
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DRA Dedicated to my mum, Clara â?§
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DRA
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DRA Contents Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Early Morning Blues ............................... 1 Can I have my God back? ......................... 3 Prayers offered in squeezed twilight ............. 5 Dance of the evening palm play .................. 7 Paradise Lost ........................................ 9 Africa, my beloved Africa, ....................... 11 Little boy in a sand coloured village ........... 13
Chapter 15
My granny, ......................................... The spirits lead us ................................ Dance of the evening palm play II ............. When will they come? ........................... Mother Africa ..................................... Time after time ................................... Mother Afrika II .................................. When will they come II ..........................
Chapter 16
Maidens of Ndokwa .............................. 31
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13 Chapter 14
15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29
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DRA
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DRA 1
Early Morning Blues
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The misty eye of the
Marooned morning slowly Opens to pale violet strings Laced with over appetured twists
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Lazy lawns greets the mist Hazy dogs with limbs stretch Welcome to the early morning blues Mother hen chuckles Clenched tightly to half dazed Freshly feathered cheeky chiks The touch of the morning blues Wraps the myth of a blessed day The cold, still sad walks gently away Welcome to the early morning blues Broken pot holes lay akimbo Wet Wall holes in limbo Visibly shakened from a long night Two little dews resting on solar reflections Occassionally rippling to the nearby lulaby Broken earthenware still sleeps Welcome to the early morning blues
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DRA 2
Can I have my God back?
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Her heart lifted
High up onto the cinematic heavens
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Adorned by clouds and native brilliance All gallantly welded together She feels light and need a light Please dont take away her God Her soul stretched wide open They reach the ends of the earth Deflected and detonated by angry auras She feels asymmetric and needs drama She bleeds from the spread Please dont take away her God Her flesh rip piece by piece Evaporated again and again By her own dear nature Seasons and reasons of an unfulfilled literature She dies and rise and dies Please don’t take away her God Her boned stares Face to face with her ethnic rendition Painted by dainty colours of her existence She feels silly and silk She feels the sea and sick Please dont take away her God
DRA 3
Prayers offered in squeezed twilight
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Prayers offered in squeezed twilight Regenerated and reflected
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Hour time of the lazy bones Dark times of the wicked willows Mud walls in drenched soaked earth laughs away its melancholic symphony echoes and woes is all we hear To the near and far distant future Satanic verses and tunes saddled the already drenched earth refused to be brushed off like mere brittles of the stroke of an artist Little children in dazed dimensions high spirited, played away unaware of the black dahila whose fangs already sharpened from the rhythms and stones of time Heavy and profound undulation sang the heavy hearts that are destined to bear this squeezed and turbulent times set in tune with the lost glories of what stood before.
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DRA 4
Dance of the evening palm play
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Dance, dance still dance
For the evening palms have
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Come to play Coconut palms in funeral procession Fueled and mist by violent water waves Sways friendly nods seamlessly In simple, yet complex dance Drenched folks scream loud screams As wavy soap wave wipes them Awakened and chasing them too Wailing madly as it wallops them Dance, dance still dance For the evening palms have Come to play Koko children gesticulates widly Musically and rhythmically Waists tied tightly to waist beads Rolling, still dancing to the beat Arrant snob sisters in Sweet small and soft silk Sleek sleeves solicit waves to stay tuned Crabs too to stay socketed
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DRA 5
Paradise Lost
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The midday sun
Bites hard on his skin He bites the last beanball His only meal the day affords
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The search of a paradise lost Corrugated skin Harmattanned like scales Foot badly sored from sojoun Stench perfumed by tan The search for paradise lost
The future, a narrow wave the present, too distant The past badly mashed The light quenched again and again The search of a paradise lost True fears of teardrop The only worry The dry stony earth eveready To melt and melt away The search for a paradise lost continues
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DRA 6
Africa, my beloved Africa,
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Africa, my beloved Africa, The one they came to call
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The one they came to wake The dark one, the forbidden one The one they say is asleep in deep Africa my sacrificial Africa Asleep in the shine and shrines Of uncanny mangroves and roots Of rot hues and humids Africa my womb Africa The origins of soiled mankind The origins of black kind The birth abode of nature and nuture The emanation, emancipation and amalgamation Of a phenomenal civilisation Africa my friend africa tell them the untold story tell them of the kings and kingdoms of the belief and relief of great dunes of the gentle greens and evergreens the smiles and indigo poetry of the lemanjaro the sahara of our nativity story
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DRA 7
Little boy in a sand coloured village
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Do you know a little boy
in a sandy coloured village
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with sand colured hair And eyes brown like the earth And ears flapped like the rats the boy with the rubber ball who plays in the sands of time the one whose shadows never leaves him the figments of the dust his companion the one that spurns the adrenalin the boy who races in the slopes of a sleepy village bare footed, bare headed and bare hearted wide eyed fairly aligned with the whites gone a true friend of the wind who slices through him without a hug the harmattan his early brother the dust his psyche pyrotechnics the chase and tyre his vision and freedom the sands his ever ground
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DRA 8
My granny,
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My Granny, My Granny
She told me and she showed me Where the spirits live where they whisper in the wind and dance
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in hush comby tones and bones so we wont ever hear and tear the dance of voodoo wooo woooo woooooo The place. A place A little place in the baobab tree back its tree finger clenched like my grannies without innovation without invocation enriched with scar soaked souls and organic moss there they swing and cry to the dance of voodoo wooo woooo woooooo the tree with a cocoon and raccoon with weavy web of unearthly eyes and weedy wounds of coily whips stretched like the grey grip of mangrove mud skippers the gentle gush of soured sap there they feed on the screams of mankind and dance to the voodoo wooo woooo woooooo
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DRA 9
The spirits lead us
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The black night met us
On the way to our dreams Slowly enveloping us And tempting us to open
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Like the claps of the great divide The shadows looking very lonely and metabolic Clinging tightly to our side As if hand painted with grey smears
Black sweat enriches our tan Soon the footpath becomes our vision With a mission to nowhere The smitten shrubs now our gengon A lasting procedural effect on our primitives Coarsed enough to take our lives What does it matter anyway Away we lie certain, smitten Our breathe our relief Only this time though
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DRA 10
Dance of the evening palm play II
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String less sonorous sonata fills the air As the waves strikes on the surfboards
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Weather beaten fingers of Hallelujah brethrens move and rock to their beat Dance, dance still dance For the evening palms have Come to play
Almost drenched birds dare the waves Crying madly at this nature’s gust From the under belly motions of the sea Flapping wings to the spirited undulation To the rhythm and beat of the waves Dance of the evening frenzy Dance, dance still dance For the evening palms have Come to play
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Laugh and cries of the sisters echoes widely As the music reaches its peak The palm sway in frenzy as the frond drummers Quicken their quick succession slaps Dance, dance still dance For the evening palms have Come to play
DRA 11
When will they come?
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We glide down the little Sloppy Slippery street
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But yet no run Our shadows tapered On comby catacombs walls Houses sobered from day and night Roofs vexed from bitter rains Time stench stared madly Madly in love with the rhapsody When will they come?
Upturned stones and moss play thorny poker on our toes The place, it sleeps But lay dead All its poetry vanished Bad but still stares Gloomy faces at dusk eavesdrop from banana leaves wide eyed socket what formally bulge When will they come?
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DRA 12
Mother Africa
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Dear mother Africa
How are you doing? Hope the times are a Blessing and love to us
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To feel and to see The reasons and pigeons
That conveys our cries to you That bonds our thrills and take our dreams on a Flight of fruitfulness
The passion of your light That shines on our lives That your unending love And beauty that bestows us In the times of our solace The rise of your imaginations
And the heights of your machinations The future of your numbers And the embers of your souls That which is kindled on us That which ignites our kind
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DRA 13
Time after time
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I ran and time ran
In pursuit of my daily dream A vision I have nursed And cursed to carry like a pack
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A back pack that never drops
A new morning a new mourning A new dream, a new beam To make a mark on this mark less void To run a rat race i cant finish Whose game to bruise and abuse Time and time again
time after time My own sweat i spat to fill Sweated to push the strings The tiny ones that connects them together The sspirits in their fabric Of a new generation and admiration Of pseudopolism and isms
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The struggle must push us Push is beyond our boundaries Beyond our heart and tributaries Beyond the fabrics of pie own imagination Beyond the limits of our selfless police Beyond the darkness that have engulfed our entire evil macchinations
DRA 14
Mother Afrika II
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Dear mother africa How are you doing? Hope the times are a
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Blessing and love to us To feel and to see
The bravery of your eagles The strength of our falcon The womb of your brownness The brute of our heroes May it be with us now and then
The figments of our The fingers of your consciousness The beloved that you shall Grant us the powers to see and feel the togetherness That is of us, that is us
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DRA 15
When will they come II
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Around a muddy stretch
We carry the heavy weight of
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The night as our large blanket Our eyes deformed with deep halos Silhouetted fences punctured by age Lizards salamander allies lies Broken hearted with songs too Call it untouched phenomenon A breeze of Bezier boldness In true reminiscent of old When will they come?
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The mystic drums gone quiet The wind too sit still and pale A wait in time and pallette When will they come? The ones who once beat the ‘sangolo’ The ones who struck with a fever blow Dum dum dum dum dummmm dum dummmmm Like acid tobacco chewed with a grin Fast dissolving into mint and bits We are waiting, waiting to die Or live in a shape shifting world
DRA 16
Maidens of Ndokwa
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Here they come the Maidens of Ndokwa Smiles like onion Peel nearly slashed
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Dimples newly punched Steps gracefully slant Neck fully graffittied Our queens, My queens We live in a sweet world
Here they come, the ladies of the eastern light Hair oily shone with the palm Waists neatly packed Beads carefully manicured Wings purely feathered Body beautifully adorned Fingers a palette of hues Our queens, My queens We live in a sweet world
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