Sunday, February 28, 2010

Weeping World!

Weeping world!

Can you hear the world's rueful cries,
As the human conscience fries,
In the fiery furnace of extreme compromise,
Fanned by the flames of extreme lack of compromise,

Shedding tears of war,
Flowing thoughts from an inhuman core,
Fountain of blood from battle,
From unborn children slaughtered like cattle,

Can you hear the thunderous protest of lightening,
Caterwauls which court an enlightening,
Can you hear the quakes,
Protest for the hungry in need of flakes,

What about those who live in abuse,
Abusers in dire need to be disabused,
What about those who mask their fears,
And only their pillows in the mask of night know their tears,

What about the causing of pain,
Which always comes around with more pain/no gain,
What about the suffocation of hope,
Stifling a people's ability to cope,

The world weeps,
So much it causes floods,
The world weeps,
In so much agony the tears are blood.

© 2010 afeseh ngwa hilary

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Compassion!

Compassion!

When we see ourselves,
In the weaknesses of fellow man,
We unlock a floodgate of compassion,
Which aids our passion to reach out.

Many times the things we condemn,
Are the things we do,
So when we judge another,
We judge ourselves.

Arrrh but that core human instinct,
To be better than another,
Can be a dark cloud to common sense and reason,
Seek to be better than former self,
That can be as former as one second ago.

In order to feel like a saint,
We are quick to demonize,
It is alright to firmly but lovingly say its wrong,
Tough love if you will,
But neither judge nor condemn,
That's God's prerogative,
Only He knows enough to Judge.


© 2010 afeseh ngwa hilary

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Nothing like the love of a mother!

Nothing like the love of a mother!

For nine months they carry an extra load,
To work, to the toilet, to bed,
With all the sickness it comes with,
Never complaining, only enduring,
Focused on the glee of that day,
When the life God incubates in them,
Transitions to earth,

Then with a very excruciating birth pang,
And all the strength and grace God can give,
They push in birth the life they nursed in them,
May even cry in the process,
Before the baby cries,
In that first drink of earthly air,
As evidence of new life,

Yet after birth motherhood has still only begun,
It is more the raising and upbringing than the birth,
More tiring days and sleepless nights set in,
Painful adjustments to accomodate this new call,
A woman's noblest call,
A call to rock the cradle,
And as she rocks the cradle she rocks the world,
The mothers shape the future of the world,

With every life in them they love,
They nourish and care, fiercely protect,
They nurse and hang in there,
Through the bitterest storms,
They stay in there to savor,
And share our best accomplishments,
Yes, there is nothing, nothing in the whole wide world,
Like the love of a good mother,
She may not have a biological child of her own,
Yet a mother to one and all,

That is why even in the evening of my life,
At a ripe old age,
I will still be mama's baby,
I celebrate you mom,
And if you know a mama like mine,
Pomp a fist of celebration in the air,
Find the time, make the time,
Tell and show mom you appreciate her love,

You rock mom, you rock,
You are better and stronger than a rock,
Yet soft like a drifting fog,
There is nothing like a good mother's love.

© 2010 Afeseh ngwa hilary.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Mount Letch!

Mount Letch

Who is this poor girl,
Acting surrogate on the altar of deceit,
On the summit of mount Letch,
Getting laid in someone's stead,
A vicarious love making,
Through the body of another.

How many options does a man have,
When the love of his life,
Is thousands of miles across the oceans,
In a far and distant land... ?
Million dollar question which begs an answer,
To do or not to do?
He yielded to the weaker part of him,
He chose to be a letch :(
How sad,
How very sad!

© 2010 afeseh ngwa hilary.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

What if!

What if!

What if there was a camera on you,
Wired to earth,
Projected on the giant screen of the bright skies of the world,
Live images of all your activities and thoughts,
Would you still do them?,
Would you still think them?,
If not, then don't do it!

© 2010 afeseh ngwa hilary

Monday, February 22, 2010

Greed!

Greed!

Arrrh greed,
Macadam to the place of ultimate destruction,
With an allure of satisfaction,
As fake as the wig on a bald head!

© 2010 afeseh ngwa hilary

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Mighty wave...

Mighty Wave...

A mighty wave of the emptiest vanity,
Sweeps across the world,
Unless you stand firm,
It will sweep you off your feet,
Help me God...

© 2010 afeseh ngwa hilary

Friday, February 19, 2010

Fueling the medicant cycle

hellooo,

I also blog every once in a while with a group of young people. I recently wrote an article for that blog and you can see it at

http://www.worldopinionjournal.blogspot.com/2010/02/fueling-mendicant-cycle.html

I will be glad to learn from your own thoughts... thanks for stopping by... come again...

© 2010 afeseh ngwa hilary.

The storm is raging!

The storm is raging

Beyond taming and beyond reach, the storm is soaring;

With nature’s loudest voice , the storm is roaring;

Caught in one of nature’s cruelest mimes;

Almost losing my mind;

As life teaches its best lesson yet;

In the process transforming a mindset;

A lesson of beauty and of pain;

A lesson about the price of gain;

That the thorns take away nothing from the beauty of a rose;

The rise from a planted naked stalk to beautiful, enchanting, charming rose;

That some of the most astounding petals of beauty sit on stalks of thorns ;

And every natural rose bush comes with thorns;

That those who refuse to brave the thorns;

May settle for petals of the flowers of corn;

That redemption's greatest possibility ;

Lies in the eye of the greatest storms;

That even the finest eye of faith;

Cannot see beyond the storm;

But it can trust, trust, trust;

An all loving, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God;

Beyond the raging storm and more.

© 2010 afeseh ngwa hilary

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Grim diagnosis

Grim diagnosis

She could have been anyone,
Nothing had prepared her for what she was to hear,
As the doctor uttered that one word,
CANCER,
She wished she was suffering from auditory hallucinations,
For a brief moment she lived in a world of denial,
The world seemed to have come to a still,
She panicked,
Flooded with an unexplainable cocktail of emotions,
Channeled in a river of tears,
Gushing from the fountain head,
Of a ready producing gland of tears,
Then she quickly pulled herself together,
For after the diagnosis,
Comes the prognosis,
This needed her full attention,
Some decisions had to be made,
Combination therapy,
A knife on her,
Some poison in her veins,
Some poison from the rays,
You would know from her hair!
She'd seen some win the battle before,
With exercise and diet and deeply abiding faith,
She will not lose without fight,
Help her God,
Combat,
All,
New,
Cells,
Escaping,
Rules of proper living.

© 2010 afeseh ngwa hilary

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Valentine's day!

Valentine's day!

I embrace you as a reminder,
Reminder of what everyday should be,
A ceaseless expression of love,
I despise you as a single one day,
When we show our love,
If you choose today,
To make everyday Valentine's day,
Happy Valentine's day.

© 2010 afeseh ngwa hilary

Friday, February 12, 2010

How!

How?

How can we win if we do not fight,
How can we triumph if we run away from the challenge,
How can a breakthrough come when in the face of the impossible,
We redirect our path to the previously done possible,
How can we be original when a taxing and daunting creativity is left to die ,
And all we seek to do is imitate,
How can there be a mountaintop without a valley,
How can there be a high without a low,
How can there be sweet without bitter,
How can there be joy without sadness,
Bad makes good possible,
Failure makes success possible,
Every negative makes the positive possible,
Fear not,
Fear only makes courage possible,
Don't embrace fear,
Don't dismiss it,
Supplant it with bold action.

© 2010 afeseh ngwa hilary

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Down payment with precious 27 years of a Life - Mandela... lessons for my African generation!

Down payment with precious 27 years of a Life - Mandela... lessons for my African generation!

Never before in history has the world paused in a moment packed with a flurry of a medley of emotions to focus all attention to the thresholds of a prison gate. Though many a young person may have scant memories of that time,as a little boy of 11 then, I have the relevance of the events of that momentous moment etched on my mind, just as surely and indelibly as they are on the pages of history. Coming from a continent where it wouldn't be so wrong to say it is largely ruled by a cabal of bandits who are driving the continent with an engine of greed to the edge of a fatally steep precipice; 11th February which this year commemorates 20 years of Nelson Mandela's release from prison, fans flames of a healthy pride in me for a sterling statesman like Mandela. Mandela belongs to a crop and league of statesmen who only come to a generation every once in a while. He is among the few which Robert F Kennedy talked about when he said "Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped." As he walked through the doors of his cell, he brought away with him a freedom which to a large extent liberated both the oppressed and oppressor in the despicable apartheid South Africa. A political genius, a charming negotiator, an endurant hard worker who despised and mocked the low road of unforgiveness and rose to the majestic heights of forgiving and finding partners in his jailers. I salute Mandela and all his compatriots in the struggle, dead and alive... Even as I salute him, I cannot help but wonder how he could not bring his charm, ability to forgive and genius to bear in salving his ailing marriage to Winnie Mandela who in no small way stood by him and made significant contribution to the struggle... Could a marriage be more difficult to fix than an apartheid south africa? that is a question for another time and day. As I salute the legacy of Mandela I think of lessons my generation and I can draw from his journey.

While Mandela made the down payment with probably the most precious 27 years of his life, there must have been some who shamelessly watched from the sidelines of passivity as the apartheid drama unfolded to the finale which saw the beginning of their emancipation, yet savored the prize of the price payed with precious lives... as many toiled for change at home, there must have also been some who gave the struggle an invaluably important voice from exile... So as young people whether at home or abroad I hear a call today for us to become a little more selfLESS and give a little of our brains and time by thinking constructive, bold, actionable ideas directed towards the self healing of africa, a request I believe any and every young person can meet...

Mandela could well have easily traded his jail time for a life of ease abroad...If you read the Anatomy of a miracle: The end of apartheid and the birth of the new South Africa by Patti Waldmeir you will see that Mandela had a plethora of choices and if you read South African History well you will also notice many many many blacks ran away from the country. In fact Mandela had more choices than we have today as a people of Africa yet he walked the hard road. See the except from Wikipedia to slightly buttress my point... "In February 1985 President P.W. Botha offered Mandela conditional release in return for renouncing armed struggle.[54] Coetzee and other ministers had advised Botha against this, saying that Mandela would never commit his organisation to giving up the armed struggle in exchange for personal freedom.[55] Mandela indeed spurned the offer, releasing a statement via his daughter Zindzi saying "What freedom am I being offered while the organisation of the people remains banned? Only free men can negotiate. A prisoner cannot enter into contracts."[53]" - Wikipedia

It would of course be naively akin to wanting to live forever to expect to find a path which leads to the mountain top which was obstacle free. When a people are bent on developing, if they don't find the path they will make one, and both involve an indefatigable hard work... When Mandela dreamed many years ago it would have been easy to say he was living and dreaming in sky-scapers of the future which he could not afford... it was not a passive inactive dreaming even against the barrage of pessimism from within and without which probably came his way... it was an active waiting which never lost hope and which was never idle even from a jail cell. We will only become noble and develop by the things we do... one thing however which the way forward cannot tolerate is any excuse for not giving or for not participating... inaction is always the easier road and great men and women never walk that path...Africans have walked down that path long enough and we have the results to show - needless to name them here but we can begin to say, not any more... inactivity will always seek to stand in the way of action, we can not let it, not any more... As a bright future beckons our generation to put our act together and step up, steering away from the mistakes of our forbears, history is watching and will judge us... No action is small, none is dumb, all is important... we can belong together and whether we realize now or not, we can rise together... the ball is in our court, the choice is ours...

It cannot be easy... It takes time and I am painfully aware of our impatience as a young people. We cannot be in the process of building an airplane and flying it at the same time, so it will be important to go back to the drawing boards. We cannot expect results before the work is done... We cannot expect a harvest before the planting season has come... The failures of yesterday cannot stop us from succeeding today unless we choose to... If there is any hope for Africa, we must stubbornly press on and we must, together with like passion driven minds, from within or without Africa either find the path forward, create one or die trying, God being our helper... We will like to see results in our lifetime but lack of results in our lifetime and potential for change only in another must not stop us from acting today in anyway we can... I am convinced in the power of ideas, I have seen their magic, their charm enthralls and the right, bold, actionable, root cause removal oriented ideas to real problems will always attract their funding in the long run... I believe, I am a believer in the things unseen, that is where tomorrow's reality is... those who wait to have enough to give never really give... Today let us begin to drive the last nail on the coffin of selfishness and burn it so that like a phoenix selflessness might rise from the ashes in stead.

© 2010 afeseh ngwa hilary.

Monday, February 8, 2010

One heartbeat away!

One heartbeat away.

When your success has gone astray,
And every step seems to take it further away,
And that thing you have been waiting for donkey years,
That special person who can share in your joys and tears,
Now seems to be only a pipe dream,
And your progress wagon refuses to gather steam,
And there is but a dying flame to help you grope in the dark,
With the grim realities very stark,
When your God seems so far in a distant land,
And a following wind blows away your footprints in the sand,
Tap from that indomitable spirit in the heart of every man,
Let the sun of hope kiss your skin for a healthy tan,
For like death, it might only be one heartbeat afar,
Every heartbeat might take you closer to being that dream star,
One heartbeat, one heartbeat, one heartbeart so far.

© 2010 afeseh ngwa hilary

Friday, February 5, 2010

Deterrent for bad behavior!

Deterrent for bad behavior.

Don't just give me a sermon about hell,
Like you were born and raised in it,
Don't just give me a deterrent for bad behaviour,
Give me an incentive for good behaviour,
Tell me about heaven,
How it is the surest haven.

© 2010 afeseh ngwa hilary

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Why I write!

I have given the reason why I write deep thought many times and it is a role which I take very seriously... as I a poet/writer I don't believe in writing for writing's sake...while I believe style is the garb of thought, I also believe that the words which are the wheels of the same must be deeply substantive and seek to highlight/dramatize and bring attention to an important issue which is receiving not enough attention or a deaf ear, to encourage, to give hope, to offer guided counsel, to identify with fellow man, to whip our common conscience and give life to our collective humanity, to share an experience, to unlock some positive energy in the reader as I try to take them on a mental journey with me about our common reality etc... tough call so I can only count on God... I think poets/writers should be impossible to bribe hehe haha :-)...

© 2010 afeseh ngwa hilary

Monday, February 1, 2010

To those we love the most.

To those we love the most.



To those we love the most,

We give them the power to hurt us the most,

Love was never wrong,

It has never been wrong to love,

Even as intensely as you have loved Lindsey,

In spite of and despite what you got in return,

Yes love might hurt,

And very much so,

But love was never wrong,

Sometimes it is only in hindsight,

That we are wise enough to make it right,

But the tragedy or commedy if you like,

Is usually that by the time we can make it right,

The chance is gone and lost,

With every life in me,

I believe that He(God) still makes all things beautiful,

Beautiful in its time,

She might be part of some of your most cherished memories,

But now that she chose to walk away the way she did,

Even as you continue to cherish her memories,

An undue focus on them might bring you to the unfortunate place,

Where you fail to see,

And reach out to that sweeter song,

Which is always there waiting to be claimed,

By those who refuse to wallow in the regrets of the past,

And cling to the comfort of the moment,

I can imagine how you feel,

Pray for her always and wish her well,

Give instructions for your letters to be sacredly kept,

They sure will give us a window to a love which never died,

One whose undying embers will still be fanned to a fiery flame,

Any day , any time by the harmattan winds of mere sight,

Tomorrow I can bet my life you will realise,

That you were spared life long worry and sorrow,

Not being a life long partner to the woman you have loved so much.

© 2010 afeseh ngwa hilary