WELCOME TO CANADA POETRY!

Poetry - Sensibly & Soundly

O, Country

From coast to coast to coast
Three seas, gigantic waters boast
At the confluence of the seasons
Decked there as queen of reasons
Surrounded by a ten-garlanded retinue
Canada, your people are a revenue.

From cold to cold to cold
White like a glass of pure gold
The shouts of pulping maples
Invade through over ripen apples
Flooding the pale-shaded meadows
As they wake shrilly from wintry shadows

From one continent to another
Here all freely came to gather.
And voices past and present,
Permeate a unified scent
Of “O, Canada, Our country,”
In both English and French poetry

_____________________

The Transit
The TTC is not just a bus station
It is a bus destination

And best of Canada’s bus stops

With its blue and ember bus tops

To catch a bus, check the bus time

And know about rush hour’s bus prime

But do not carry a bus fare

Just sit in a nearby bus chair

And there wait for the bus driver

Who will pull down the bus lever

Which starts to run the bus engine.

None tells of the bus origin

For there is no bus conductor

Nor a bus facilitator.

All people pre-pay a bus fee

While the driver keeps the bus key.

For once they close off the bus door,

They are all busy to bus all
__________________________________

Here is Canada

Here my Canada I come.

I once visited you

With no intent at all

And saw your nakedness

With this picture now

I am haunted.

Here my Canada I am

Flesh stuck to flesh

Bones big, broad and hard,

And Canada I call you mine.

Here Canada my children accept

I am negritude and no tigritude

And Canada open wide your arms

And define nature’s soul.

Here Canada I come

To breed light from darkness

And brood over unborn destinies.

Here Canada,

I call you mine.

______________________________

Bernados

“You need Canada, Canada needs you”

in the dawn of the appraised

civilization

at the vertex of neglected childhood

was the call that saved Europe

and erected the ladder to prosperity

never equaled to elsewhere.

There along the corridors of Liverpool

naked boys and girls

squeezed in tiny squirms of Bernados

in need of food or shelter.

And Canada was there

to extend her hand

to the rescue of a genius posterity

and the legacy of goodwill

which now and always

Great Canada is known by.

By the wood structures of Halifax

by night or by day via Quebec City

and worn-out from ancient labor,

these inhabitants of the world

found the warmth of work

denied them from Great Britain

and unavailable for these children

who were neither exclusive workers

nor bonafide members of these families.

________________

Brutus

Clap your hands all you people

and shout for joy with a

voice of triumph

for the mighty have fallen.

Oh, how they have fallen,

the mighty!

Hussein is incarcerate

And Bush is deified

but Brutus has murdered Caesar

with the butt of a sword.

Saddam has murdered peace

with the face of the Iraq people

and George has

butchered morality

with the vanity of

the United Nations.

There at the Capitol

Great Julius Caesar fell

at the hands of him that he loved

and at Capital Hill

the voice of the Security Council

has been silent,

suffering from vocal phobia

a disease too hard to cure.

The rhythm of warfare

Wherever it has been played

has a tendency to send conflicting signals.

To the aggressors

it is an invitation to romance

while to the victim

is scorn poured on bald heads.

The Marcus Brutus quest

has been triggered and

everyday men and women

are reaping from its deadly effects.

______________________________
Canada

Cold and Clean

Oh Canada, Canada

Streets of marble

And terrain ever gold.

Your people busy

Subways cold and clean

And eyes blue and wet.

In these speechless elevators,

You behold avenues,

Swept and candy sellers

Malls packed and full

And men confused.

Canada,

Land of opportunities.

And Canada

Is cold and very clean.

____________________________

Subway

Thank you subway in which my mind comes to life.

For in you I hatch poetry beautiful and sensual.

You feel my heart’s corner with precious thoughts

And chip my hands with fruitful narratives.

At St. George myriads disembark in high heels

As bells and sirens cloud my ripen memory!

I hear the chuckles of young nightingales

And pay attention to the songs they sing.

Kennedy to Kipling sings my soul in pure verse

As I recite the sweet numbers of divine crescendo.

In staccatos of blank and rhymed lines

I find my being and the reason I live.

Oh, you gods that rule in these darkly tunnels,

Muses who sharpen my linguistic genius –

Stand at Bay when Castle and Frank broadly view

And all veterans keep and protect at War-den.

Stranger is when life abundantly flow at Keele,

While guns and brains are traded for favour at Jane!

_____________________________

Slave Mantras

Alien you brag, even spite yourself

that slavery had its past in antiquity.

You rave at the mention of its hatching

claiming the ancient minds boo-booed.

You are not alone, because many are as you

who stand before a throng of frustrated bosses

and pal round with industrial supervisors

who thwart saving laws of ergonomics.

Rules in the executive boardroom

ring a different tune from those on the floor.

Pain and its cousin, broken joys

wrangle incessantly in disgruntled lines.

At shipping and receiving stations

paper and palm-tracks crambo through coils

irritating already fragile eardrums

caused by a decade of repeated round motions.

Breathless hearts pound into damned warehouses,

ignoring that blood is thinner than diesel,

while shaven bosses lax through idle offices,

imbibing coffee and chanting slave mantras
____________________________

Wealth

Oh wealth, oh money, oh riches!

Oh mighty, oh power, oh strength

Oh wealth – do not deny me

Oh money – do not elude me

Oh, if you can, embrace me

Oh, I beg, do not forsake me

I knew the merciless heart of lack

And the miserable hand of poverty

In both, human dignity retreats

And the stiff hand of embarrassment rules

Sense and reason have taken an easy way

And knowledge is a whip for beggars.

I have asked you, lover of none

And beseeched your counsel, accepter of all

Because in you, wit and foolhardy trust

And fame answers only to stinky pouches.

___________________________

Northern Hemisphere

I sing to your beautiful skies and days

Oh universe of the magnificent North.

As a child I only thought of rains

And sun-scotched patches of October.

In dreams and visions, wisdom slept pale;

In floated endless whispers of love.

The posts of the universe in twos posit,

Walking between thickets of dry sands

And reaching the valleys of white and chill.

Our minds have raced childhood fantasies -

Comparing you only to divine Aphrodite.

A child in terror-ripped village

Has vowed to drown the darling of South

Calling her Snow and mirage.

_____________________________

Ashen Pebbles

The hilarity of them who thump through the thumb

Of ashen pebbles;

In which they thrum through the stricken crumb

Of sunken fables;

The thrill of them whose thrust falls on numb

Aces of shrunken tables;

Who hung the tongue of a slyly throated lamb

With molten cables

These hard earned medals will only be metals

Damned to the ghettoes;

These blooms subjected to a loom of broken petals

Gammed without vetoes;

These garlands from the land of our twisted sepals,

Our Jammed mementoes;

And the stories of our glories deified in the temples

Of hammed potentials

A throne thrown in jumbled destinations

By a confederation of nations,

These high hopes of childhood hijacked by fate,

Becoming the coveted bait of hate;

And the gentle voice of discrimination

Breeds consternation

In blanket canopied hearts of immigrants,

Enslaved by the lavish junkets of grants

___________________________

Goodbye to Sara

Joshua used to ignore

The sleeps of her tongue

And Sara never

Minded her language

She told Joshua a story

Of the romantic old Peter

And Sara never

Minded her language.

One day she told him

That he was half as good

And Sara never

Minded her language.

She said Peter was rich

And very active in bed

And Sara never

Minded her language.

And Sara told Joshua

To dress like her old boyfriends

And Sara never

Minded her language.

One day Joshua met Jane

And Jane who was down to earth

Understood Joshua

For who he was.

Joshua came back home happy

Sara despised his singing

And Sara never

Minded her language.

Joshua failed to turn up home

And later phoned Sara

And Joshua told Sara next time

To mind her language.

Goodbye to Sara.

___________________________

Journey

The journey,

Will begin at Lusaka

Via Harare to

London.

Lusaka

Harare

Heathrow

Pearson

Calgary

Joburg

And I will be there.

You could start yours.

From withdrawing aside

To think and plan.

Then start the journey.

You could end in Manila

Or in Ndola or Moscow.

___________________________

Lights at Christmas

The light burns brightly to the end.

All things look good and very calm.

And flowers by nature invade the land

In the presence of candles and carols.

It is Christmas Day in Toronto

And true bright light shines to the full

Over the heart to the very finish.

We remember these bright lights

And the meaning that they present:

These gifts abroad and the other Gift,

May our Christmas always be bright
______________________________

Music in the Sky

i am amazed how that
above the clouds
that are above a gigantic ocean
beats resounding melodies
in symphony of superb tunes
and sweet voice of Celine Deon,
and the electric vocals of Richie,
and the vibrancy of Cocker
together with the beaming
eloquence of Dolly-
how that these music go
on playing in the landless paths
in those heavens far above.
the sound so beautiful
in those snowy azures,
bringing earthly pleasure.
these ecstasies are heavily pried for
when the listening becomes intense
and these beats flap the hips of the engine.
there is music in heaven
bright and beautiful
drawing a soothing feeling of laughter.
in these skies the busy-ness of life
and the pressure of brewing
are all swallowed up
compacted and recycled
and hearts beat in chorus.
nearing the soils
melodies begin to faint,
reminder that corruption
and sister pain are closer.
these sweet waves,
softer than the soul -
and still, there is music in the sky.

____________________________

Bodies

In volumes they squeeze the scent of melting sweat

To the rhythms of unheard sounds

Surrounded by dark frost thick and sweet

Magnolia of silhouetted compact discs

Play upon dense magnets of blood

And bodies file in singles to the abattoir

Of self-indulgency they flood

Somehow there is light in the night of moving shadows

Boys accompanied by identity cards,

Men surrounded by tattooed butts,

And women carpet-combed in the middles;

To life they toss flipping cups fluffed with lethal foam

And they never understand what slaps their backs

Nor the reforms their derelicts form.

Throngs of mercurial bodies bump into each other,

Their skeletons fight to line in thin spaces

By reservation of their famed disc jockeys

And they tire just after they gather.

____________________________

Nests of Newmarket

She looks through the window

In the gravel by green meadows

As her heart dances to the flaps

Of the skipping scarlet macaw

This uniform, so naturally dark

This scream, which shudders nature

These parrots, in their raw colours

Their wings, readily they wag

Here and there moves whimper

Up and down their beaks simper

Side to side raises echoes deeper

Tether to thither lovers get hyper
__________________________

Canadian Spring

The sun doeth shine steadily in Canuck

The flowers doth wave happily in Kanata

The grass in mountainless prairies

And cars through west speed to east

Spring doeth shine on caffeinated brains

Cows and bears in shades hide

And farmers on pumpkin skins drilleth

To shun devils from spreading colours

___________________________

Down Recession Street

Down recession street

Nothing out of the ordinary is seen

Green loans and maple trees line-up

And the same old buildings stand

Down recession street

Large Ford cars drive as usual

Trucks and vans stop at red lights

And Esso gas station is busy as always

Down recession street

Chrysler plants are closing down

The work force is reduced to graffiti

And all production is done by managers

Down recession street

I introduced myself as Mwewa

Bearing deep semblance with Petawawa

While GM plants shut down in Oshawa

And all look for help from Ottawa

_____________________________

Highways

In lanes two and one they drive

As trucks and vans swerve in and out

To and fro work hearts race in throbs

As they speed through round abouts

No matter what you wish to do

Not to follow set out traffic rules

Is to risk your safety and survival

For people who drink and drive pay

Do what you can to reach the end

You will not wrong the rear mirrors

Nor offend your sober-rested mind

And thus you escape unseen errors

Loved ones all need you breathing

For although you drive all alone

You carry in you family and friends

And to arrive alive becomes your thrive

Brace all you in this Highway of heroes
For it weighs less in high nays of zeroes

____________________________

Four Messengers

They may come from anywhere

The four messenger from hell

In their path and from nowhere

They arrive without a bell

AIDS makes her nest in Africa

H1N1 lays her young in America

SARS leases her spores in Asia

CANCER rests her head in Persia

Dig up mass graves in a desert

Deny Hitler a noon dessert

For in race as in colour he fuses

Jews and blacks he kills in gasses

No-one is innocent in Europe

None, when discriminations gallop

America pleads “not guilty” to blood

And Africa is submerged by a flood

____________________________

Shakespeare Unedited

Thou in thy dream saw Shakespeare

In the dead of night saw thou a spear

For the wife of that venerable Macbeth

This lady of vice and untimely birth

Thee in thy dream also saw Portia

In kind and mind as Obama’s Sasha

Yet in thy wake watches Sinatra

The nard which played Cleopatra

Whence that might Julius Caesar

In battles trekked he with no visa

To surpass the spoils of Richmond

And to the Senate be gave diamond

Thou wrote on thy knee: Elizabethan

Which thou recanted to biblical Nathan

Who in predictions of David or Pharaoh

Who the priming looks of Romeo

Would dare not crown Richard the Third

For who wore bloody gowns unaided

____________________________

Mulock Drive

There beneath a green-faced forest

By the highway astride four-o-four

Our minds conceived lively lines

By the intersection of rushing hearts

In the upper country of Newmarket

By the love of young Mulock Drive

And the enchanting Harry Walker

There we walked with singing pens

Lady who faithfully works

Mother whose children she laps

Wife of a man of many plans

For daily she dropped him there

So long we have religiously come

To these fountains of living pulses

To the land where money sanely brag

And men seldom go on retirement
____________________________

Stolen Hearts

She refused to let her heart away

While her instigators she kept at bay

A man with many plans she would sway

While heroes never danced her way

She would come early to Victoria bay

To grant hundred suitors their pay

And she counted months till May

When she would pick a suitable day

In suits and breasted jackets they pray

Her heart strong, her soul as a shy prey

But she knew when men might spray

Their evil tactics of the matter of grey

____________________________

Hips

It dangles lazily down

The square-shaped back-head,

Blondish, shinning in the shades

Of the elements’ brilliance

Like a flock of newly-born,

It dances to the gyrating hips,

And elegantly swings side to side

Along her darling skin,

Simple, slimy and sizzling

The bends within its concaves,

Reflecting the singing whispers

Of perfect affinity. It leaves a gap –

And her dancing skirt frolics with

Enticing rhythms –

The hips shower down to

The knuckles, raising spasms of

Splendor and

The lips shyly branches to the

Dripping colours;

Hair so fair,

A face drawn with grace

__________________________

More for Nothing

He woke up in the heart of the night

“More of the same,” he spoke to himself

He gazed from his left and his right

He was alone all by himself

He dressed in his old pairs of pajamas

Which spoke to him all night long

“See, you are still not famous

You wonder and ponder, for how long?”

He tried to shut up his voluminous soul

Closer to him than his own shadow

He realized he was his own foe

And all he chased was a dying shadow

He was going to decide to change

Because he couldn’t afford the same

But he was going to met a challenge

If not, he would hate being the same

“How can I shake this misery,” he said

Foes and friends live under the same sun

And from the same toil they are paid

Oh, how unfair it is under the sun!

He dragged himself towards his library

Old and new books shyly stared at him

He had last been there in February

And no-one stood in for him

“All these books are banks of insight”

He was thinking his thoughts aloud

“But they bring me nothing to bite”

He now decided to speak up loud

___________________________

Tiger's dooW

When the mighty fall

So their arrogance go

In praises and song they are sung

But forlorn they never again sprung

When the mighty fall

Media houses make more

They mislay when they are low

While in past victory they flow

When the mighty fall

And their worlds with them all

For in their stories, deified

In their fall, they are satanized

When the mighty fall

Their pomps with them falter

In fame their worths ever glow

In their shame all their prides swelter

When the mighty fall

Should we also not gol?

We love them in their glory

Shouldn’t we love them in their sorry?

TOP

O, Country

Here is Canada

Here my Canada I come.

I once visited you

With no intent at all

And saw your nakedness

With this picture now

I am haunted.

Here my Canada I am

Flesh stuck to flesh

Bones big, broad and hard,

And Canada I call you mine.

Here Canada my children accept

I am negritude and no tigritude

And Canada open wide your arms

And define nature’s soul.

Here Canada I come

To breed light from darkness

And brood over unborn destinies.

Here Canada,

I call you mine.

______________________________

Bernados

“You need Canada, Canada needs you”

in the dawn of the appraised

civilization

at the vertex of neglected childhood

was the call that saved Europe

and erected the ladder to prosperity

never equaled to elsewhere.

There along the corridors of Liverpool

naked boys and girls

squeezed in tiny squirms of Bernados

in need of food or shelter.

And Canada was there

to extend her hand

to the rescue of a genius posterity

and the legacy of goodwill

which now and always

Great Canada is known by.

By the wood structures of Halifax

by night or by day via Quebec City

and worn-out from ancient labor,

these inhabitants of the world

found the warmth of work

denied them from Great Britain

and unavailable for these children

who were neither exclusive workers

nor bonafide members of these families.

________________ Brutus

Clap your hands all you people

and shout for joy with a

voice of triumph

for the mighty have fallen.

Oh, how they have fallen,

the mighty!

Hussein is incarcerate

And Bush is deified

but Brutus has murdered Caesar

with the butt of a sword.

Saddam has murdered peace

with the face of the Iraq people

and George has

butchered morality

with the vanity of

the United Nations.

There at the Capitol

Great Julius Caesar fell

at the hands of him that he loved

and at Capital Hill

the voice of the Security Council

has been silent,

suffering from vocal phobia

a disease too hard to cure.

The rhythm of warfare

Wherever it has been played

has a tendency to send conflicting signals.

To the aggressors

it is an invitation to romance

while to the victim

________________

Brutus

______________________________
Canada

____________________________

Subway