Mama

Here I cry
My foster years I evoke
Like a stray canine
They abused, so cursed me
I impute no one
But your early parting
Their espousal is naught
If you were alive and kicking
They say you had humour
Was tall and slender
With a mouth of a shark
Prompting them to have
Double thoughts
Paying us a visit
But absolute ethic
You imparted
Nurturing my charisma
And a testimony
To my life

By Michael Geketa



My sacred birth song

Your love was written on the sun’s eyeballs
At the very moment you conceived my being
In your uterus in a form of a blob of blood
I knew your love, felt your emotions
and experienced the strains
I heard your secret whispers to my father too
“My blood was cut short,” you cried
I laughed and sang slowly looking through you
I saw him smiling and embraced you
I knew he loved me to be born
One night I struggled inside you
You cried aloud and screamed for help
The night was cold and wet but it was my arrival time
I heard the tribal birds singing to welcome me
I sprang through your black groins
between the sacred mounds of your fortress
and landed in the land of my heritage
My grandmother grabbed my soft being
with her pig greased naked hands
You were unconscious
but heard her singing the sacred song
“Oh! The young woman, you have killed and eaten a bird.”
You knew her indirect language
that a baby boy was born to you
It was my birth
You introduced me to your breasts
I sucked and fed in love
I grew and matured, knowing your soft doctrines
but my father seduced me into hiding, belted me to accept
and believe in his laws
despised your kind soft world
but I am now both of you
your love is I
I knew it all from the start
Not after birth.

By Michael Kigl Kawage

To our mothers

The world speaks for itself to prove
A mothers’ great labour of love
This most excruciating role
And its pains taken as a whole
When compared against all life’s call
Is far significant of all

Within your wombs our seeds were sown
In perfect still so safe and sound
Within you our cradle of life
Where our tiny hearts starts to thrive
And nurtured forth into a man
Thus here’s the world, here I am

You gave joy that never runs dry
You gave me wings that I may fly
You gave me your heart for my throne
You gave me your all, my life shone
Your labour of love and all this
Was all given to me gratis

You mothers of varying stature
All blessed with one divine nature
Down hist’ry less acknowledged yet
Had borne great minds that changed the earth
With your firm and all trusted hand
Raised great conquerors of the land

Though a thousand words I utter
Failed to appreciate you better
Praises are just flowery words
This ode to you is just mere words
‘till I enthrone you in my heart
As the daughter of God the Great

By Samson and Dulcie Siwong

Guidance

Human life is haste
You can not do all things at once
Not seeking God is a waste
Life melts like ice

And disappears like vapour
Nothing in this world is new
So first seek God’s favour
Because everything is in God’s view

Earnestly seek God first
Live in complete faith
So you will quench your thirst
And you will not faint

Building without God is in vain
God is my concrete wall
Word has power to move mountains
God is in total control

By Joanna Guiop Pile