Category: Poetry Festival

THE 14-YEAR OLD STUDENT, HER TEACHER AND HER GOD, by RENE EUAGGELIZO

http://www.irenesnuggets.wordpress.com

STUDENT:

It’s me again,Lord

Thank you for the chicken mummy fried for dinner yesterday

If only she had added a little more salt, it would have been awesome.

(PLEASE DON’T TELL HER, she can easily cancel the burger king date)

Can you please allow my younger sister to forget about the Oreos ice-cream

this afternoon, so I can take it tonight and say it was a mistake?

God, (sighs deeply) is school really important?

I know the bible says that we should study to show ourselves approved but

What if I don’t want to prove myself to anybody? (throws hands up in despair)

I mean with teachers like Mr. Alphius, Mr. Lucovic and Ms. Irene,

how can I ever be happy? Ms. Irene

It’s not about her looks, ermmmmm…. She’s pretty… you created her well,

But does she know how difficult it is to meet her homework deadlines?

That woman is so difficult to convince… soooooo difficult that

On a difficulty scale from 1 to 10

She is probably like 9.92341

And about Mr. Alphius let me not even go there

He’s a pain

I cannot even ask him a simple question

Without him blasting me

I mean how I am supposed to learn if I can’t even ask questions?

Lord, I know you say we should put our trust in you and you’ll provide for us

But Checkpoint Exams is just beyond my faith.

We’ve written like 5 progression tests and I don’t know what to believe anymore

I always pray Lord; you know I do

But I never get the grades I expect

Lord, trust me, I want to have blind Faith in you

But at my age, it’s very difficult to when there are so many distractions

And my calls to you are unanswered

Dear lord I know I sin a lot like…. a lot

And always ask for forgiveness and sometimes if I was you

I wouldn’t even forgive myself

Remember the time I lied to Mr. Aikins that I had done my homework even though I spent my whole night talking to Jayden on the phone. And I was searching in my bag as if I had done it in the first place.

Lord I’m sorry for all those times that I tried to talk to you

And got distracted by my phone.

LORD! The final exams are almost here

I will put you first

I will put you second

I will put you third

In fact, its all about you, JESUS.

Please help me

I’m sorry

TEACHER:

Finally, I have time to talk to you

With all the marking and teaching I have to do

I never have time though I know I should make time

Lord my students are failing and I don’t know what to do

Am I a bad teacher??????

Lord, I have learnt that teaching is a calling.

Could it be that perhaps you didn’t call me?

I have tried so many things but nothing has worked

In fact, my boss said if they didn’t pass their next test

I would be fired.

I can’t lose another job…. I need the money

I’m not even done with my masters

degree and I’m desperate.

How do you even select the students who come to my class?

Rosa? Lord, Rosa? Oh

What did I do wrong? I have read the story of Dr. Ben Carson but God

This 4-4-2 formation of

Rosa-Leila-Dana-Justine

Claire-Addison-Rae-Charlie

Chase and Anthony ………………… is just like Chelsea against Bayern Munich :3,0

Rosa and Claire…this girl never stops talking with that other girl Leila

Who doesn’t know how to respect her elders?

Oh God

Dana and Charlie…. and I’ve tried Lord. Trust me, I have.

I don’t know how to help her.

How can you get 7 out of 30 on a test about a topic I just taught the day before?

I mean is it even believable?

I feel like Chase and Anthony just want to see me have a mental breakdown.

Lord, your word says we can overcome any challenge

but these children are more than mountains

Can you make them plains?

Lord, I know I’m not supposed to complain but I’ve had enough.

You didn’t promise that the road will be smooth

but this one I am on is worse than rocky springs!

I’m calling on you Lord. Please answer.

GOD:
(Sighs) O my child!

Not this again

We’ve had this conversation many times

You don’t seem to get it

How many times do I have to say

That you can’t do anything without me?

Maybe if I was the first thing on your mind in the morning

I would’ve noticed you.

It seems you only come to me in times of need

Or in tough situations.

I said in my Word that I will deliver you in times of trouble

But I also said you must love me with all you heart, soul and body.

Your lifestyle doesn’t include me and

It breaks my heart.

I need you to trust me

Trust me when I say seek me first and all the things you want

Will be yours

Trust me when I say I will be with you always

You’ve forgotten that Rosa is my child too?

Sometimes it’s just not her fault

But your fault for not knowing that foolishness

Is bound to the hearts of children

Or if you knew

You didn’t drive it away well.

You are trying your best

I can see

And you made the right choice coming to me

I’m a very jealous God

And I’ve made it very clear that I don’t tolerate any

Type of idols

I will say it clearly

Your phone is your idol

You don’t believe me?

What’s the first thing you think about when you get up?

When your mother takes it away from you

You look like a day-old baby who has been deprived of milk for 8 hours!

I miss those times when you used to read your bible everyday

And be happy to go to church everyday

Singing on the way, “everyday”

Now you find it boring ANYWAY

So next time you pray to me

Consider me,

Put me first in your life

and don’t exploit My Grace.

The irony, by Coco

http://www.poemsfromheartcom.wordpress.com/

What are you tryna do? I’m somewhat confused.
Why are you on the ground, acting like you’re bruised?

Why is it dat you seem to suffer?
When I was the one who had it tougher.
And even though I couldn’t have had it rougher,
I wished at least you were happy, duffer.

A little of smartness, with a hint of heart.
Your special recipe. Your perfect black art.
I was the one left with a bleeding heart.
So why are you acting like you’re the one hurt?

The beautiful dream that I so lovingly built,
Covered in red with the blood that you spilt.
You chose to be the one holding the hilt.
So why all of a sudden, the facade of guilt?

I was the one caged in what was your lair.
So why do you seem like the one in despair?
You take the blame and act like you care.
Trying to make me feel bad? Isn’t it unfair?

You said you liked dark but your favorite was red.
Oh how I loved you! For you, I bled.
But you wouldn’t see it. Turned your back on me instead.
And you say you loved me too now dat I’m dead?

Why are you still alone?
I thought that we were done.
You say you’re trying to atone.
But what’s dead will never be reborn.

Keep your sarcasm and your wisdom.
You can go back to where you came from.
Barge in my life and played the system.
You’re the criminal. Not the victim.

What suffering do you talk about? What pain?
When it was me who was left barely sane.
You won the battle. So why dont you go reign?
Declare yourself the king, almighty and vain.

TALE OF A MISOGYNIST!, by Debasish Majumdar

Listen dear; you are behaving rudely in bed
You are hurting me, can’t you get?
‘Shut up you bitch
You are my better half; you have no right to make any hitch
You are being crafted by nature to satiate my desire
I am adorning you out of my wealth which I only aspire
My wealth I offer
To make a grand coffer
This suits you as per my desire
I am contented to display you as an object for other do admire.

You are merely an object of lust
You exist only out of my imagination which only I trust
Out of my obsession I dare to construct an expensive edifice
Where my endeavor will only endorse my sincere emphasis for mundane synopsis
People only admire my love for you
Hardly they will care you are beautiful, only they will focus that I adore you
You exist out of my caprice
My presence will dominate your existence and price
You have no choice apart from bowing to me
Dear, I live only for thee.

I wonder why female
Making so noise with acrimonious gale
Who they are without us
We male only make prolific tribute to their fetus
We alone determine their existence
Without ‘Y’ chromosome do they have any presence?
Still I am amazed by their brazen clamor
Claiming their rights and entity with huge blabber!

I am happy to declare with flair
It is man who determine the history of all human affair
Please don’t hate but bear
Am I not depicting all men’s heart’s symphony?
Females are claiming they are subjected to male’s atrocity
I cannot realize why they uproar with such mendacity?
Do they have any distinct entity?
For which we revere and salute them hastily?

I truly despise them
They are the reason of all mayhem
Human history reveals
For them only all ruckus unveils and reels
I truly don’t care about their fetus
They only can bear Judas and Jesus
Who cares how human history rolls?
Sexual equilibrium is a myth, having no reasonable role
Who truly cares about amniotic fluid?
Only caring of Oxygen and gamut of external gases for their existence and relief!

Today I Walked In The Rain, by Kaya Nicole

Today I walked in the rain

Felt the cool water hit me as I released all the worries of the days before

I let go and didn’t have a care in the world.

In that moment I was free to be myself in the purest form possible.

What a blessing it was to walk down the streets unnoticed by all.

Smelling the flowers that are for sale at the little flower shop on the corner.

Seeing all the delicious pastries in the display window outside of the bakery that has the best chocolate cake.

And watching all the people rushing to their next destination while letting the beauty of life pass them by

My heart aches for the joy they are missing out on.

As the rain pours over me, the ache decreases as I see my favorite couple.

The old gentleman that looks to be no more than 50, but is really in his 70’s.

He’s holding the umbrella for his wife who just happens to be his high school sweetheart.

They walk unhurriedly up the street for their weekly date at the bistro he proposed to her at all those years ago.

Once again my heart is filled with love.

So much love that I stand there and smile.

Caught in my moment, I missed my name being called.

Your touch on my shoulder brings me back to reality.

The smile on your face says that you already knew I’d be drenched.

You learned years ago my love of the rain and walking in it.

Out of your bag, You produce a towel for me to dry off some

Before pulling me in the crook of your arm ignoring my wet clothes.

We walk home under the umbrella just like the old couple and my spirit is content.

Today I walked in the rain and in the rain I found peace…

JUDE AND LEO – NICU, by Yvonne Gluyas

Twin babies in clear plastic boxes.
I reach my hand in and touch one.
Machines measure their lives
in heartbeats and breaths.

Their environment is controlled,
but my emotions are not.

One baby clasps his fist around
the tip of my little finger.

The second stirs,
reaches towards his twin,
separated after just
thirty weeks together.

I am part of their souls,
they are part of my life.

One day they will hold my hands
and not just the tip
Of my little finger.

For Jude and Leo
Born 16th December 2019

To celebrate my first meeting with them on 20th December 1919 in NICU (Hobart Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit).

© Yvonne Gluyas

NEFARIOUS VISION WITH EVIL INTENTION!, by Debasish Majumder

Eagle, Vulture and Kite
They all fly in extreme height
Still they can focus their prey
To satiate their appetite in gay
They do depend on carcass
On plane surface living beings serve their focus
Dead bodies are their source for subsistence
At least they don’t crave for surplus to avoid their fast
What a grand surveillance from top they enjoy in ruckus!

In Earth’s plane
Humans are sharing their food with an amazing train
With stray dogs, not having any hesitation and neither desirous to refrain
They both need to satisfy their stomach
Compromising with the available situation
Where they have no choice but appear in stark!

We human can envisage alone
Birds eye or our eye
Which is supreme, which is prime
Which can evaluate the crisis irrespective of any echelon
Eyes too need food
Though Cornea having no blood vessels but continuously serving us in gratitude
It exists out of our physical structure
Without which it has no such gravity and could align our faculty in rapture!

We majority are starving in the present global scenario
Though we contribute our labor to construct all available beauty
We religiously maintained our duty
Cities and Towns are dazzling for our sincere rendering of labor since eternity!

Alas! We are subjected to naked repression
Abrupt lock down made our life miserable, nobody is heeding to our deplorable situation
Few at the top are craving
We should be quarantined or imprisoned for an infinite regime
Without any provision to heal
We will perhaps soon die
We wonder who will construe a platform for us to sigh
How long we will be subjected to few eccentrics vendetta
Profit seeking few megalomaniacs matrix how long embroil our souls with such anathema!

THE FOREST, by Novia Rika

I was born in the heart of teak forests
where most of the roads were gravelled
then spent my childhood only a sprint away
from the sea and the woods

My play yard was piles of logs
under the array of mahogany and saman trees
where I hunted anything from the trees;
Mahogany fruit shells with its bitter winged seeds,
monkey pods, or the honey-like frozen sap
that were dangling from the barks

I used to runaway from my mother’s nap time calling
Flee to the open hill above the sea surface
Then running down the hill to catch the ocean breeze
together with my closest friend, the youngest brother

Six years living on the seaside
we learn about how this world is continuously moving
like the tidal waves, the wandering wind,
the scattered sand on the beach, the fishermen’s boats
and also us, moving from town to town

Me and my brother are the youngest of the family
So we always attached more to our parents
As our three older siblings had been roaming into the adults world
Me and him, we always stayed together

Puberty is hard, and I was always alone in my mind
Questioning about nothing that I could understand
Maybe he felt the same way too, or even worse
He was like me, too quiet
He only had higher hopes of pride,
that maybe he buried them deep under his skin
like the piles of dry leaves that we were playing on our childhood forest

One day, all of sudden his mind became a cocoon
Swirling in webs of memories and reality
Slowly the innerlight on his eyes dimmed
Shadowed by his gibberish words,
or sometimes the unknown rage

His skin was changing, wrinkled and putrid
I’ve seen it dry and suppurate
His words were changing, it was like a prose
with disordered storyline and biased characters
And his eyes, his eyes were like a wild forest
Too deep to roam, too dense to scour
I could never understand what it feels like
Lost in a deep forest without a hand to hold

So it’s true, that life is always moving
I threw a goodbye to embrace a new life,
with heart as heavy as bogs
What sadden me was that he couldn’t be moving anymore
It crystallised in my mother’s tears, her biggest grief
Yet she offered the biggest love

Until the end of her life they had a special bond
As all of her children were clinging desperately
next to her hospital bed at 2 AM
Tens miles away he loitered around the gate
of his forced shelter, restlessly asking to go home
We didn’t even had a chance to tell him that his mother is dying
So maybe her soul visited him for the last time, her long lost son

Now I don’t know how to bring his soul back
My brother, my closest friend back then
It is the second year without my mother
And it has been years without him
Still, we’re living in the forest
Different from another

—–

BIO

Novia Rika Perwitasari. An Indonesian poetess. She has won first prize at several Indonesia poetry competitions. She is the founder of Poetry Prairie website, Indonesian delegate at 19th World Festival of Youth & Students in Russia. Her poems have been published in various poetry anthologies in Indonesia, and her English poems also published in international platforms such as Dying Dahlia Review, Optimum Zine, Poetry Kit and “Haiku Masters” by NHK TV Japan. She also took part on translation project of literature works by Intersastra Publisher.

Poetry by Noemi D

When my babies were born I was afraid.
Their tiny brown bodies so fragile
that even a hand placed too low
or too high
would fail to support their necks
and they would break.
They grew as strong and as American as the trunks of apple trees
but still I am afraid
of the intentional placement of knees
on brown and black necks
not fragile but weakened
by these chains that don’t look heavy until you’ve worn them a hundred years.
I watched my babies as they slept
my heart stopped each time their chests took a millisecond too long to rise
but they always did rise, and then I too could breathe again.
To suffocate must feel
like you are drowning slowly
like the air is right there if you could just reach the surface
if only the blurry hands and voices begging for your breath were strong enough to break through and save you.
Instead only the black pavement held you like a mother’s chest until there was no more sky.
And the strange slow violence of your murder played again and again like nursery rhymes
like prayer
reminding us to choose between breath and fear.

Poetry by a.c.t

he is sitting at the kitchen table

and I can hear the fridge humming

this air is thick with tension, please,

I wish you would just cut me into pieces

with that dull dinner knife you use

please cut me into pieces

until I am so small that I can fit

up in the cracks in the ceiling

or into the grooves of our tiled floor

because I cannot stand to share a meal with you

where neither of us

dare speak a word

a.c.t

@poemsbyact

I am the boss, by Mihir Modi

Oh boy, here I am, I am the boss,
Don’t ever try, my way to cross.
This is a camera and not an eye,
You have to follow my orders and don’t ever ask why.
I am the one, who can divide zero with negative,
You might be given once in 5 years a small incentive.
Don’t ever expect a leave for sad demise or function preparation,
Because it is directly proportional to the sudden new project that needs
attention.
You cannot be my favorite unless you are my pet poodle in the office,
“I’M ALWAYS RIGHT” is the only rule in this premise.
You can’t be classified as a human so don’t dare to fall ill,
Work load you will get is directly proportional to my mood and my will.
You have to be on time and don’t ask me when to leave,
As your timings are not the same as mine, and that you should believe.
I’ll be considerate and spare you on Saturdays and Sundays,
But do not expect mercy on rest five days.
Remember, I’ll always take credit for your work,
Miss a single comma, full stop or an apostrophe and you will have to rework.
You must find your pride in fault findings and public humiliation,
Dare you fight with me and on grounds of “INCOMPETENCE” you get
your letter of termination.
So the rules are clear and welcome to my world where I am the boss,
And let me remind you, never try my way to cross.