Category: Uncategorized

DEATH Poem: NOTHING’S MOTHER, by Hannah Levy

How you ended up here with black heels creating a heartbeat in your feet, matching the lines of makeup streaming down your face, you have no idea.
The person eulogizing your grandfather, was labeled as a “grandchild” of the deceased. The man is someone you’ve never met before.
In a beige room, you’re placed in the back row, looking at the heads of people you used to call family. Family died with him. Or maybe, even before that.
The man continues his eulogy, staring into your eyes, knowing damn well he’s standing in your place on the podium. He’s standing above a box holding the person you called Papa.
Of course, you begin to stare back blankly at the short-term boyfriend of a girl you once called cousin. Now you call her Nothing.
The voice of Nothing’s boyfriend becomes drowned out by the sight of something even more painful. Sitting next to Nothing, is the source of your rage. Her mother.
Nothing’s mother is the woman who rubs salt in your wounds and sometimes even inflicts them herself just because she’s bored.
For a woman usually quite vacuous she seems to have a separate brain for cultivating pain within the people she claims to care for.
You sit behind her back remembering the knife she left in yours. The one she twisted when choosing to purposefully leave you out of the obituary only 24 hours ago.
People keep telling you shouldn’t feel too bad about it because she left her brother, sister, and another niece out if it too. As if somehow, that’s supposed to make it better.
The metal of the folding chair in the back row digs into your thighs. You’ve dug your nails so hard into your palms that they begin to bleed.
You do this to keep yourself from slapping the makeup straight off the face of Nothing’s mother. Causing your own pain instead because after everything you still wouldn’t hurt her.
Fake grandchild keeps rambling in the background while you swallow how it feels to be fucking pissed, but care too much about attempting to placate the feelings of Nothing’s mother.
Blood boils in your veins, while Nothing’s mother holds the hand of the person you call brother. Because yes, she even manipulated your little brother.
When you look down your hands don’t look like yours anymore. Salt water sticks your hair to your cheeks and tastes like swallowing fire when you bite your lower lip.
Salt water, yes. Tears are too intimate for the numbness that clenches your jaw to the point your teeth feel as if they’re going to shatter.
As the flavor mixes with the tang of iron a thick concoction of anger lingers in the back of your throat clawing its way down your esophagus.
You’re realizing that Nothing’s mother took something else from you too. The room spins and you gasp for air, hyperventilating.
In a split second, your lungs begin to feel with the grief which had been drowned out by anger for Nothing’s mother.
All you’re wishing for is to crawl in that ugly box and be suffocated by the dirt being shoveled upon it. You sit broken, stripped of the opportunity to say goodbye, all because of Nothing’s mother.

DEATH Poem: The Graveyard, by Judith Igwedibia

The graveyard
Beside this graveyard, wailed my eyes out
Didn’t get to have a final word with you
Never got to meet you
The memories that were expected from us
Was never experienced
Had I known this would happen
I would have come earlier than you
Seen how you looked and how you played
Protected you and played with you
With no picture of you, I have forgotten how you look
I can’t say I miss, because I didn’t have enough moment with you
I will clearly say I miss what we would have had
A life full of your support and love
I would steal your clothes and you would mine
Make jokes for you, to see how wild your smile is
Tell you my ideas and we laugh at the mistakes we will make
Never afraid to breakdown and cry out loud to you
When it is tough and unyielding.
Still give me a deep hug after shouting down at you.
Having you close, would have been a pill enough to keep me going
Would have had a sister from the same mother not another
We would fight but an hour will not pass us ignoring each other
We will cry together and laugh together
Be the maid of honor on your wedding day
And you would be the first to see my ring.
I would love you fiercely and you will be the perfect big aunty for my kids.
A beautiful family we would have made
If only, if only
You are home with me not this graveyard.
Softness
Fragile deep inside her enclosed heart
Warmness erupted from her like volcano
She’s a delight to have and to cherish
In her lifetime she’s never seen hardship
Enwrapped in the sunshine from riches

Dear Death, by Moseka Ntiyia

It’s strange to write to you, the silent visitor, the uninvited guest, the shadow always loitering. But today, I must. Today, I met you—not as a concept, not as an abstraction, but as a presence, real and terrifying.

I was beneath the waves, surrounded by the waters of the sea, feeling the thrill of a newfound skill. For a brief moment, I believed I had conquered the water, transformed into one of those effortless swimmers who sail without fear. But then, something shifted. My right hand betrayed me, slipping out of its socket like a disloyal companion abandoning me at the worst possible moment.

The water became heavier, darker, and angrier. My legs kicked, my left hand flailed, but my body betrayed the calm rhythm I had learned. Panic took over. The world blurred, and in that suffocating silence beneath the waves, I saw you. You were patient, unhurried, as though waiting for me to surrender.

I won’t lie, Death—I felt your pull. For a moment, I thought I might. The pain in my arm, the water pressing against my lungs, the realization that no one above could hear me, that I might vanish without a word or a goodbye—it was all too much.

But then I thought of my pen. I thought of the words I have yet to write, the stories trapped inside me, clawing to be told. I thought of my passion for language, for turning fleeting moments into immortal lines. Could I let you take me now, while my heart still burns with so much to say? No. I am not ready, Death.

So I kicked. Not with the precision of a swimmer, but with the desperation of someone who refuses to go quietly. I clawed my way back to the surface, gasping for air, choking on salt, and clutching the life that was almost stolen.

What happened in the water? Perhaps it was your reminder that you are never far. Perhaps it was the sea’s way of humbling me, of showing me that mastery is fleeting, that pride comes with a price. Or maybe it was just a cruel coincidence, my arm choosing that moment to falter. Whatever it was, I am here, alive, and writing this letter. I have unfinished business with the world, with the people I love, and with the stories I’ve yet to tell. Death, you almost won today, but I am stubborn. I have words that need to be said, dreams that need to be pursued, and passions that need to be kindled.

When we meet again—and we will—it will not be like this. It will be on my terms, not yours. Until then, I will write.

Sincerely,
A Survivor Of Majini ya Nyali Beach

DEATH Poem: The One Little Kid with a Bright Future, by anonymous young person

Written by an anonymous young person from Echo Glen Children’s Center,
11-13-2024

Two kids
who never got taught right from wrong,
One with a bright future
and the other who took the wrong path.

The other always encouraged to do right
but can never do right himself
Always teaching
always observing
to protect and to shield the younger one from danger

He never really knew
that everything he did
would fall back
on the one little kid
with a bright future

They were twins, damn near,
doing everything together
Always with one another
because they were all they had
Their father was never there
and their mother was always sick
but at least they had each other

Until one day, the path the older one chose to take
led him to death
His little brother reacted the worst way possible
Getting into gangs,
violence,
robbery,
and even murder.

Everybody else looked at him as a criminal.
As he wishes he could just go back
to that one little kid
with a bright future.

The bright future continued to dim,
just as the life from his older brother’s eyes did

He too, had to figure out why his older brother chose this path
The only way to do that,
was to walk the path his older brother once did.

Upon walking that path,
he had suffered hardships,
that he would not have known
if he didn’t choose this for himself,
At the end of the day,
he figured out why his older brother chose
to die,
to live,
and to teach.
The way he did

We’ll never know
how that one little kid with the bright future
will turn out
because he himself,
has not figured that out

DEATH Poem: Colours and Smoke, by Mohammed Salihu

If rain is a leaking prayer
that washes the questions of yesterday’s pain,
then what is fire?
Does it burn today’s scars inside out
so tomorrow wears a new skin?

Beyond the womb of soil
that cradles bodies before their time,
beyond the umbilical cord
of a mother’s last lullaby,
beyond the slaving trees
that bow to the master wind,
lies the tunnel of my throat,
leaking a boiling scream
for the father who never came home,
for the brother swallowed by fire,
for the hands I once held
now buried beneath a sky of silence.

Who watched the rivers choke
on the ashes of their own children,
who heard the streets wail
beneath the boots of war?

And unlike the breath of nations
who swallow their acrid grief
into the belly of silence,
this land finds relief—
purging its suffering
from the casket of its past
down to the curve of its broken smile.

Leaving me choking on the dust of war,
leaving me sinking into the hole of exile.
And what can be deeper than a hole
in the heart of a land
if not a grave cradling its people?

If trials are the gravity
that drowns a nation in despair,
then love is the buoyancy
that stops us from calling the ground home.

In twirling years to come,
when the ink of our destinies fades into dust,
will we be colours, remembered and cherished?
Or will we be smoke, whispered and forgotten?

DEATH Poem: What Was Not Said, by Hannah Underhill

First, introduction
New life, enter with a cry.
No world corruption.

Sleep well, my dear.

Not fearing to fall,
So many fun, new things to try,
Time to do it all.

Live loud, my dear.

Room light always on.
Parents shake their heads and sigh,
Where has the baby gone?

New fear, my dear.

Into growing pains
Spread broken wings, learn to fly,
Fight the parents’ reins.

I cry, my dear.

Med schedule to tend.
Never shall I fear to die,
Feel far from the—

Goodbye, my dear.

DEATH Poem by Rosaleen Siroosi

scissors, forceps, knives, probes, and scalpels
i wish to be dissected,
ripped out, severed, on display,
my insides laid bare by my hollow frame.
i wish to be sterilized,
to be considered corrupted –
though stripped of my humanity,
my individuality –
capable of a purity, untouched and baptized.
i wish to be studied,
to be nothing more than a collection of organs,
ceasing to be,
yet existing lifelessly for you.
i wish to feel naked –
exposed, nude, vulnerable,
now deaf to the carnal whispers
your gaze trace upon me.
i wish to be reduced to my body,
but be more than a body to you.
i wish to be a spectacle,
as my vacant eyes momentarily meet yours,
you feel nothing,
blind to your own image within me.
i wish you to look at me,
and forget the soul that lived within,
binding us to the same fragile thread of being.

DEATH Poem: BONES IN THE WALL, by Matthew McCain

Featuring: Billy Morrison

Solid, still, losing the will to live
Cold, hard, watch me hit the ground

Hollowed out
Crumbling in doubt
Here I stand empty and without

My future that was bright and glowing
Is now hidden with moss growing

My foundation
Is devastation
From my own terminal isolation

Lights no longer shine from inside
Windows are blown out on either side
With the front doors opened wide

And now my bones in these decaying brick walls
Are all I have after it all

Tittering, shaking, everything is breaking
Chipping, cracking, watch me start shattering

Broken pieces
Rust increases
While hope inside decreases

My future that was all but assured
Is now in reverse
With absolutely nothing to preserve

My feelings
Have no meaning
As my walls start bleeding

Now nothing inside thrives
And nothing will survive
Because nothing inside feels alive

Feeling pieces starting to chip and fall
I’m crumbling across all four walls

Forgotten, unsteady, here I stand ransacked and empty
Taunted, haunted, watch me get demolished

Decaying in despair

My condition is anything but fair
Because I’m beyond repair

With my interior devastated
Everything I am is now dilapidated

And now, at the end of the day
Nothing is here to stay
As all I am fades away

Despite the past reaching out and calling
My walls are now falling
And there’s nothing to do but watch it all dissolve
Because my bones are still hidden in these walls

DEATH Poem: SALIENCE, by Évah Myles Mitchell

I died that day. A piece of me fell. Collapsed. Transformed into a primordial; sucking the tears of my crying soul. What was left of me? Death? Wallowing to avoid the joys of life – attempting to keep myself anything but grounded. I never wanted to be alive until I nearly died at the hands of someone else. Until my oxygen hit 92 : lying on a stretcher : getting wheeled in an ambulance. Is that possible? Is that sane? Am I sane. When I stared at the man poking my arm with a needle to make sure I was still alive, to make sure i bled. If I bled, therefore I was.