PageforAfrica3

Night Commuters

by Zayra Ives

San Francisco, CA, USA

Someone said on the news radio

that they caught the rebel

who forced us to kill

our own families

and wander in the night

but we know the limits

of forgiveness

and survival,

so tonight we will walk

in darkness bare foot

covered with rags.

Don't ask me if I want to go home

because there is no home

and the smell of gasoline

still lingers as rust blood

in my mouth.

They may threaten to nail

my tongue to a board

but I will not tell them

what I have witnessed

of human flesh.

Truth is not reserved

only for the dead. I know that.

I have seen freedom chopped

to pieces. I know the color

of life as it seeps

from a face.

My heart has already been carved

out and left in an open field

for vultures, so I walk

until my feet bleed,

until the world

opens its doors

to help.

by zayra yves

Contact: crowned.compassion@gmail.com

The Hope

by Antipodi (Stuart Chugg)

Melbourne, Australia

Vile minds concoct and deceive

They appeal to the darkside of many who believe

Racial supremacy, Bigotry, Exclusivism, Powermad

These are the demons that kill and make me so sad

Yet..

With blind eyes we see and watch on

Soon our precious diversity may be truly gone.

The this vile ooze seeps to invade and stay

They dull and plunder our very minds this way

Why..

Does a loving mother cry to a wilderness of ears

Pain and suffering has been repeating and going many years

So why do we not speak out with tremendous cry

Do we just shrivel away in a corner whilst millions die

I ask..

Is there hope or has all reason and goodness forever flown

Do we just sit smile , ignore whilst the evil becomes home grown

No , we must as brother and sisters unite against this awful tyranny

We must stand up, be counted and yell ..

Then..

love and tolerance will become our standard banner and freedom bell..

Antipodi (Stuart Chugg)

Peace

by Rob Ganson

Washburn WI. USA

Fleece of the lambs, bloodied by dogs of war

Peace is the gift I would leave my children

Love is the message I shout from mountains

Above all, may our hearts grow generous

we all love our children,desire calm,

see the light of human understanding

"What happened to the golden rule?" I plead.

but no one seems to hear, or to heed it

lagging behind in our evolution

nagging fears about war, and pollution

This isn't the world that I want to leave

fist pounding on table, I scream to all

we mustn't forsake them, hear the great call

See the light,do it right, give peace a chance

The following poem is a rewrite of a poem that was published in a book called 'Poets For Africa' edited by Susann Flammang in 1986. The copyright has reverted to Mike Scheidemann.

President, 'Voices', The Israel English Poetry Association.

Hunger – The Other Face of War

Most times, so wrapped in pain of incompleteness, each one of us,

We overlook our basic needs and the hungers of others, wrought by warfare.

For some of us a self-absorbing suffering is an indulgence, a soft cross to bear;

We can no longer afford it what with the genocides that plague the earth

And old Ma Africa leading the rest with sunken breasts where flies feed

Off the tears of the eyes of children. Meanwhile the sanguine claim;

Life’s hardships surely exalt human love. I say; remember Rwanda and Dafur

Where the stranger reaps dark harvests, seemingly forever.

There as elsewhere on tired soils death is a wearisome visitor, a carping relative

Who passes through like the sultry wind but whose departure is long overdue.

Surely the greatest irresponsibility is borne

By anguished beings who choose to ignore

And cruelly rest inactive. Only Mother Nature

Can play the posture of indifference as her right?

Have we not severed the incestuous chords

With the natural world embedded in its soils

And chosen the expression of brotherhood

For our individual freedom?

Darkness may seduce and destroy the curiosity

Of children. When can we all embrace again

The joy of the child-like, our natural right?

Let us not be content to bemoan and accept;

Let us bear all the woes of the world

Upon our collective shoulder.

-------------------------------------------

ANGER NOT THE GODS

by Tom Berman

This is a land

of ancient gods

They have not left this landscape

They reside in the anguish of the stones

in the gray bark of carob trees

and the dimness of karst caves

They sigh in dry thorn stalks

on summer hillsides

Their breath hovers

in whirls of dust

This is an old, hard land

with a surfeit of memory

It does not take much

to stir passions

or memories

when the wind rustles

the leaves in the olive groves

Tread lightly on the land

of ancient gods.

-----------------------------------------------

Published in Shards, a Handful of Verse (Tom Berman, Writers Club

Press,2002).

------------------------------------------------------

Tom Berman

Editor in Chief

Israel Voices Anthology

Kibbutz Amiad,

Galil Elyon 12 335

Israel

e-mail:berman@amiad.org. il

tberman@ocean.org.il

Tel: 972-4-6909476

What if?

by Bill Healey, Liverpool, England

I’ve fixed up a room for my daughter

For when she returns from Lidice

She will come back to featherbed comfort.

She never came back.

The room still awaits her

Because what if?

I’ve fixed up a room in my father’s house

For when all my brothers and sisters come together

They will know their father and their mother.

They never came back.

The room still awaits them

Because what if?

I’ve fixed up a room in my heart

For when my hope returns from nowhere

It will find a home filled with sunshine.

It never came back.

The room still awaits

Because what if?

No Reason To Kill

by Margaret J. Brown-Bailey

New York, USA

When I think of genocide Darfur comes to mind,

I think how can anyone hate their human kind?

To maim, kill or antagonize because of one's legacy or profile,

This is downright hostile.......

There is no reason to kill,

Taking a life is not a joy or a thrill,

Hating someone because of their heritage,

Makes me think that mental care is imperative,

Have people in the world all gone mad?

To this question I ponder......

Because I feel sad that they are terminally insane,

Why else would they rain down wrath on a people so humble?

Causing them a lifetime of pain.

Copyright, Margaret J. Brown-Bailey, 2005

CHILDHOOOD MEMORIES OF THE HOLOCAUST

by Helen Bar-Lev

Jesusalem, Israel

I was born in New York in 1942

Of my age that day I am not sure

when my mother sent me to fetch a newspaper from the nearby candy store

How old could I have been? Four? Five? Not more

My mother took the paper to the kitchen window

where the sun shone through in a peaceful way

She was probably thirty-five, the age my daughter is today

When she saw the paper, she cried

I'm certain I remember the moment because I'd never before seen tears fall from her eyes.

My child’s eye had seen the picture in the newspaper

as I skipped up the street full of pride because I was old enough to be sent

on an errand so important

But that child’s eye could not comprehend it yet till this day remembers it

and can now interpret it: a mass grave of men and women

who had died already skeletons

A site so horrific that I still cannot deal with it

And then when I was ten

I saw a photograph of an oven – a crematorium –

a door in a stone wall and had a vision of being put in

too weak to call, I too a skeleton

The door shuts

The fires beckon

The flames searing

I wake up screaming

Barely breathing

And from then until I was forty this dream returned to me

much too frequently

I the American child consumed by a guilt nearly intolerable

How was it possible that I was here, alive

when all those other children, there, had died?

www.helenbarlev.com

A Century of Sacrifices

by LHelene Donovan

Los Angeles, CA , USA

nine million for their faith

nine hundred thousand for their culture

ninety thousand for their imagination

nine thousand for their humility

nine hundred for their courage

ninety for their opinions

nine for their truths

Even one person killed

for who they are

can not be ignored or forgotten.

Doesn't everyone know this?

Or do we prefer our fear?

"A Century of Sacrifice" was inspired in part by

the Holocaust of Jews, gypsies and others during

WWII as well as current atrocities in Africa and

elsewhere. I also learned about the Armenian

genocide when I taught at a school where

Armenians did not attend (or teach) class on

Remembrance Day in April. Now I live near Little

Armenia in Los Angeles... I encourage you to

include their story in your narrative. Here's a

link that may help.

http://www.armenian-genocide.org/index.htm

NIGHT

by Michael Brownstein

Chicago, IL, USA

Honey locusts loosen their gold trimmed lips.

Nearby the river slides through brush and leaf,

past turquoise ponds, carved gullies, shadow

and rock, tall grass and wandering gazelles.

Blue sky and soft cloud slip through paths of light,

the sun a globe to life and pleasure and security.

But not for the child of the man on the clay,

hands wrenched from bone and flesh, blood

black, thick with silence. He has a need for tears.

There are none. This day is somewhere else.

Four gazelles bound by, leap over everything,

too beautiful to ignore, and the boy cannot see

any of this. He has eyes only for the dead

hands of his father, melting already into sand.

Copyright, 2005, Michael Brownstein

POB 268805

Chicago, IL 60626-8805

773-487=1309

Iqbal Masih

by Ryfkah

La Mirada, California, U.S.A.

Streets my daylight abode

no longer a baby

still I venerate my family

We break bread each evening

the flat kind with scent of clay

Now and then as tempest cloud

in fair sky there is none

My mother quite sick

requires an operation

or else she shall perish

She borrows money from the owner and

at age five I imprisoned

to toil in his factory

to pay back our debts

Carpet fibers weave into lungs

I rest within their patterns

dreaming their dyes

Year after year I am captive to these ornaments

for rich people in houses I never glimpse

Now ten I run away

I run and run and run

like a seed pod from tree

spiraling in late summer breeze

There are people who care deeply

They hide me and soon

I speak for those subjugated still

the other children my brothers and sisters

at conferences with people

who live in big houses

with carpets made by child slaves

Father forgive them

they know not what they do

In Pakistan though notorious

this fame should procure my safety

I am returned home thirteen like Ishmael

Allah unearths my tears

but his angel forgets to inform them

Gunshot I bleed

the crimson juice of pomegranates

adorning hallowed space and ordinary substance

Could there be life elsewhere without carpets

in lives yet imagined

Copyright, 2005, Ryfkah

HARVESTS OF CORPSES

by SRINJAY CHAKRAVARTI

This is drought

or a creeping annihilation.

This sun is an empty bowl,

or the hollow fangless jaws

of a sky with a desert yawn.

Here the only rains that come

are these whirlwind days of dry dust.

The only cloud is a haze of heat.

In this land of eternal famine,

the only nomads are the vampires

you call hunger, thirst and disease.

Here your saliva is molten lead,

your tears form diamond embryos,

and death rots in barren fields

under the watchful eye of pockmarked moons.

Srinjay Chakravarti is a 32-year-old journalist,

economist and poet based in Salt Lake City, Calcutta,

India. His poetry and prose have appeared in various

publications all over the world. His first book of

poems has received an award from Australia.

Poem copyright ( c ) 2005 Srinjay Chakravarti

Previously published in \THE NEW MISCELLANY, India

SRINJAY CHAKRAVARTI

BE 192 SECTOR I

SALT LAKE CITY

CALCUTTA 700064

INDIA

PHONE: 00-91-33-2359-2788

MAILING ADDRESS:

SRINJAY CHAKRAVARTI

C/O DR. K.K. CHAKRAVARTY, IAS

C II/ 51 SHAHJAHAN ROAD

NEW DELHI 110011

INDIA

srinjchak@yahoo.co.in

srinjchak@rediffmail.com

srinjchak@hotmail.com

Defining Moments

By Nordette Adams

New Jersey, USA

What are you my brother that I glibly dispose of you,

hoist your severed head and limbs high on spikes,

trophies boasting my savagery while I dance your blood

back into the earth, back into our mother's womb,

joying in your inexistence?

What are you my sister that I smile while two-legged beasts

ravage your innocence into the sewers of man's arrogance,

slice skins of pleasure from your life

and leave you battered, disfigured in the bush?

What am I that I walk past horror, preening,

kissing the gleam of my De Beers

that sings love songs to my perfectly manicured finger,

drowning the cries of Africa in my diamond-studded ears?

http://www.writingjunkie.net

Mother Land (iv)

by Deji

United Kingdon

Pie Chart

Success accomplishment

Detoured and delayed

By an affect that's there

Concisely ordained

Perpetual tombola

Encrypt in the life cycle

Of an entrapped mammal

As ours in hands with wand, circles

Hands of foggy minds

Cum foot of twisted legs

Of what note will ye be hold

As lives are gone, cut short as pegs

American Dream where art thou?

Opt for African, too weak to rise

Still numb from days of shock

Dream, dream, real dream

Unlike that when asleep is felt.

Come to think of it

Isn’t it a mere fantasy;

That we can dine in glee together

For only in dreams we live

In lasting ecstasy

www.poetrypoem.com/livinspring

BATTALION OF THE DAMNED

by Mike Subritzky

New Zealand

March Battalion March!

March the long African day,

sing me the freedom songs,

as we die bravely on,

March the Battalion of the Damned.

Stolen away as children in 1976 -

to the training camps of the North

where the comrades taught us

the songs of revolution

and the weapons of the cause.

We were like rows and rows

of fresh buds of young mealie corn

nurtured and green in the

early sunlight of an African dawn.

March Battalion March!

We trained hard -

under the harsh discipline

of the sjambok, and the bullet

in the back of the head at midnight.

We learned in the camps

there was no place for pity

or surrender in the guerilla war.

We were like rows and rows

of unripened mealie corn

strong and slender in the

burning sunshine of an African day.

March Battalion March!

We marched South in 1978 -

to wash our bayonets in the

blood of Smith's men

in the Tribal Trust Lands of home.

In contact and running firefight

we cried and died

as the helicopter soldiers

of the Rhodesian Army sought

us out in relentless pursuit.

We were like rows and rows

of shattered and strewn mealie corn

devastated and torn in the

splintered lightening of an African storm.

March Battalion March!

At wars end in December 1979 -

we camped at Assembly Place Lima

with the New Zealand Peacemakers.

Tired and victorious

we rested at Mhadlambudzi

where we sang songs of revolution

and cleaned our weapons after battle.

We were like rows and rows

of sun jaded mealie corn

lethargic and spent in the

afternoon glow of an African sunset.

March Battalion March!

In April 1980 -

we advanced from our camp at

Essexvale to fight against

Mugabe's men at the

Bulawayo. Ambushed by remnants

of the Rhodesia African Rifles

our lead armour was struck

by rockets and then the gunships

fell upon us, with their frightening

sound and endless cannons.

We fell like rows and rows

of ripened mealie corn

harvested in blood and bullets in the

red gloom of an African twilight.

March Battalion March!

How we died that day -

there at that dusty ambush

outside of Bulawayo.

800 Regulars and 200 Guerillas.

The lifeblood of our entire Battalion

is now but a ghost from another African war.

Our bones lie like rows and rows

of skeletal mealie corn stalks

stark and silent as we lie here, in the

moonlight of an African night.

March Battalion March!

March the long African day,

sing me the freedom songs,

as we die bravely on,

March the Battalion of the Damned.

Mike Subritzky

NZATMC - AP Lima 1980

In memory of:

1st ZIPRA BATTALION

Zimbabwe Peoples Revolutionary Army

Formed: 1976 from Rhodesian children stolen by Joshua Ngkomo.

Operational: 1978 - 1979 Tribal Trust Lands of Matabeleland.

Annihilated: April 1980 on the outskirts of Bulawayo.

Average Age: 16.

Africa Sings

by Steve Klepetar

St. Cloud, MN, USA

Africa sings, praise

songs writhing into ribbons

of blood and dust, thirst rising

in broken throats. Turn away and

your eyes dim, your ears fill with clay.

Ghosts wail in the Sudan,

the Congo burns. Hear fires

roar as smoke pulses with rhythm

of a thousand tongues. In the mountains

of Kenya, strong runners tramp barefoot

along stony paths.

Sun blazes over township

shacks, barb wire hovels where

refugees slip out for water in between

the raging bite of bullets in the dusk.

We turn away, our

tongues thick with mud

of silence, our private tears blurry

in leaden eyes. Africa sings in her

misery, grace notes rising in sullen air.

Faculty Director of Advising

SCSU

Phone: 320-308-5642

Email: sfklepetar@stcloudstate.edu

AFRICA – Motherland

Umm Dunya (Name for “Mother of the World”

by Medieval Arabs)

Part V

by V. K. Westbrook

Des Moines, IA

Iowa, USA

Aree

Aree was a gem among Sudanese girls

She glowed with the radiance of ebony pearls.

Her skin was as smooth and dark as the night

Her smile the essence of warmth and light.

One night Janjaweeds stormed through her village

Killed her family and took all they could pillage.

Aree tried to run but she could not escape

Eight Janjaweeds beat her, then took turns in her rape.

A woman named Casma found Aree behind a shed

Where vicious Janjaweeds had left her for dead.

She removed duct tape that had Aree bound

Then picked her up from the damp filthy ground.

Casma knew she’d better not wait

Because the child was in a terrible state.

She dropped to her weak, wobbly knees

and prayed, “Lord help this child, please.”

Aree withstood more then any child should take

She had courage and a will hard to break.

Come morning, she shivered with chills and cold

Her fight was valiant but king death took hold.

Aree hung on through high fevers and moans

This woman child of spirit, skin and bones.

Finality flashed across her small ashen face,

She was buried in a white dress trimmed in lace…