Munyori Poetry Journal

David McLean  - Two Poems

the crows

the crows sing night's sweet morning,
assembled cosy slaughter,
they dance murder to the wind, wings spread
as we spread meaning with vocabulary's unfeeling,
wings black blades twisted to the depth of a surprising
sickness
fucking love's butterfly, each one but one
spot of black entrained on carriage clouds in a lonely sky,
enchanted statuary entranced the words they're chasing,
they wait that dreams may die

we grant dispassionate their living unthinking,
burgeoning hormones that make a waiting crow,
the hunger, the known cold,
knowing the same humiliation that imprisons a tree
still,
trapped hard, grown down to ground,
burning armchairs in a crow's crazy aviary;
so why die a derisive day when life may listen
to turgid blood's solemn slow-pulsing sound?

Papa's star still burns his blissful dead decision,
he is symbol, object, love's ugly imago,
God there he died that a dream may grow
a crow-dance, stiff as a nipple
havoc hopeful under whorish heaven,
seven feet to dance cold Orion blind
tonight.

and the crows take carrion's blessing from death's dark graces
a flight that dances snapshots of sky's timely resting-places,
an instant under unrolled history, a death to find.

what secrets lie enscrolled in crow's sublime unthinking mind
what chaos unrolled in the trusting black eyes
of murder’s eternal
child?

dandelion

the stars shall soon be dead
and i much sooner
but you dandelion first.
do i look to you as does a star
to me?
something so far
so distant
with unknown
or no
intent?



Lesley Munyuki - Two Poems

Human Proof Fence.

Red and dried out coating chipping and blowing away to the other side,
that’s the only way to get through me.

Crackling in haste as I struggle to keep standing,
As you, sometimes in masses, always in desperation,
Struggle to clutch my razor wrapped frame,
scorching from this intense heat.

But who wouldn’t?

Your fear deafens me as you scream to the site of hounds and
black, blood stained batter sticks,
Figures of blue and brown behind dust fogged glass,
marching, pacing towards you.

I become invisible as you look through me,
you see the other side, deliverance,
you smile whilst you pant and weep,

You’re are almost there.

Then you hit me with a force unimaginable,
and suddenly you see me,
you shackle and rattle me with angst,
I can’t be mad,
I know you finally understood my purpose.
you try to clutch and climb my frame but,
I would not let you,
they catch up to you,
they pierce you with bullets,
they send their hounds against you,
then batter you with their already blood stained sticks,
leaving you with pain and death whilst your blood splatters all over me.

I become invisible once again,
as you gaze right through me,
you see the other side,
deliverance,
you smile whilst you cry and pant,
till you are no more,

Then what’s left?

Red and dried out coating of your blood chipping and blowing away to the
other side,
And that’s the only way to get through me.

You almost made it.

(For the people who died trying to cross barriers for a better life, Berlin
wall, Apartheid Fence in Israel, North and South Korea barrier fence.)


Cry...

Let
these formless
crystals be stolen
away…
by the
gentle strokes of
the
wind…
as we
stand on
the edge of
Earth’s Mountain and…
allow
faith to
unearth doubts of
yours and mine...
whilst we
whisper patiently to
time…
letting it
take them
to a place and moment…
where
you and I
will never reside.
as you
Allow yourself
To cry.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

thanks.


Shilla Mutamba - Two Poems

Finding my way

I first saw her one day,
In the middle of cold May,
Her looks were no play,
Into her heart,
I would find my way.

Her heart I vowed to win,
To win her heart I was keen,
She had a cute face,
That I did notice.

I vowed to give her my best smile,
I hoped my smile would go an extra mile,
Her phone, I would always dial,
Winning her heart,
Needed a trial.

I went through a great deal,
But her heart, I began to steal,
Love for me, she began to feel,
But ay, what a telephone bill!


Looking for ME

I travelled in many lands across the sea,
With keenness and zeal you should have seen,
I was searching for the being called ME,
I tossed and turned but ME I couldn't see.

I came back all fagged out,
I had failed in my search, no doubt,
For ME was nowhere to be found,
but had to be formed right from the start.

Gradually I began creating time for ME,
Hard it was but I did go on,
I now have no single regret,
It sure was worth the effort!



Peggy Rambach  - Three Poems

Late Nights

I won't be out much longer
to listen to the small plane's motor
and the power saw
sink its teeth
into a piece of plywood
three houses down.

Though I know I'll hear a bird or two -
the way the chickadee
sounds the last sound left
on the day it snows.

Pretty soon the magnolia will give
up its leaves so fast
they'll make a patter.
And I might be aware of
the cars on Burnham Road
rounding the bend for the climb to town.

I'll shut the windows
inside the storms
and mostly hear the stove's flame,
cabinets' click,
and my dog's nails
on the bare floors.

There is this, and more -
my own thoughts
to listen and listen to
late nights,
until I shove the door open
shiver - to hear something
from the freezing stars.

It Was Enough

I didn't need
the white satin lining
nor the cushion for my head.
And pine would certainly have done
for polished rosewood.
I didn't need anything - really.
For I had laid so many things
in shallow holes
dug with my rusty garden trowel;
mice and moles and birds
with soft necks and tiny crooked limbs.
It was enough for them
and for me -
the cool, the dirt, the dark,
the feast of insects.

Bodily Functions

Now that the neighbors
cut the maple in their back yard,
I see sky.
Too early to know
if it's the kind of gray
a sun will change to blue
or if the numbers
on the cable box
will say 6:03
no matter how long I lie here -
Until it's my body
that gets me up.
Hunger,
and the need to pee -
When all I want to do
is lean against the hard, warm
back of my dog,
covers to my neck,
and keep looking
at a cloud
the sun has not climbed high enough
to touch.



Tad Richards - One Poem

The Blue Hula

Next to the entranceway, a potted palm
In a turquoise planter, now a luminous
Blue, now cobalt blue. The colors drum
A sort of hula, swirling sinuous

Shoots of bamboo, arousing its grass skirt
To sway and swivel. From a curtain’s fold
Glides a tall woman: first in silhouette,
Then lit with color, bronze to red to gold.

She’s dancing flame. She sways to the blue hula
And blue creeps round her ankles, drenching
The white-gold tips of fire. The corolla
Of crimson goes to purple. Now the friction

Of air and flame congeals. Now she is rooted,
Naked, ashen, soft, now hard, tubular,
Decked out in rustling green, extended, fluted,
Swaying in the wind to the blue hula.



Mayombwe David Simeon - One Poem

Interviews

Always at the end of these “Up close & Personal”
Interviews, no matter the media; if on tv the host,
Usually a female with vivacious curves, will lean
Suggestively towards “the Personality” and smile
As if the night was a conspiracy and she has plans
And then she will ask, with all the familiarity
Of having just exposed your life to the world
And now knowing you so well she could be family.
“So how would you like to be remembered?”

It is human nature to naturally think that even in death
The most important consideration is to stay alive.
That people should continue to live after death.
Whatever happen to people who when they lived
Only sought to be loved and believed?
People who did good for its beautiful sake
And not because glory was at stake
Whatever happened to people who once dead
Only sought to be honorably buried?
People who faced with that total question
Have done so much good they can find no answer
Are immortal even as they live.



Mary Ann Sullivan - Two Poems

Gathering South Asia Through Our Eyes
for Maggie

Of water won and wonder woo
And water lost and arbor under
Sat and yellow pink and yellow
seat and granite bench and there
we sat

Ever long the last and last

Walks and through and arch and long
The arms and robes of Muslims
forward walk and
Wind and blown
We talked

And sat and yellow pink and yellow
seat and granite bench and there
we sat

the scarfs of Pakistani men were long
and on the shoulder down
and robes of Islam longer

the women Pakistani soft
and gentle tender
south and south of Asia
south
for once and first Kashmiris known

and gather motion gather words
through eye and eye and
pulled in mind and held
in mind like camera
‘neath an arbor


with gathered under
pink and pink and yellow
share and share

and rides and car and parked on brick
for mom, and mum, and mom
and green

Gathering south Asia through our eyes
Gathering pink and pink and pink
with dearest, dearest pink.


And sprinkling down south Asia
piece and piece and gently falling
Piece of dearest pink and pink and yellow

copyright © 2007 mary ann sullivan



At work the day after
for Maggie

She of hall pulled through
The air
The surge of knowing
Deeper

After morning weep
And words through air vibration sent her
phone
evening sleep
and on the morrow
in the hall stand each of
one at ends
beyond
and tightening air
the loins of known
no words
just known
and knowing

known
and
known the air between
copyright © 2007 mary ann sullivan

Davide Trame  - Three Poems

Facing The Wind

It’s easterly this morning, so fresh, a relief.
The sea a crowd of wrinkles and curls,
the sun focusing on everything,
digging out and swarming the air’s pores.
And things stripped to their very breath,
flags standing torn, sunlit canvases ripped.
Flashes of what swarms away:
the paper handkerchiefs
your hand couldn’t hold,
snatched away by a gust of wind
or the child’s marbles
blown along the causeway
and licked up by a fringe of foam.

You face it sitting on the wall.
A cleansing run. On the shore
the waves distending.
You almost
hear an “at last” in the roar.
And the sense of a whole world’s burden
cast behind the shoulder,
with a silent laugh.


The Next Bend

To that turn –we say- pointing up there
on the mountain path
and having to go back, being late.
Ankles at awkward angles,
feet sinking among the big yellow-
grey stones and century old chestnut trees
overhanging.
Rough earth’s skin on our skin.
While the air thins out,
and gives off the blue blades’ stare.
Just up there it seems
another breath is going to
open up, another sky.
The unknown like deer’s eyes.
Ready to answer
gaze to gaze.

And we are never sure we’ll stop,
once there,
we are never sure we’ll go back.
Because it’s where we are always going,
fingers pointing
at the clean empty air.

Up there,
the silent opening beyond metaphor.
The certainty
of what we are going to be made of.

Native Village, Now

Cleansed dents in the walls’ white stones
and in the chinks fresh, bristling, shining cement,
a lane of old just restored houses.
After the rain a swell of green on the hills,
the proud trees’ fists, the prints of branches an inch
behind rooftops, a mantle of bloom, earth’s
teasing cheek.
The new grave is beige granite, dry
and neat among the puddles stung by sunbeams,
he stares in his stone at the mountains, at hedgerows
just in front, and a football field, grass trimmed
on this Sunday, clappings, cheers, breaths
reaching down below, dotting the widespread
countenances in the roots.

Outside the cemetery the sun is hot
on the gravel, in the blinding glare.
You are stared at by an aged woman
pushing a bicycle, walking with a limp,
you are caught by a glimpse
of varicose veins like roots at her calves
and poppies on the roadside brushing
her black gown, in a gust of lime-trees
and a sweeping flash of motherland’s
lasting silence.

While a tune breaks in, a mobile ringing
inside a parked brand-new vehicle,
metal sheet’s shine answering light to light
grabbing you back in the fast
blade of the present.


Clarius Ugwuoha - Four Poems

In the Teeth of a Cloudburst

Caught
Hollow like a drum
Where it is darkest
And the paths drunk
Are impracticable

No incandescences illumine -
My contretemps
I am as nebulous as the sky
Which falling
Runs seawards dead

Caught in egrecious depths
Amidst rat-wet serfs
Onwards I must go

Out of depths
I turn seamstress
Beckoning on the receding grave



Cry of the Earth

At night I stretch and yawn
And watch the distant stars
You sleep sound in your homes
While I am deep at work
That you may dine the day to come
But you do not take thought for me
I look around me in fear
You are armed against me
I do not know what I have done

What have I done to you
That you draw up plans crude and new
To plunder and ravage my helpless mass?
Hairs as trees in the forestland
You burn me bald and bare

And here I am the mat on which you lie
And in which you shall someday hide
And when I am gone
Where do you think you can stand upon
What then have I done to you?

And when your loved one dies
Do I not hide them from your rat-wet eyes
That you may endure and forget
The bitterness and pain
In life's unplanned and gloomy rain.

In the coral reef where my beauty shines
Like diamond in the dark dines
Your noxious chemicals and submarines
Which do not care that I cry
And pray that they should not pry
They sear through my body
Leaving me hot with pain

look at it
This deep great wound up there in my form
The ozone layer eaten into
As by a million ravenous wolves
Look at it
And one demented day, the heat they say can melt the furnace walls
Drown civilization

I implore you then
Hurt me no more
I mean no threat to you
Hurt me no more
I am a friend not foe
Hurt me no more
I'm weary and wrought



Fugitive From Justice

The Sun let down
To hide its shame
The earth runs
Like the fleet-footed hound

The stench of blood
Palls the bleeding knife.

What river of tears!
And the sudden market where grief was sold,
Fugitive

Fugitives there are too
From the wreckage of the tongue and pen
Fugitives from justice
In the very home they live.

Run, Fugitive run
From the shadow that trails

But Justice grinds exceedingly small!



Suicide

shattered
and scattered

lonely
and disillusioned

his world
hung on a ragged
knot

the birds sang away
in the trees

the clouds shifted
about to fall

morning beckoned
but he was gone.