Stop the Violence by Nomar Knight

Save the children of the street,
Tripping over graves under their feet.
Older people run in fear.
Pendulum of death swings so near.

Terrifying games are being played.
Hour by hour new graves are made.
Echoes of cries that will never fade.
Vivid memories of death and hate.
Ignorant youths challenge their fate.
Oppressed people flailing in vain.
Lads see a future with nothing but pain.
Everyone looking out for number one.
Never believing one day they'll be done.
Cries for help go undaunted.
Electric streets, forever haunted.

© Copyright Nomar Knight 2008. Reprint. All rights reserved.

Source:

http://knightchills.blogspot.com/2010/11/stop-violence-by-nomar-knight.html

The mystery of the Cane..........!!!!

I have a fine bamboo cane

Mounted on my window pane

Even as a five months old babe

Kaka my daughter knows its name

Correction is essential for upbringing

Just like the young sprouting yam tendrils

Entwined on a stake in the farm of my granny

To ensure they survive and do not stray

Teach a child the way in which to go

And when he grows from it would not go

This the holy book to us made known

From Him to whom all mysteries know

The Igbo saying is always repeated

Correct the child with the right hand

Console the child with the left hand

A saying that I always hold dear to heart

by Miss Lotanna Nnoli

I Wonder.....!!!

I look out the window

Seeing the fallen coconut fruit

The leaves from the orange tree

The petals from the hibiscus plant

And I thought to myself

What does this day hold for me

I wonder

I stepped out the front door

Faced with the barking of my Dog-Bliss

Sighted the neighbors goat

Heard the crowing of the landlady’s chickens

And I thought to myself

What does this day hold for me

I wonder

Walking into the street

Hearing the blaring of the school bus

Seeing the impatient Dad blaring his horns at the front gate

The already tired mum dragging her twin boys into the car

And I thought to my self

What does this day hold for me

I wonder

Sitting in front of my PC

Writing this prose/poem

Thinking to my self

What exactly does today hold for me

I wonder

by FRANCISCA O OGUNLADE (nee NNADI).

FALLEN.........!!!!

Not for their sin; not for my sin

then for whose sin?

Maybe not for sin.

Cries, tears and wails

Amidst the agony, anguish and pain

Cut through the air of smoke and settling dust

Orphaned children,

Sudden childless parents

Broken limbs…shattered dreams

They go by the name boko Haram

Their goal remain to create more harm

But why ?

Their reason remain confusing.

They have unleashed their terrors

My people now live in horror

Life suddenly has lost taste

Justice seems to have lost the case.

Shall we go on like this?

Shall thing continue to be like this?

No, stand with me my brothers and sisters

For we need to work together

Write if you will,

talk if you can

But just do something

And lets together,

put an end, to these orgies of violence.

We can no longer engage in the violence of silence.

by Lion Kisser

Why You Should Stay Away From Poets by Alice Keys MD

You should stay away from poets. Far away. Poetry is a contagious, untreatable virus which is transmitted through the eyes and ears, directly to the heart. Even stuffing your ears with cotton and poking out both eyes won’t kill poetry, once contracted. There is no cure. 

One can, however, confer immunity to poetry. This works best with children. Poetry classes taught from volumes thick with chapters on syllable counting and meter, punctuation and rhyme can make the most poetically vulnerable, resistant. This works best administered after lunch while seated on hard wooden chairs in an over-heated room. Distractions from the natural world must be blocked by concrete walls, fluorescent hums and window shades.

There should be signs on the doors of the houses of poets. “Poet here”. “Keep away”. “Danger”. Poets should be forced to wear warning tags stitched to the fronts of their jackets so people will know to keep their children at a safe distance.

Poets are notorious for feeling and then writing the truth. This is another reason they should be ostracized and bound. They have no limits to what they’ll drag out into the light. They may fool you by beginning with bird songs or snowmen or a kelp-scented breeze. But beware. Poets sprout razors. They cut deep in the belly and tear open hearts.

Contracting poetry poisons one away from useful endeavors, like writing cell phone apps so children can practice killing at bus stops. Those who tear feathers by the handful from the bodies of half-live chickens at the processing plant are more valued than poets. They’re paid. They have jobs.

If you become infected with poetry and are find yourself inking couplets on the corners of napkins over breakfast, don’t quit your graveyard shift job unpacking truckloads of cheap Chinese junk. Keep flipping burgers. When one says “starving artist”, the poet does not even make it up onto this lowest of rungs on the socioeconomic ladder. At least a “starving artist” has that quirky patina people revere from a distance. Jazz musicians and landscape painters rate the secret awe normally reserved for yogis that meditate bare-bottomed in the snow. Poets don’t.

If you’re asked what you do and you reply “write poetry”, the questioner will go silent, blue then ask again. “No really. I meant, what do you do?”

It makes no sense for me to feel so good to be infected by poetry. The making of poems earns no money. Even family members sigh from having to live around me. They want dinner and attention, not clever words or insights into the horrors of our modern culture. My poor children. My sainted husband. My lost friends.

When you hang out with poets, you rub the folding corners of your arms with those who are too busy listening and watching, feeling and writing to notice the jab of your elbows.

by Alice Keys MD


http://alicekeysmd.wordpress.com/2013/01/06/why-you-should-stay-away-from-poets/

Poetry (A Powerful Medium for Literacy)

Up to now, we have read how Mankind has a natural affinity for poetry which began since ancient times and how this form of expression helps the development of language skills. But, even though poetry is such a wonderful tool to lighten up children’s minds, many teachers would argue that it seems to elicit the most groans from students. How can this be?  If we want our students to understand that poetry brings them to a deeper understanding, we need to find meaningful ways to engage them with poetry.

 “It is not an exaggeration to say that all children, at least until adolescence, are natural poets.”

 How does poetry help 21st century literacy? 

Literacy is the ability to read and write proficiently. For the last thousand years, men and women have written on and read printed pages; this was the preferred medium. But now to excel in literacy, people not only must be able to read and write on a piece of paper they also have to be skillful in the use of technology. How can poetry help?

Poetry helps Literacy in two important ways.

First, it improves children’s language skills:

·    “A focus on oral language development through the reading and performing of poetry acknowledges that sound is meaning. When we hear the sound of the words in a poem read aloud, we gain a better understanding of the meaning of the writing.

·    Attention to the language and rhythms of a poem serves to expand oral and written vocabulary. 

·    Students express the kinds of connections to feelings and senses that they experience.

·    Poetry supports the multiple goals of literary development, including making inferences, identifying the main idea, making judgments and drawing conclusions, clarifying and developing points of view, and making connections.” (Hughes, 2007)

Secondly, it gives children material that can be put in multiple technological platforms because poetry is a very versatile art form. It is not only meant to be read aloud but also to jump up from the page so the audience may engage with it. Technology makes this very easy.

“Consider a group of students in an Ontario school who used Corel Presentations to create a Seuss-like poem for a class project. The students combined sound/music, text, and images to synthesize their ideas. In one student’s words, not only was the project “fun” but students were able to “see poetry differently” when they created their poems on screen. The use of new media adds multiple layers of meaning and interpretation of a poem in ways that are not available with a conventional textual format”. (Hughes, 2007)

"Poetry reflects on the quality of life, on us as we are in process on this earth, in our lives, in our relationships, in our communities." 

http://poetry4literacy.mundoemilia.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=10&Itemid=113&limitstart=0