Karo Kari

Karo Kari..

They stab the scars of humiliation onto her beautiful skin

The pool of blood flowing through her mouth pleas for mercy 

Innocent girl screaming in agony for her mother to stop

How could the soft hands that once used to nourish her pain

Be the same hands that have become the instruments of her brutal fate

She fell in love, as innocent as she can

With a man who left her with a swollen stomach 

The baby screams through his mother’s black and blue skin

But the beatings are not enough, for she has dishonoured her father’s name 

Mercy is not a factor weighed on the scales of honour. 

So they pass her lifeless body for the others to stone 

Her tears flow into the sand bathing the tombstones underneath

Her tongue is clothed in black

In agony it moans for God’s name

Her paralysed heart is giving up

All she can taste is the pain of her and her unborn’s funeral tonight. 

Parents for her will not weep. 

Instead high heads they shall keep..

The words betray me to describe the pain..

The pain in my heart for all the innocent lives that have been lost in vain.

By Gulsum Asadova

One day (she'll come by)

One day she’ll cross paths with me, one day, God Willing

The sun will soon sooth my skin as I stare, but I’ll be too scared to speak,

Weak, as I question the cheek of questioning her eyes

Rivalling the clear blue skies

She’ll walk past that memory will last

Imprinted in conscious thought….

She’ll arrive like an asteroid and leave a void

As I’ll fight with my self’s self

She’ll smile, so bright, that light will overcome an eclipse,

A smile that sucks your words into a stutter

To scared to utter: s-o-r-r-y wha..What’s yo-u-r name?

Confidence evident, her beauty will be unrepentant

Like white fluffy clouds forming a mount to match Snowdon

Like roses blossoming without the thorn

Like freedom, like peace, like justice

Sheer beauty of the mind; no face no race, no beholder

The sun will clash with my iris as my mind and heart

Will be in occupation with something, some say a virus.

Silence.

I wish to sail the seas of love I’ll say,

Then get told it’s just a cheap cliché

I’ll step up, trying to be brave, unshackling the boyhood shackles of adolescence,

Comprehending the sense,

I just want to be friends, I say in my mind.

Carefully treading so as not to disease by heart with desires.

You see if my deen was a queen I must find her, and if desire is the fire I must

Extinguish it.

Then I’ll step up and say…

 ‘For you I’d line up the stars as a consolation and line up memories of us into a constellation.

I’d commit to truthful love and eternal bliss, trust, soul’s intertwined, combined, lined, not defined, for you’d I’d take that risk.

I’ll say it without fear attempting to sound like a modern day Shakespeare with all the metaphorical, exquisite, linguistic poetic devices my brain could muster.

And she’ll reject.  Humbly say no to my superficial phrases,

Not fazed because then I’ll know, that’s her.

And One day, she'll cross paths with me, God Willing. 

By Mohamed-Zain Dada

Twitter: @Zainthepoet

Articles: www.times-series.co.uk/blogs/mohamed_zain_dada

Nonsense Poetry

This week, the young people, inspired by Edward Lear produced their own limericks.  Here's a quick intro to Edward Lear and an example of his works:

Edward Lear (12 May 1812 – 29 January 1888) was an English artist, illustrator, author, and poet, renowned today primarily for his literary nonsense, in poetry and prose, and especially his limericks, a form that he popularised.

'There was an Old Man with a nose, Who said, 'If you choose to suppose, That my nose is too long, You are certainly wrong!' That remarkable Man with a nose.' 'There was an Old Man on a hill, Who seldom, if ever, stood still; He ran up and down, In his Grandmother's gown, Which adorned that Old Man on a hill.'

The Words Apart collective formed our own limericks accompanied with illustrations: 

By Fauzia - The Lady Gaga Limerick

By Arj, Vain Pete

By Zain - The Turd called Clegg

                    


                                                 

  
By Special Guest DJ Steaz - Broken promise

By Tajhame Jackson - Marriage Baggage Limerick 

Exclusive Youtube Channel: WordsApartPoetry

Tajhame Jackson with the poem 'Jamaica' at Finchley Youth Theatre.

We now have a whole host of youtube video's on 'WordsApartPoetry'

Be like a Candle

Be Like a candle…

Light up faces with a smile

And spread warmth when you walk,

Speak purity all the while

And beauty when you talk

He told me be like a Candle,

The flip side of a sandal or

flip flops when it hits the dust

Knowledge merely a particle

as we promote trust

And expect nothing in return,

Each day passes we earn and learn

Don’t count your blessings..

Store them..

Be like a candle,

selfless like an anti-consumerist society,

Shelf-less

Don’t be restless, patience, control your mind

Hasten.

Rather than chasing 360 and get called dizzee

Be like a candle,

Noor in the darkness,

Sense amongst the senseless,

Like the only ethnic in the census

Direction for the headless

We’re Chickens on the coup,

Fear, as we wait for the military coo

Don’t be scared

Throw your shoe at a dictator. Mubarak

Give like a candle gives light,

Live the way your soul deserves to live

Be a freedom writer, free-writer, free runner

Keep your candle alight, don’t survive,

Fight from an unjust night to a blessed dawn

treasure time, the wick will waste away

As the drummer's kick will awake us one day

Dormant to suffering 

like a volcano lacking heat

conceit 

don't let the wax that moulds us

control us,

don't let hope melt

I repeat

we fly, not spiritually like Rumi

merely physically. over countries.

not hearts.

We have the potential to bring warmth to every human enveloped by darkness

Just like a candle.

The potential to bring a smile to those enveloped by pain

Just like a candle

The potential to conquer hearts which are enslaved

Just like a Candle

But eventually

Our light and warmth will turn to smoke and

Ascend to judgement

From tar filled smog to a beautiful incense

All depending on the intent

Before that unexpected, unknown end,

Simply, Be Like a Candle. 

By Mohamed-Zain Dada, poet and writer: www.times-series.co.uk/blogs/mohamed_zain_dada

Twitter: @Zainthepoet

VIDEO COMING SOON! 

Invasion

that long awaited disdain 
which exchanged jealousy for pride
and cast off the unfortunate
persuasion of an anger
discarding the age old tradition
of its foremothers in an attempt
to outdo its betters
had arrived.
the urgency of the current
emergency was lost on it.
purging the florid joy of which 
the atmosphere boasted
was its main priority.
interiority is not to be found
therefore in this speech here.
sensing its own inferiority
in its effort to terminate
the bliss and delight in its wake
condensing the serenity
and requesting for support
that long awaited disdain
retreated disturbed by 
the probable possibility
of a putrid checkmate stalemate.
soon joined by an
unmistakeable misfortune
who held a rather fair disposition
and equally followed by a
constipated fear
whose countenance was disrupted
disdain felt its own sense
of discerning pleasure
which was in essence
disgusted discontent.
at the front, the derobed, devested
truth soothes the Bestiality
of all sides
into submission.
fury runs around looking
for someone to blame.
problems, real problems were 
ignored. 
ignorance had prospered.
it was too late to turn back
the flow of despair
tranquillity runs around looking
for someone to blame.
once acclaimed, twice shamed
that long awaited disdain.





by Comfort Fabian Nwabia, a poet, playwright and actress and part of the youth poetry collective Words Apart.


VIDEO COMING SOON! 

The Power of Words

I took the words. I loaded them. Took aim and FIRED! but there was no sound. I cocked back my pen, fixed the jam, took aim again and fired! but again nothing happened.

The words that were once my private passport to another world seemed empty. 
I once commanded the verbs, the nouns, the adjectives, the adverbs like my own private army completely loyal to me and willing to be strategically manipulated at any time - day OR night. 
Able to strike fear into an enemy's heart and nourish the soul in the same poem and all that was needed in the middle...was a full stop.

What I thought flowed from the soul, through the heart, took a right at the brain and exploded from my right arm onto the paper.

I didn't write to topic or to please an examiner and I didnt care who liked it! I wrote for ME and if someone happened to like it then the more the merrier.

The ideas of rhyme, form, pentuplets, sonnets were nice but rather like being told to pick certain sweets at a pick and mix...the final taste just wouldn't be what I really wanted.

The concepts that wordsmiths had struggled to define in rigid formats for millennia came easily to me.

Love wasn't love. 
Love was a demonstration of compassion that held A beauty so unique that only the beholder could perceive it.

Hate wasn't hate. 
Hate was a manifestation of the souls response to its own misgivings - to the moments that felt like a lifetime of torment - to everything wrong in the world.

I was one. Heart, body, mind, soul and pen. 
My own musical instrument. 
My loudspeaker. 
My comfort and my real voice. 
The "like"s, "blad"s, "bruv"s and "fam"s of everyday life replaced by words of infinite majesty and terms of blinding greatness all wrapped in a sheet of A4.

And yet here I sit, words on the paper, life displayed in the ink and the death of my poetry seeming evermore fictional.



By
Eddie O'Garro-priddie - poet and part of the Words Apart collective!