Poetic Tea (International Poetry Collaboration)

My pen was empty 
The ink spilled 
but not on my poetry pad
so bad to make one sad.

I was thinking to quit
and abandon my hobby
for a new 'hubby'; my egocentric empathy.

When suddenly,
You knocked at my door
and asked me for a poetic tea
Will I not serve you
to keep your soul warm?

By: Ligaw Makata (Philippines)

My pen like a plucked leaf is wry
Its ever flowing ink is dry
My soul is as thirsty as a camel
It is deserted by inspiration
Stranded in the desert of frustration.

Spotting a spotless mug of poetic tea
I call unto my pen to drink
And be revived
For the journey that lies ahead
Will not condone fainting.

O Poetess Ligaw,
My pen is revived
To pursue its purpose
Crying out loudly,
"How beneficial is symbiotic association to man?"

By: Kolade Olanrewaju Freedom (Nigeria)

Written by: Ligaw Makata and Kolade Olanrewaju Freedom clamouring for beneficial association among writers.

Short Story: The Unlimited Power Of Love

"Love has no special cost,it only demands that your heart be free from hatred". 

Mark pondered over this realistic statement, but he got flustered at every attempt to exercise it.His fidgeting fingers reflected his anxiety,the awful past kept intruding into the dim present.He moved towards the other part of the living room to welcome the cool air of the evening by opening the window and parting the curtains.To his utmost amazement,he saw his mum making her way up through the stairs;towards his door.

He heard a resounding knock on his door,he tried to deafen his ear through negligence,but he couldn't.He opened the door forcefully and gazed directly at his mum's face.She looked dejected and awful.

Her face sought for sympathy,empathy,love and forgiveness.She knelt before his son and uttered the following words,
"Forgive me son,I have wronged you;let's bury the past"
"You leave me with no choice.Bury the past! You forsook me when I needed you to survive and thrive as a child.You abandoned me and treated me like trash and you now expect me not to be rash and vengeful.Leave my house honorably," Mark said in a gentle but serious tone.

She rose up from her knees apologetically, but left the house without saying a word to bail her out. Remembering the great sacrifice St.Valentine offered through love made Mark uneasy.
'Is forgiveness too expensive to be bought by love? Does he really have the love in his heart? How can he access it? He thought
"Open your heart to receive it,"was the answer that came forth from within.
He ran out of the house in search for his mum wildly,but his race was cut short when he saw a crowd gather round a body,he took a furtive glance and immediately saw the bloody body of his mum;she had been hit by a fast moving vehicle.He Knelt beside his almost lifeless mother and held her hands dearly.
"Mum,am pleading that you forgive me of not forgiving,the healing power of love has restored sanity back to me.You are a treasure to behold through love. Don't die now,"Mark said while the tears flowed freely like the River Nile.
"Son,the present you present to me through love has overshadowed the past full of flaws..It's great to be forgiven,greater to be cherished and greatest to be loved.Bye,son." Life left her body before Mark could give a response.

Mark sat on the couch in his living room to mark the tenth year of  his mother's departure to the great beyond.Co-incidentally,it was a Feb. 14 - Valentine's day.Mark had created an imaginary presence of her mother and taken her to be his val.
"Mum, you have taught me the greatest lesson of love.Forgiveness can not be acquired by revenge, anger and prosecution not even justice but by love.And love is what eases the heavy burden of not forgiving.  As I celebrate this day of love with you,I am remembered of how unlimited the power of love is.
He drank a toast to his mum.Two cups were actually present in his mind;that of love and possibilities.

Love is the key that closes the door of hatred,bitterness,cruelty,brutality,injustice,castigation,selfishness,resentment,slander,violence and infidelity.

Story by:Kolade Olanrewaju Freedom

The Newness of life

New is the year

New are the wares

New are the resolutions

Likewise the aspirations

New is the spirit

Strange to retreat

New is the vibrancy

A force of potency.

Life offers newness

To wear out oldness

Oldness that bores my heart

Newness that gladdens heart

Be merry, new is the life

It holds no place for strife.

The desire for change

Has no definite range

Time to change ways

Rays of hope

Help you cope.

~ Kolade Olanrewaju Freedom

I Pen My Heart For Her Day

I Pen My Heart For Her Day

Life will not allow you live it without having people to build the stairs for you to courageously climb. Growing up, I have had many reasons to appreciate the existence of people as catalysts to speed you up while aiming to fulfill destiny. Realistically, I have also greatly suffered psychologically due to the indifference and negligence received from people I least expect ( not even a family name to consider).

Out of the blue she came extending hands of love,support and comfort that first scared me not to death but to unbelief! Never knew love so real could be emitted from someone who I couldn't see off my phone screen.

Hope jerked back to live, faith was empowered, courage raged as she showered me with love and attention a mother would give to a child.

The Light Bearer(my poetry collection) is an offspring of the relationship I had with her. Believing in me, she tore away the leaves of impossibility from the tree of greatness; she ridiculed normality by encouraging me to type the poems to be published as a book on my mobile phone since I had no computer to work with. I became industrious, she became the industry as she transformed my phone poetry to an enviable manuscript.Gloriously, the dreams were hatched, The Light Bearer was published!

I cannot possibly recount all the good seeds she has sown in my fertile heart,but few years to come you will all see the delightful fruits.

Today is her day, and my pen is drunk with inspiration to honor her beyond what limit could limit. Catherine Mahoney is the angel whom I talk about...

Living is helping
Helping is living
Living is loving
Loving is living.

Flourish with no hitch
If I be a palm tree
Do not I have one
who shined and rained
just to have me attain a height
that retains greatness?

What significance has her birth?
Steal a look at me
And nod convincingly like an agama
Aren't I a ray of rays of her light
Happy, happy is this day truly
Happy is my soul
That eternally longs for hers
Happy is humanity
She has given posterity future
Let future come
You will know what I speak of.

A day comes when my gratefulness will arrest her kindness,her selflessness and her loveliness.

Happy Birthday, Catherine Mahoney..

Angels rejoice in heaven,
Lend them your voice!

~ Kolade Olanrewaju Freedom

Trance by Hülya N Yilmaz

TRANCE


Hülya N Yilmaz, in this soulful poetry collection of hers displays high level of intellectualism that will keep a reader digging incessantly in order to fully explore the richness of her eloquent expression.

As a reader, I had to connect my soul to her writings in order to extract the undiluted message Hulya has for the world. 

Written in three dominant languages; Tukish, German and English...Hulya achieves what many will term impossible as she unites and creates a unique blend with these three languages without a depreciation in the appreciation of her profound expressions.

I cannot help but further continue to address Hulya N. Yilmaz as a literary mother whom I need to associate myself with so as to graduate to the level of excellence where mediocrity is shamed.

My heart is endeared to this awesome collection (Trance), and my love for the writer is strengthened beyond breakage...I have no choice but to address her as "mein Schatz" ( You care to know the meaning of these strange words? Go get the book)

Book available via link: http://www.innerchildpress.com/hülya-n-yilmaz.php

~Kolade Olanrewaju Freedom, author of The Light Bearer.

Interested in knowing this awesome personality? Here is her biography:hülya yılmaz is an interrupted poet and writer since middle school, hidden in a career as a college professor in Humanities. She earned her Ph.D. from The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1989. Her extensive teaching experience resulted in a respectable number of thankful students whose verbal and written words of appreciation she cherishes most of all in her profession. She authored a research book in German in 1992 on the literary reflections of cross-cultural influences between the West and the Islamic East – a groundbreaking study for the time. More recently – on April 24, 2012 to be precise, a scholarly anthology was published to which she contributed by invitation with a book chapter on a controversial novel by Orhan Pamuk, the 2006 recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature. In her creative writing, yılmaz concentrates on fictional autobiography, short story and poetry. Two of her poems were published in July, 2013 by Indies In Action in the international charity anthology Twist of Fate. Presently, she continues to teach full-time in her fields of specialty; is a self-appointed literary translator and a novice in free-lance writing.

- See more at: http://www.innerchildpress.com/h%C3%BClya-n-yilmaz.php#sthash.wn1PykRp.dpuf

The Forgotten Ones

Beneath the thick layer of indifference
I see creatures battered and beaten
by cruelty of no stoppage
In a carriage of no destination
Their hopes wander in rags
Shamed to live its name.

Beneath the thick layer of inhumanity;
I see children hugged by hunger
Their tomorrow to be spent in sorrows
Their sustenance in bowls
of coins
Earned by passionate pleas
of desperation
to quench the sufferings
that have kept them in wretchedness
of great torment.


Beneath the thick layer of injustice
I see creatures in fiery dungeons
Caged for ages
Holed-up in pits of no pity
Their joy locked up in bottles
Drunk by their oppressors.


Beneath the thick layer of faith
I climb the hills in haste
To see the future that gives future
To the 'futureless' ones.

Beneath the thick lines of positivism
I give my dreams rigidity;
By foreseeing the lines of marginalization deleted
Everyone clothed in no distinct robes
The forgotten ones absorbed by remembrance.

Written by: Kolade Olanrewaju Freedom

My First Poetry Book

I had just come in from an exhausting work on a Friday (31st of May, 2013 ) when I saw an essay contest online for poets who wanted to get their books published but had been limited by limitations. Seeing such great opportunity , I acted instantly by writing an essay titled "My Poetry Speaks' on the spot without any special preparation; passion was at work. I had published no book then and was determined to have my poems in a book for readers to read and be impacted positively.

Months later,the result came in,and miraculously I made the first cut of 28 essayists and was given the scholarship to publish a chap book with Inner Child Press in the United States.

What you see in the picture is the product of the essay, and on Monday 2nd of December, 2013 , it will be available for sale!

A big thank you to Inner Child Press for creating such great opportunity for my ability.

Are we prepared to welcome the birth of a new book?
I will be forever grateful for every help rendered to make book's existence fruitful.


Thanks,   

Book is now available,purchase here:

www.innerchildpress.com/kolade-olanrewaju-freedom.php

A Nigerian Cultural Poem By An American Poet (Siddartha Beth Pierce)

Amazing Siddartha From The United States Writes A Descriptive Poetry On The Nigerian Culture. 

She shared this poem with me in my inbox, and I was lost for words,I couldn't believe a foreigner could possibly know more than a native...stunned, I also decided to share below:

Baule spirit spouses 

are the belief among 

an African people wherein 

there is also

a husband or wife in heaven 

for everyone- 

So they create sculptures 

and ritually care for them 

once a week 

by feeding them, 

bathing and sleeping with them 

to keep them near their sides. 

Similarly, the Nigerians create 

Ere Ibeji figures as twins birth 

are very common there 

and there is a high 

fetal mortality rate 

and these figures 

stand for the dead twins or twin- 

they are worn in a sash 

around the mother 

and ritually cared for 

and dressed much 

like the Baule spirit spouse figurines. 

Carved from wood 

and adorned with cowry shells 

and scented oils 

the Ere Ibeji are later 

passed down the family line 

either to a surviving twin 

or an aunt or another child 

once an adult 

to honor the dead spirit 

of their family 

and keep their souls 

appeased and comforted. 

Honorable traditions 

for the dead 

mapped out in sculpted hands 

African traditions 

that I have learned in my studies

in graduate school 

that inspire awe within me 

as the amount 

of homage and respect 

for the dead doesn't end

at burial or the mark 

upon the tombstone 

but is carried on 

for generations throughout 

every week and day 

so that they are not forgotten. 

© 2008 Siddartha Beth Pierce

 

Ms. Pierce is a nationally and internationally published poet and artist as well as a Mother.  Some of her works have appeared in The Indian Diary, After-Nyne, Issuu, The Artist in You, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, The Muses Review, Budzu’s Hammer, and Blue Fifth Review.  Much of her work can be found at writerscafe.org. -

- See more at: http://www.innerchildpress.com/siddartha-beth-pierce.php#sthash.E2QiHOgq.dpuf

We Give Thanks Unto Thee

The sky did darken
The earth did shake
Evil did prevail
Good did travail
But for a while
But for a season
As a new light ushered in hope
To disperse the gross darkness.


I arise today
into the sunrise of gratefulness
My friends live
Their happiness not defiled
Their blessings not cursed
Their smiles not imprisoned
By calamity not repentant.


Their land not ravaged by doom
Peace rejoices; no sound like boom
Their land not hugged by disaster
No barrenness to appraise as a star.


Need I say more ?
Arise O tongues and give praises
Fall on the ground O you knees
And adore Him who made you 'kneelful'

Happy Thanksgiving Day to all my lovely friends in the United States, you are loved!

Poem by: Kolade Olanrewaju Freedom

Picture Source:

cpitlibrary.wordpress.com

TEAR MY HEART OPEN

Tear my heart open
To gaze at a golden rose
Seated on a golden throne
Crowned with a golden diadem
Clothed in a royal apparel
of golden linen.

Tear my heart open
to gaze at the lighted candle
that melts the metallic cage of loneliness
to bring me into the well of joy
where sinking is preferable to floating.

Tear my heart open
to see beauty never seen before
to see smile that makes you walk a mile
before realising you are lost in lust.

Tear my heart open
to tear the seal of a star
whose brightness defies normality.

Tear my heart open
to see love overwhelm you
but take just a glance
lest you be enslaved.

~~THROUGH POETRY~~(International Collaboration)

Ligaw Makata( Philippines)

Through poetry; 

we build a bridge

to convey our message 

our heartfelt healing 

words of comfort and wishes. 

Through poetry 

Let our pens amalgamate 

Let our hearts' oneness knit 

for our brothers & sisters sake 

we shall unite as one to rejuvenate.

Kolade Olanrewaju Freedom (Nigeria)

Through poetry;

The pains will be chased away

Sad memories will be laid to rest

Comfort will be dispensed

as air for all to inhale.

Through poetry;

The mountains shall crumble

The lousy storm will be silenced

Cries parading on faces will be dried

Hearts bleeding will clot.

Dedicated to all victims of the Typhoon Haiyan.

I WIN (A poem from THE LIGHT BEARER)

Gross darkness makes soul's vision cloudy

Worries call my courage dowdy
Fears laugh my resilience to scorn 
Tears wear my heart as cloth
But eyes refuse to let tears drop.

I float like clouds
Into the midst of mist
Focus lost; dreams fading
Suddenly, I see rays of light
White clothed creatures extend hands
Hands of support and love.

They speak words;
Words become swords
Fears and worries slain
I win!

To read other powerful poems contained in THE LIGHT BEARER, order for your copies here:

Amazon uk: www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1492940577

Amazon U.S: www.amazon.com/dp/1492940577

Kindle edition:
http://­www.amazon.com/dp/B00FP86PY2

 — with Moses Chibueze Oparaand 17 others.