Poetry Bench: Poetry bench

GEORGE PAMBASON: THE AFRICAN POET

Equality

I paused and heckled to beckon decency

To surrogate lifestyle with culture

I paused and touched the breadth of the mirror

To cite liberties born of a free nation

I paused in the heart of the moon

To feel the pulse of the world

I paused and touched the silent past

To appreciate the wonder of creation

I paused and smiled to the joyful rainbow

To feed my mind with tolerance

I paused and painted a picture on the face of heaven

To discharge imagination of greatness

@ George Pambason

The Ebola plague

This is a praise poem for those who have died of Ebola especially the medical personnel who have died in line of duty (R.I.P)

Your hopes cast to dust; your trust misted so hastily, a life hasted to dust like dust

Misted like dying dew on a grayish evening, like a dying sun succumbed to the

fall of dusk, So Lonely you succumbed!

The pangs that tricked your life, cell by cell, organ by organ with wildly voracity

never erased your name

The wheezes and shrieks still mount in our memories, far and wide we reckon

helplessly

And so in silent you sleep robed by a plague, the burden beseeched by the world you so loved

So lonely you succumbed, one by one, village to Village, Country to Country

Tombs of deaths strutted grimly, seas of fear torment on the dead as they

torment on the widowed

Souls once loved, souls now dreaded, like love imperfectionist, a tear so soft

drooping on the loft down the lip robbed of a kiss!

Downed is the eye reddened with grief, downed is the soul you robbed of your smile

And so in silent you sleep robed by a plague, the burden beseeched by the world you so loved

Wrapped and maimed, tagged and ripped in ritual of fear without honor you so deserved.

And so you went like a flame died of wind

Wails of grief, prints of your touch, breadth of your smile, love of your duty all

echo your name

And you fell like a leaf burdened by age but so young you went

And so in silent you sleep robed by a plague, the burden beseeched by the

world you so loved

By George Pambason

The mind in love

I am captivated in solitary incarceration of my
secular desire.

Reverberating my groins, razing through my conscience,
and settling in my spine like a mid night twister.

Tremorish yet trickles the Manish of me, ticklish yet

Pounds the impotency out my groins

Exuding full spools of hormonal drunkenness.

Look! See that damsel wiggling her cluster? No! she is no nun

of times. Yes! she is my virgin envy and secular desire.

Ooh! Gosh!

My heart throbs in my weakly tummy, just tendering the helm of

Passion threshing my nerves

Look hey damsel! Cry not my name, am no hero!

I am just a name.

Lose me not in the craze of madness,

Mend mine-strewn veins in immortal passion and

Thrive not, to biblical condemnation as Eve of Eden.

Hey damsel! I infer all the lyrics on your searching lips

And am enchanted in pleasure,

Pleasure like comics that purify cupids,

Hunting for wisdom from your budding, do what you can’t

Say and lay my lips never to say what they do.

Underneath the covert of dawn, we sink and soar in unison.

Ouch! Yes, damsel you my desire.

@ George Pambason

Searching for my roots

I lay sullen in the stupor of losing my roots.

Soulless like hollow, empty like emptiness

Spelling spells of ghostly stigma warring my vanity.

My vanity sketched by shadows of my ancestral footsteps

Shadows of imaginations of how it could be now, or how it was then

When land and name was culture, when name was born of tradition

I lay sullen in the stupor so coy, my ancestral epitaph carved on delusional strips.

I am coddled in the jumble of cultural uncertainty

The fear of slavery, washing my shivery bones to the west

To be baptized by holy water, before the holy cross

To be enslaved by the holy name!

That Tobby is holy! That Kunta kinte is pagan?

I can hear the sounds of the universe, screaming! Screaming!

Calling my ancestral name from the gates of heaven

Calling for the culture of the land

The culture where the name was born of tradition

@ George Pambason

Hope!

I rise to the delight, gasping in natural streams of hope.

Streams of hope filled with breathing life to seize moments.

Moments that bring my culture to the altar, in its nucleus, great names inscribed.

Me too I spell my name to rise and swell, to live and never to die again

Seizing space after space, gratifying the oath of the great civilization.

That of self creed, latent in hidden chambers, yet bespoke to my values.

I relent ages when days span in poverty and dreams succumbed to tattered essence.

Rise to the delight, gasping in natural streams of hope.

Rise and stand tall! Nourish your mind! Spell your name to the Altar.

Grief fades beyond history, while hope looms with flickers

Seize your hope and nourish your mind with free will

Seize your hope and touch the nucleus of the wobbling universe

Seize your hope and be the fountain that weans a thirsting humanity

Seize your hope and heal the tired, who grief injustice and inequality

Be the hope to your wandering soul.

Spell your name like patterns of the rainbow, across all colours

Rising from the fountain of life to feed heavens

Rising over cold and warring countries, yet exuberating the splendour of kindness

You are the hope!

@ George Pambason

Prisoner on their Island.

Behind this thickening racial wall is mankind

Every life a testimony of a nation ailing in agony

A warring nation ragged in moral crudeness

A heritage erased by dictates of foreign regalia disguised in native shades