Insane Moment

Suddenly

The song of the fields is a silly wild cacophony
The quiet of noon home a sombre frozen void

The radio is a distressing mad discordance
The screen a flurry of undefined absurd forms

The book shelves no more have the power to arrest
The writing gadgets no more the magic to release

The night club has lost the glitz to charm
The house of Providence the clout to quiet

The people once in the breast no longer are there
The rationale of their acquaintance gone with them

The things formerly planned all are lost
The things  previously done not memorable either

All ambition appear without rationale or purpose
All toil without true reward or recompense

All acquisition seem without realism or substance
All loss without essence or significance

The very concept of life looks inane and idiotic
The very continuing here frivolous and foolish

The very notion of existence is base and stupid
The very picture of the world blank and bleak.

——

Good Friday Evening, 2010

Time for the commemoration
Of God’s son’s gruesome crucifixion
Two millennia since:

The taverns are booming
With revelers come to celebrate drinking,
The lodges are teeming
With couples come to sleep over adultering,
The streets are overflowing
With prostitutes come with discounts for the evening,

This policeman is wresting bribes
So he can avail his family chicken for the season,
The other fellow is breaking into houses
So he can go to the beach Easter Sunday afternoon,
That vendor yonder is hiking prices
So he can garner extra profit from the celebration.

Hear God’s son’s death
Was for the salvation of men from catastrophe
If only men kept from
Drunkenness and theft and adultery and all sin.

——

Delight

That in this dark deep dead of night
Your form and soul all so bright
Should shine my dull world to light,

That in the worst of the worst of moments
-of fears and hurts and unutterable torments-
Your cheer should upon me come in torrents,

That in the oft eerie mazes of this wide world
Your hand ever tender should thine readily hold
Toward the correct boulevard to steadily lead,

That among the many volatile and perfidious
Carrying on here down amongst us, with us,
A man should find one to count on, to cherish!

——

Melancholy

The sight yesterday of classmate Allan
With his old man gladly going swimming
Had me behind the classroom bitterly weeping
As I saw myself and my own old man
Whom I never saw also gladly go swimming;

Back home I asked mother if she thought
My old man would have taken me swimming
Were he to be this earth still walking
And she said, Yes, she thought
Small tears down her eyes streaming.

——

Blessed for Song

How blessed my poor abject soul to own
A key to the house of song!
What gift to know, like the bard of Dorchester town,
The chambers of the singsong!

When tempests so sway the old boat
In the sacred house do I lock self to forget the turbulence!
When troubles my spirit ruthlessly tort
In the sacred chambers do I always find sweet condolence!

When I want to store up pleasures cosmic
I have known, the house avails a store infinitely roomy!
When I wish to tell of endeavours epic
I have undertaken, the chambers avail a microphone boomy!

What gift my key to that house of song,
What blessing to know those chambers of the singsong!

——

(c) Ssemutooke Joseph Kitaka