Karen Degnan Foiles, 22 january 2013
Love is good, love is kind
But love can be evil and blind
Love controlled my heart and mind
For so many years of my life
Made me ignore all the signs
Of the bad things that I did
And all the things I did not do
How many people I've left too
All the poems I've written
All the songs I've sung
Were a little bad birdie in my ear
Singing the wicked praises of love
My dependence of loves dread
Love led me astray to regrets
Of bad decisions and lies
Were just evidence of my demise
The neediness of acceptance
The craving of bonding
The wanting of touch
The patience of sex
Love injured my heart and
Shattered my trust
Made me question my very souls
Worthiness for happiness
Leaving me emotionally spent
And physically weak
Was I just trying to repair
The broken child within?
Patricia Etienne, 22 january 2013
Oh great wisdom Sage of wondrous time
Shine up your great eyes on the women of India as they have been under difficulties
Their land has no place to free and their voice has no strength to cry for mercy
Each day is a struggle like a challenge for a limb to climb up mountains
For you Great Sage, stood against the great Sanhedrin's practices
Your revolutionary actions, had delivered the ultimate chance, and fair choices
That brought by far, women's and children's rights.
Like Mary-Magdalena became sin-free
The Samaritan woman spread the gospel of salvation
The crippled woman who first took steps inside the synagogue
for you broke down the hall of patriarch superiority
your affirmation on behalf of women, had brought The Pharisees to humiliation and shamed
Oh Great Master-avatar!
Why in India a woman is raped every twenty minutes?
Why such adversities on those women ?
Why tears take the place of their glowing eyes?
why sadness takes constant notes in their hearts?
Why such malevolent at large?
If follow your theory by turning the other cheek to the aggressor.
It won't be much hope and
MeditaTION wouldn't be the answer either
For those Indian women cry “Great St. Essa”
You sacrificed to create peace and gender equality.
Let the bell tolls and said “Beware, Brute-Men leave the site of those women for they are sacred and loved!”
Let those unleashed rapist be refrained to normal type of behavior
For legacy of justice reigns, and the fallen souls shall depart in peace.
© 2011 by _Patricia Etienne
All rights reserved
Gert Strydom, 22 january 2013
The heart of a human is a strange thing,
it’s a place that words and deeds do penetrate
or to some only a pumping station for blood
but still love can let it sing without words
and now I wonder what to do with you?
Will I be able to disappear into your depths?
Will I eternally anchor to who and what you are?
Will I trust you to keep all of my secrets?
That something deeper is present than any words can say
is constantly clear to me when your hand lies in mine
and if this thing is love that binds me to you
then I would never want it any different.
and to laugh and cry with you,
to hide against the rough world at your side
seems to me like how things should be
when we love each in innocence without fear.
Gert Strydom, 22 january 2013
(after C. Louis Leipoldt)
Lord, when the last hour of the year leaves me
then I ask love and mercy from You
and sometimes in this life I am astonished and dumbfounded
but at times left behind by friends and loved ones
and when the last minute of the year disappears
then I want to think back to times where I could find moments of happiness
and when life wants to press me down I stand before you like a child,
while I trust in hope on the new tomorrow’s sunshine.
Give me a disposition that forgives and do forget,
help me to stay true to You, to my wife and to my country,
to stand free from self-exaltation and any hypocrisy
and to really know about the depth of love.
Help me to live for more than own enrichment,
to pursue the struggle for everything that is right
and bring on my life’s way daily new meaning,
teach me to constantly discover your truths,
to live only to Your will in my humanity
and I beg that you lead on the way,
that You do fill each day with new hope
become a part of my reality
and when the dark days comes suddenly
then I ask that You become the light on my way
and when I do deviate I ask that You bring me back to equilibrium
unto the last days of old age.
[Reference: “’n Kersnaggebed” (A Christmas night prayer) by C. Louis Leipoldt.]
Gert Strydom, 22 january 2013
When the rain falls for days without end,
and I lie on a Sunday morning nurturing in your arms,
while lightning sounds far away in the distance
then in the cosiness I want nothing different
and then I feel your breath soft and hot against my cheek,
while a few doves coo peacefully outside,
and I notice roses with their flowers full of water hanging lower
when the sun time after time peeps furtively.
On a day as this there is a kind of rest
that lingers right through the house and nature
and when I kiss you soft upon your lips
a scene of love plays like something from an age-old story
while I smell jasmine and gardenia on the wind
when your soft hand finds mine.
David de la Croes, 21 january 2013
When we are lost, God's love will find us
and when wounded, His grace will bind us
when our prospects are bleak and forlornly
and the paths we walk are steep and thorny
our hope is in God on whom we wait
more than those that watch for the morning.
Gert Strydom, 21 january 2013
There is a kind of love that I do not really understand
and when my thoughts go to the bible story
then I wonder in my own sinful human nature
how an almighty God comes to a word of fear?
Through the ages the hammer blows keeps ringing
as man did crucify the God of the universe
who did not keep them that murdered Him accountable
as darkness and sorrow came over the earth
and when even an idol worshiper out of the Roman legion
realised that it was the son of God and reconciled himself with the Lord
a price was paid in unmentionable love
and this pain and sorrow keeps lingering in my thoughts.
When the world looks threatening and terrible
I still see His eyes looking in love from the cross.
Gert Strydom, 21 january 2013
A picture lingers with me
of God hanging as a man on the cross,
of Mary standing dumfounded nearby
and mere humans mocking Him about His powerlessness
when the bright day fled into the night,
when God himself paid a sacrifice for the human existence
and this scene remains in my mind
and to me its reality, not just only a very old story.
Gert Strydom, 21 january 2013
From a life of iniquity the Lord has called me
and although Satan wants to make me but a pauper
I am a child of the everlasting king
and His praises I will shout out and sing.
Even if at times I do feel despair,
as if my whole world is falling apart
in His wisdom He controls every affair
and He still does live within my heart,
He does every day take the greatest care
while He walks ahead of my life’s way.
Satish Verma, 21 january 2013
The shift to vernal tone
starts a standoff with eyelashes.
A sickle moon begin
sharpooning the stars.
The unorthodox microlove
brings out a ciliated canon
of faithless interior. The gods
were going to become weary of snowfall.
Punctuating the silence, words
again scream, fly like eagles
in the valley of wounds. How far
the fire will go engulfing the untouchable?
Satish Verma
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