FEATURE FRIDAY: POEMS BY ELLEN MAR & KATE OMONEDO

It’s Feature Friday on my BBM channel, FICFAC (C0014488E) and today, two subscribers have submitted their poetry. Please leave your reactions in the comments’ section below. Enjoy the reading. 

Home of Worries by ELLEN MAR

While I wander, I ponder
Why life is so full of sad wonders
Talents hidden
Skills shaken
Dreams forgotten

Wander I through the sphere
A great find I must confess
Failure is bound to air
When one is rooted in distress
Some were born to be ahead
Others wait to be approved

Never forget at some point
All eyes will seek proof of your worth
Would you be lost in naught?
Or soar on your stance?
Wait not for people to twist you round the world
And have you lost in their words

Great men of old in the Holy Book took this stage
And are remembered in this age
Greater words I have none
But the truth I must inform
You either surge and fly
Or be shut out of this place they call world
A place you call HOME.

COMMENTS

Poetry is one genre of literature that it’s hard to critique without sounding individualistic. You have written a nice poem here which artfully describes the toil faced by humans in the world. However, there seems to be a deliberate attempt to create end rhymes, though they do not follow a particular pattern in each stanza. There’s nothing wrong with this but for us on this side of the divide, we favour ‘life’ over ‘art’ – that is, “art for life’s sake and not art for art’s sake.” This is not to give you a prescriptive style for your writing but a consideration in focus when writing. You’ll also want to aim for originality because this echoes poetry by Eliot, Wordsworth, Shakespeare, etc.

Keep writing, it can only get better.  

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Our Rainbow is Near by KATE OMONEDO

Grey skies overhead,

Heavy clouds in distress gather.

Expectant eyes skyward gaze,

The long awaited cleansing  is here.

Finally…this is it,

Promises will be kept, prayers will be answered.

Surely, our rainbow must be near.

 On the podium they had stood, backs straight with

voices raised in righteous indignation.

Promises were made;

Left hand on chest,

Right index finger touched tongue and raised in the air.

Eyes so sincere, our hopes surged.

We failed to notice the agbada–donned elders standing behind,

Paid no heed to the Ghana-must-go bags greedy age-dotted hands held in readiness.

 Expelled from her womb,

My skin still moist from its comforting warmth.

She touched my chin,

I grasped her finger with both hands.

The contact lasted ten seconds…I believed the promise.

Mother laid me in the bushes, adjusting her dress as she walked away.

Darkness drew near, the ants came in search of dinner.

She will be back….she must come back.

A promise had been made.

 Grey skies overhead,

Heavy clouds will be freed.

We shall reap from this fertile ground,

Reap from our Motherland fruits sown in tears, blood and oil.

We hold hands and in unison skyward gaze.

Promises must be kept, prayers must be answered.

Lightening splits across the sky in sympathy of the burden it bears.

It cannot be long now…our rainbow  is near.

COMMENTS

I have a strong bias for free verse poetry, maybe because I actually wrote a lot of that as a fledgling teenager trying to be literary-minded (lol). That was before I finally decided prose was the medium for me. Your poem comes with intrigue and powerful imagery. The satire of politicians and their unfulfilled promises, the betraying elders and the masses who continue to hope is so jarring and real. The swift transition to another movement in the third stanza seems strange at first but in a good way. It takes the journey from a general to a personal experience. On a thematic level, this follows the path of hoping for divine intervention which has eaten deep into the consciousness of all or is there a hint of rebellion in the ‘hands held in unison’?

Keep writing, it can only get better.