I Have Seen Continents Written On Faces
I have seen continents written on faces
with eyes full of pain, postures in a weathered mien
and at a number of places
images went to my brain, of some people keen
with their loving embraces
while others living in a world that had been,
of which only memories remain.
It is as life changes from its summer form,
changes with ageing
while people from youth through adulthood transform
and if daily some have a struggle that is waging,
a kind of brewing silent storm,
that lashes against the remainders of summer and spring
while daily they have duties and a myriad of tasks to perform.
When through ageing and destiny
people have to live alone,
or it may be by their iniquity
that a loved one is forever gone,
then there is sadness that I sometimes see
while they struggle to live on and on
and from life and living some wish to be free.
Yet others age well
as if they are totally exempt
from life’s spell,
while younger women still do them tempt,
it’s if they did not experience the same kind of hell
and to ageing, illness and death have contempt
while they still in their mansions do dwell.
poem by Gert Strydom
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We Live In An Ageist Society
We live in an ageist society where ageing people are treated as second class
Where the ageing man and ageing woman are seen as inferior to the young man and the young lass
And the older you get life gets harder the future belong to the young
And so many on retirement pensions are lonely, forgotten and unsung.
They worked hard for to raise their children but they will end their days in a retirement home
And their children don't visit them often 'twould seem that their usefulness they have outgrown,
One might say they've had a good innings though nothing easy came their way
And I do not find it consoling to think their lot will be my lot one day.
I fear growing old more than I fear death their last few years so few enjoy
But I suppose that there is consolation to know that the wealthy too grow old and die
And life too will go on without them their money will not keep them alive
The Reaper one day he will claim them though to an old age they survive.
We live in an ageist society and ageism is on the increase
One can feel happy for the dear departed at least they can now rest in peace
Rejected in their old age and lonely with only their good memories left to recall
And only the Reaper awaits them the Reaper who waits for us all.
poem by Francis Duggan
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Life Is Just Life
life is neither a heaven nor a hell.
not a puzzle to get displace.
life is life n only life
which we have to live n survive..
life is not a trauma of tumult..
nor of sporadic spryness or sundry sadness
life is living n to live is life
life is not a season of summer or springs..
or of being at shed or scortching heat
life is what it is l-iving i-t f-ullest e-clatically
is the message it gives..
life is not a sea of sorrow or plethora of pleasure
nothing so special nothin to err
life is living n only living..
& the one who defines it, does it for living
life is not a boon nor a bane
& nthng being so estrange
life is to live n to live is life..
& living life makes us suffice.........
poem by Srishti Shrivastava
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A New And A Better World
A new and a better World I may not live to see
But the time is not far distant when all people will live free
Of oppressive regimes and terrorism and greed and poverty
For all of those poor victims of capitalism who live in penury.
A new and better World may be a century away
And I for one will not be around for to celebrate that day
And though one hundred years may seem far off in time not a lengthy span
Only the life time after all of one long lived woman or man.
We may not be that far away in time when ageing people will recall
We never thought we'd live to see the day of a fair go for all
When people are not discriminated against due to their religion or race
And in human society for poverty and oppression there isn't any place.
A new and a far better World for me will come too late
For time is ever ticking and the reaper for me wait
But the day is not that distant when people in wars or of hunger will not die
And a fair go is something that all people will enjoy.
poem by Francis Duggan
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Saga Of The Ageing Orphan
Father and I waved goodbye
As we went to look
Uncle peter was writing a book
And his mama was starting to cook and shes ageing
We had come in search of one
Who evades us all
Never heeds the call
If only someone could stall this ageing
So Ill go and hope and know
That my time is near
Laughing through the years
Having only fears of ageing
song performed by by Thin Lizzy
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Saga Of The Ageing Orphan
Father and I waved goodbye
As we went to look
Uncle peter was writing a book
And his mama was starting to cook and shes ageing
We had come in search of one
Who evades us all
Never heeds the call
If only someone could stall this ageing
So Ill go and hope and know
That my time is near
Laughing through the years
Having only fears of ageing
song performed by by Thin Lizzy
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Age of Fall
A time when things material
begin to have little… or no
Import at all
A time closely akin to Nature’s transformation
From verdant summer green
To roseate and redolent Fall
A season in life…
as much a reason in Nature
When retrospection and reappraisal…
like falling leaves…
settle softly…subtly
On each one and all
A season when sentiments
of sincerity, and satisfaction
Reign supreme
As inevitably as soft blankets of leaves
And inexorable incursions
Of fall’s ice upon streams
A time of looking back o’er shoulder
No concern to what
Lies ahead
A time of taking stock of how life…like leaves
Has fallen about you and humbled
Your weary head
A time of peace…in both meadows and mind
Of qualities shared equally…
By both in kind
Ageing and Fall…times of hesitation
To look back upon…wistfully..
Your Summers and Spring
Of blossoming trees…and of fond memories
That only Ageing…
And fall can bring
poem by David Whalen
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Port Fairy In January
Port Fairy in January on a warm and humid saturday
The beach full of people the young splash and play
In the shallows where the small waves splash onto the beach
In a place safe to swim where the life savers can reach
Anyone who gets in trouble and for help have to shout
To the beach for safety they will drag them out
And if necessary so give them mouth to mouth
The worth of the Life Saver is never in doubt
In the prime of the Summer at the start of the New Year
When people still enjoy the Seasonal cheer
Ageing and younger people and many girl and boy
A dip in salt-water do seem to enjoy
People of all ages and colours and mostly every Race
Make Port Fairy in January quite a busy place.
poem by Francis Duggan
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The World I Know
There are times when the day become night
A night struck by the afflatus of the day
A day felt the mourning of the night
And a mytho-pattern, a singing line or two
Is the cadence with an accelerated heart beat of the people.
There are time when a single felt ideas, image or metaphor are becoming the cadavers of injustices
It is the world I know
A world which full of exploitation and oppression
A world which injustices are prevail
A world where the few are the one who have privileges to live
It is the world where we live in
I will take a nap for a while and I will more dreaming, and I may understand much more that for every minutes
I close my eyes we have lost the sixty seconds of our life
I will systematically sequesters all the things
Not only for their importance’s, but for their meanings
Perhaps I will think first before I rhetorically say all the things
This is the world I know
A world which full of strange and ambiguous but precise
And myriads of golden beads which lay down on the bosom of the earth
Tell us how this world become an important to the children of soil
But unfortunately, these children of soil which give more importance to the myriad of golden beads
Is the one who suffer the burden which create by the monsters of greed
It is the world I know
A world which full of deception and perplexity
It is aghast to all of us, when we tend to know the real situation
The keen of poverty which have been suffered by the children of soil
Is the rock spring, that we shall fetch
For the momentous struggle and liberation
The ferocious monster of greed are been totally defeated
It is the world I know
A world of series struggle and liberation
A world free from deprivation and starvation
From inequality and injustice
From domination and exploitation
A world living in God promise of interconnectedness in peace that's anchored on justice
It is the world I know
poem by Vicente Añonuevo
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Are We Doing All God Needs?
Are you an influence for The Lord, as you live your daily life?
Or is your witness just ignored, caught up in your daily strife?
We’re to impact the lives men, which we bump into every day,
Now that we are Born Again, to show others God’s Only Way.
Do you live with Christ in mind, called to be for God His light?
When someone may be unkind, treating you in ways not right?
Jesus showed us how to live, and a love that we should show,
And Grace to us He would give, to help others come to know.
Do men see the Light of God, if you walk into a darker place?
In this darkened world you trod, led by the light of His Grace?
For God’s Light we are to be, lifted high by Christ, upon a hill,
Placed where all men can see, and done according to His will.
As you live life in this world, do you point men to God’s Truth?
Is your life for Him a Herald, with your own life as living proof?
It’s God’s Truth we’re to proclaim, to all people of every nation,
In the power of Christ’s name, pointing men to God’s Salvation.
Are we being, as Christ’s bride, the people whom God bought?
Living our lives truly crucified, to walk what we’ve been taught?
Are we doing all that God needs, willing today to pay the price?
Living this life sowing seeds, so others come to faith in Christ?
(Copyright ©02/2008)
Your Life Is A Fountain Of Dreams
Life is a journey that all we take,
We should fearless do every day forward a step,
Could be a fail, or could be not,
We should let life to flow.
Life is a mystery each passing day,
We wake up and find unbelievable ways,
We seek, we experience, we fulfill our knowledge hunger,
Each experience of life makes us stronger.
Life is a struggle and life is a joy,
We can experience happiness or we can experience pain,
It's about choices we should take,
Life is a lesson each step we make.
Moments of life are bad or good,
We live and remember those moments,
Memories will be kept forever in our hearts,
But hopes are base of the future.
Never give up hoping,
Life is it short but didnt finish yet,
As long as you are still living,
Your life is a fountain of dreams.
poem by Cristina Teodor
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At times it might look (in answer to W. B. Yeats)
At times it might look and feel if the young
are truly living, are really happy,
as if to them the whole world does belong
in their bliss, even in iniquity;
some call ageing trifling, even paltry,
but in the eyes of the honest true love,
age brings a kind of great maturity
and nothing can the loveliness remove
which in each word and deed selfless express
the greatest kind of sheer loving kindness
when a heart does unwavering love possess
and love has a own unique blindness
that does overreach everything else,
a deep thing about which any poet tells.
[Reference: "Sailing to Byzantium" by W.B. Yeats.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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Better It Would Have Been (Sonnet Corona / Crown Of Sonnets)
I
Without you much better it would have been,
if in this wide world under all the skies
I did not know you, I had never seen
the glimmer, the attraction in your eyes.
Better it would have been if I unseen
at the braking of that particular day
joyous, somewhat sincere like a teen
went on another different kind of way,
I would then have totally missed you
as our love, our joy was sealed in vain.
You would not have opportunity to do
things that leave much heartache and pain
as your heart was set in some treachery,
your blunt rebuke was not sought by me.
II
Your blunt rebuke was not sought by me,
yet you gave it to me as if earned,
as if from it I was not to be free,
its impact did hurt and really burned
right into my depths, my heart's inner core
and still I then very much loved you
every day more and even much more
as something very sincere and true
but my Lord I loved more deeper still
as He always dwelled in everything
and I try to live by His very will,
with your love being at times a cursing
and at times there was water on my glasses;
when the wild wind rushes through the grasses.
III
When the wild wind rushes through the grasses,
it is something that you will never see
nor the beauty of the places were it passes
as you can never be really quite free
from the rich earthly things that embraces
you in wantonness, in deep iniquity
and at many different kinds of places
high up on the hill and down in the lea
diamonds adorn grasses and wild flowers
as if nature cries for you and me
as tears of dew that shines, not from showers
while life is how it's determined to be,
when you had chosen a fresh sort of start;
I did not ask you to return my heart.
IV
I did not ask you to return my heart
you have trampled it again and again
and now it would be really just in vain
as it is broken in every part
but now from each other being apart
we live separate lives of joy and pain
and the simple fact does still remain,
it does not take someone really quite smart
to know that when you do not have me
your whole life becomes somewhat mundane,
then you do not really want to be free
and I know that it sounds very inane
but obviously I cannot anymore be
yours in love's strange painful mystery.
V
Yours in love's strange painful mystery
were without any tears and full of glee
but left me totally broken hearted
then I noted after more than fifteen years
that you did not take a last kind of kiss,
from me was taking whatever you could,
had totally forgotten our sweet bliss,
maybe I knew this was the way that it would.
I wish time and again not to have know you
in the way that it ended when you were gone,
while then you had been wickedly untrue
had have intimate sex with someone,
it's sometimes hard to be the only one,
when at night in darkness I lie down alone.
VI
When at night in darkness I lie down alone
the golden moon and all the stars are bright
and some of them to me are quite unknown,
Orion and the seven sisters gleam at night
but life does continually carry on
the morning sun seems at times out of sight
and it is stripped from all affection
but can constantly bring back life and light
to what is still left of my kind of world,
as if everything is falling apart
and in all the things that I do behold
you seem to be somehow the crucial part
as if everything was astray leaden,
as you left me, my life did then deaden.
VII
As you left me, my life did then deaden
as if being tied up and underfed,
walking away, not anymore a maiden,
leaving my heart filled with only dread.
In love I saw you as pure and holy
a mother for children, true to the gods,
but with your lover you acted lowly
as you did cast me away to life's odds
and you have lost all the joyful graces
with the very thoughts of you that remain,
images of your many different faces
are filled to the brim with utter pain
and to meet you again I am not keen,
without you much better it would have been.
poem by Gert Strydom
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It's My Life
Refrain:
It's my life
I stand it all alone
Accept my way of living
I live it on my own
It's my life
I try to be so free
'cause freedom is the promise
Of my destiny
It's my life
Oho ohoho
I'm never gonna give it up
Oho ohoho
I never ever lose my aim
Oho ohoho
I'm never gonna give it up
Accept my way of living
It's my life
1.
I am dreaming in the sunshine
I dream of all the people I talked to in my lifetime
Different cultures, different nations
Happy people, lucky people feeling my vibrations
They just told me all the reasons
I have to find my own way, don't change it like the season
It's my life, I live it on my own
Welcome to dangerzone
2.
Like my mother is holding my hand
Whenever I'm alone, music is my best friend
You're my passion, we're together
Music is my life I wanna live with you forever
There's no limit, celebration
Everybody come and dance, feel the fascination
Like a Rolling Stone into the microphone
I live it on my own
song performed by by DJ Bobo
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Faces
Key:-a - anita r - ray
A: look around you
What do those faces tell you?
R: faces, joy and pain
A: faces
All around different faces I see
Some are happy, some in misery
They express joy and pain
No two faces are the same.
R: people, people all over town
Some of them are poor and others wear a crown
Ive seen alot of many faces
Joy and pain in different places
Open your mind, set yourself free
Figure it out, what could it be?
Sympathise, understand
Give love and peace to the other fellow man
A: faces
R: faces, joy and pain
A: look around you
Do you see those faces
What do those faces tell you
A: everywhere I go, different faces I see
A: faces
All around different faces I see
Some are happy, some in misery
They express joy and pain
No two faces are the same.
R: playing with your life, playing with your soul
You all scream out Im the one in control
Killing of the colours, silly stupid games
You know who you are without no names
Dont mess the world cause that the sequal
Open your mind cause we talking about the people
In the world, all kind of places
Different races, different faces
A: different faces
Everywhere
song performed by by 2 Unlimited
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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An Ageing Gipsy Woman
An ageing woman of no fixed abode
She has travelled down many a road
The lines of life etched on her face
And she is one who ages with grace.
Born into the wandering way of life
And is she a mother and to an ageing Rom a wife
And does her children play music and sing
And dance around the camp-fire in a ring.
All she asks is a small help from you
A gold or silver coin maybe two
Towards her ticket to her next destiny
How far distant from Paris or to where that might be.
The darkness of her eyes and her hair
And the colourful scarf that she wear
A beautiful though ageing Gipsy Rose
She strikes such a classical pose.
One can detect the pride of her race
And the wisdom in her beautiful face
The wisdom the years only bring
To one who should be a Queen for a King.
Discrimination against her she surely has known
But any thoughts of inferiority she has outgrown
So elegant, graceful and proud
She would stand out in any crowd.
The camera of course never lies
It has captured the wisdom in her brown Romany eyes
The great book of life by her read
And of her what more can be said.
poem by Francis Duggan
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In The Tiredness Of Life
The survival stage of being,
Living day by day travel in,
Travel out in division of life.
Fatigue, weary, pain,
Inside whole being;
Struggle, adversity, experiences,
Trouble, are great suffering.
The eyes feel every drops of pain,
The heart and mind combine with
Breath fade away,
To carry the cross by the way
Experience in any kind event journey,
What it is all about inside life?
all things made by choice, permission
Of God to happen, to polish the wholeness
Of being, to understand the deepest
Important of life existence,
To know the duties of life in the
lives of one individual.
The pain struggle is the source
Of a beautiful life, we cannot
experience God glory without adversity,
Though its hurting deep down inside
Outside being.
God rule, reveal his power;
Receive him in heart in the annoying soul.
In the tiredness of life, revival;
We see rainbow glistering all over,
holding God hands to the perfect
Place of peace.
The prosperity of being,
The reality of life destination.
poem by Jocelyn Dunbar
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The Once Mighty Bay
Fifteen years ago he could run as fast as the wind
The champion group 1 gelding of the thoroughbred kind
At the big City race tracks big races he won
The big bay in his prime was the Nation's number one
Racehorse and highest stakes winner and the one to beat
In his racing life he never tasted defeat
But in his retirement his face looking gray
A shadow of the horse he once was is the ageing big bay
In his younger years he was the Nation's pride
And to watch him race people came from places far and wide
But it has been awhile now since he was in his prime
And he is losing out to the father of time
And like every dog every race-horse has it's day
He can scarce raise a trot now the once mighty bay.
poem by Francis Duggan
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The hidden violence lurked (English sonnet)
The hidden violence lurked, was right there,
waiting always waiting to come to the surface
and in Africa most people were totally unaware
until the blood flowed, until they had to face
the destruction, until a hungry lion rushed in;
on the tranquil river eyes were peeping
and this struggle no unarmed person could win
when razor sharp jaws were snapping
and yet a kind of beauty, a kind of innocence,
was always present and just waiting to appear,
even if cruelty did daily feelings incense
there was something without any kind of fear
that dwelt in the early morning beauty,
something that stayed great and forever free.
poem by Gert Strydom
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Parents
My Ma
Is in her
Late sixties.
My Baba
In his
Early seventies.
Going by the
Average
Life span
Of people
Living in
India,
They don't have
Very many
Years to live.
It's a loss for me.
It's a loss for them.
When life has
Nothing more
To give.
All the grudges
You have
Against your
Parents,
Just let them go,
For when they go,
You'll keep grudging
About all the love
You couldn't show.
Because of them
You've seen
The light
Of this earth.
Be grateful…
For they've
Brought you
To this earth.
You owe them
Your life.
Whatever they could,
They did their best.
Now it's time
To put matters
At rest.
They are your
Parents.
Were they good
Or not so good,
You'll always
Miss them.
(Poem themed on Ageing)
poem by Aparna Chatterjee
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Daily I Crucify Him
Daily I crucify Him while I dwell in sin,
while I stumble forth in life;
daily a new life for me He does begin
even when I fall down in strive
and from every sin, every iniquity
daily He sets me free.
poem by Gert Strydom
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