We Dust The Eyes
We the men and women of the world,
Remain annoyed
With brothers, sisters and fellow beings;
Spend lives
Dining the dinners of hatred,
Taking the waters of hypocrisy,
Breathing the air of arrogance.
We trouble, we tease, we torment,
Plotting, playing
Against them the foul games;
And when one dies,
Departs to the world next,
We gather around the corpse
With tied jaws, close eyes, wrapped in shroud.
We shriek and shout, we weep and wail
We cling to the feet, fall to embrace the deceased,
We sniff back the tears,
Some shed them as does a crocodile,
We wipe, rub the noses to make them red,
As if we are bruised and battered by the pang.
Along the coffin
We move with pretentious sullen hearts,
As if we have a load of grief to haul.
Putting into grave we throw handfuls of dust,
In fact we dust the eyes
Of participants of the burial.
All rites then after we perform
To nourish the bellies with the dishes sweet,
Though the deceased might have died of hunger.
poem by Muhammad Shanazar
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Related quotes
Children's Playground In The City
THIS is a place where men laid their dead,
Each with his life-tale of good or ill;
Here prayers were murmured and hot tears shed,
And passionate anguish moaned its fill.
Silent now is each voice that cried,
And the tears that were wept have all been dried
In the dust; and dust are the hearts that bled
With hopeless longing for hearts grown still.
Dead and forgotten! for Death, requiter
Of love, taught Memory how to forget!
The love that remembered them died. Grow brighter,
Oh, dim grave-garden, with dead hearts set!
Room for the small flying feet to pass,
The feet of the children over the grass!
The dead, if they knew it, would feel them lighter
Than the weight of a stone that no tears make wet.
We must die too, and the grief that will live
Must die as surely--death comes to all;
But you who come after--let Nature give
To our graves her tears, to our dust her pall:
Let her hide us away in her cold broad breast,
Let us be forgotten, and be at rest,
And over our heads let the great world strive,
And the children's voices carol and call.
If your heart on the flower of remembrance is set,
There is one way to pluck it--and only one:
Dare you ask your country not to forget
A name that needs to be graved on stone?
By grief, strife, sacrifice, scorn of fame,
You may grave on the people's hearts your name,
Or your name may die, and your soul live yet
In the cause you died for--the work you have done.
poem by Edith Nesbit
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Beneath The Ossa Of Dust
(On the event when five women buried alive)
What kind of hearts
We contain in the chests!
What kind of thoughts
We bear in the minds!
What kind of blood
Flows through our veins!
For the loins and the wolves,
The rats and cats, the dogs and hogs:
The ferocious animals
That bear the brutal hearts,
Dare not bury their fellows alive.
I weep, weep and weep!
I wail, wail and wail!
On the deed you did,
On the crime you committed;
And those who remained silent spectators,
Are the accomplices too,
The collaborators,
In execution of the most heinous,
And monstrous deed.
The daughters of Eve and Adam,
Who are akin to us
As mothers, daughters, sisters
And companions of life
Have been maltreated,
Buried alive by the so-called elites:
Cream of the crop,
Who are men in forms
But wolves in spirits,
The sky might not have witnessed
The spectacle more horrible,
More hideous since centuries.
They might have suffocated
Feeling themselves beneath
The Ossa of dust,
Blocking the respiratory tracks,
All helpless, unaided
With palpitating, breathing hearts,
And fearful minds
Wrapped in the brutal murkiness,
Yearning for a single
Fresh breath or a gust of wind.
Where are the laws?
Where are the morals?
Yes; they exist,
But for the back-broken
And not for the feudal lords:
The snakes sitting coiled
Upon the heaps of gold,
They are privileged
To do with liberty
What their wanton hearts wish,
No punishment:
Terrestrial or celestial them scars.
Ah! They buried
Five women in the dust alive,
Should we weep and wail,
Or wail and weep,
We still live in the Stone Age
Or in an era much worse than that,
We are no more in the modern age;
Imaging a while,
Place yourself in the place of those women
Buried alive with the beating hearts,
Pulsating pulses
What a horrible experience
They might have undergone.
The more I think
The more my head begins to pound
And my despised heart wishes to live,
In the hovels beneath the ground,
In the company of the beasts:
Less brute and less appalling,
They may tear me to pieces
But will not bury me alive,
With beating heart and pulsating pulse
Beneath the Ossa of dust,
Blocking the respiratory tracks.
poem by Muhammad Shanazar
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Carried On My Back To Master
If tears from my eyes,
Are seen to drip...
As if from a faulty faucet,
Needing to be fixed.
I have just observed and visited,
The sufferings endured...
By my sisters and brothers.
Enduring hunger and homelessness...
In once thriving neighborhoods.
If my tongue seems to be tensed,
And incensed with laments.
I have just observed and visited,
The sufferings endured...
By my sisters and brothers.
Enduring hunger and homelessness...
In once thriving neighborhoods.
If my comments should offend,
Anyone listening...
With pretensions they defend.
I have just observed and visited,
The sufferings endured...
By my sisters and brothers.
Enduring hunger and homelessness...
In once thriving neighborhoods.
And I do the best I can...
To continue my journey,
With a focus at my command.
Trying to comprehend and understand...
Why my tears,
Falling in a silence no one hears...
Can not nourish or flourish those lives I pass,
As I grasp these visions appearing...
On my path.
Knowing my own burdens and tasks,
Are carried on my back to master!
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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The Cemetery of Hearts
It was a Cemetery of Hearts
laid out in neat rectangular squares
tombstone engravings of individual stories;
of loves lost and betrayed,
tear-ravaged love trysts.
love cuts, severed
or grief-laden,
all buried in Innocent's Ground
from whence they came.
I peered at the writing on first tombstone and then some others:
'He led me on and then made love to my mother
all this to me unknown.' one said
'I died in childbirth alone after having been exiled
from my home to a nunnery.'
'She plotted against me with my best friend.'
'She told me the baby was mine.'
'I died of grief in a sex war and of an affection-less marriage.'
My love and I were shot lying together.'
One said:
'Dead hearts murdered by rage or fear are the worst;
these hearts die gnarled and alone.'
The caretaker addressed me:
'What are you doing here? ' he said.
'I came to bury my heart with the rest of them.' I said.
'Really he said. Let me have a look.
This heart, ' he said is not really dead.
'I can't bury a heart that is yet alive.
that would be murder and wrong;
away with you.
You are premature. Go. Take this heart
and feed it, make it live again.'
I was shocked. To me this rejection was
yet another heart-ache to endure.
'My heart is not dead enough? ' I said.
'That's right, ' he said, yours is merely slightly used
and a little bruised but not dead.'
'
This cemetery is Innocent Ground,
a healing place for deceased hearts,
not ones merely tired and bruised.'
'Go back out there, take some courage from this dream.
The sores on your heart will heal
and be stronger then
for someone else you'll meet.
'You are stronger than you think.
We are really short of space here
we take only the really bad heart cases.'
'Go he said
dive right back in.'
He was right.
'And, ' he said
'Never underestimate the human heart;
it is the human brain that most times
that's wrong and prematurely deceased.'
poem by Lonnie Hicks
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The Last Assembly
As I walked to the last assembly,
There were tears in the back of my eyes,
And I saw all my friends all around me,
They were there to wish me goodbye.
As I stood in a line with my comrades,
I felt such a feeling of pride,
And I forgot all the grief and the hatred inside,
As we sang for the very last time.
Gather round, gather round,
Everybody gather round.
Come and join our last assembly,
Let us smile, wipe away all the frowns.
Gather round, gather round,
Everybody gather round.
As we stood at the last assembly,
All my friends came to wish me goodbye.
Gather round, gather round,
Gather round, gather round,
Everybody gather round.
As I stand at the last assembly,
I just cant keep the tears from my eyes.
song performed by by Kinks
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Briny Grave
You wonder why so many would be buried in the sea,
In this world of froth and bubble,
But I don’t wonder, for it seems to me
That it saves such a lot of trouble.
And there ain’t no undertaker—
Oh! there ain’t no order that your friends can give
On the quiet to the coffin-maker—
To a gimcrack coffin-maker,
They make no differ twixt the absentee swell
And the clerk that cut from a “shortage”—
Oh! there ain’t no pauper funer-el,
And there ain’t no “impressive cortege.”
It may be a chap from the for’ard crowd,
Or a member of the British Peerage,
But they sew his nibs in a canvas shroud
Just the same as the bloke from the steerage—
As that poor bloke from the steerage.
There ain’t no need for a gravedigger there,
For you dig your own grave! Lord love yer!
And there ain’t no use for a headstone fair
When the waters close above yer!
The little headstone where they come to weep,
May be right for the land’s dry-rotters,
But you rest just as sound when you’re anchored deep
With the pigiron at your trotters—
(Our fathers had iron at their trotters).
The sea is democratic the wide world round,
And it don’t give a hang for no man,
There ain’t no Church of England burial ground,
Nor yet there ain’t no Roman.
Orthodox and het’rodox by wreck-strewn cliffs,
At peace in the stormiest weather,
Might bob up and down like two brother “stiffs,”
And rest in one shark together—
And mix up their bones together.
The bare-headed skipper is as good any day
As an authorised shifter of sin is,
And the tear of shipmate is better anyway
Than the tear of the next-of-kin is.
It saves your friends, and it fills your needs,
It is best when all is reckoned,
And she can’t come there in her widder weeds,
With her eyes on a likely second—
And a spot for the likely second.
poem by Henry Lawson
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We Are Hearts And Hands
Be not annoyed with me,
Those who go asunder
On the winding route
Are in fact alien since beginning.
If it is possible,
Think not of them your own,
And be not melancholic,
O! Friend,
Make not your courage
The dust of their feet.
Be not annoyed with me,
Never lose your valour,
Till breath goes on be optimist,
Leave not the edge of hope,
Tough love is afar yet it is near too.
Rise! Gird up your back,
For I am with you,
We both are hearts,
And hands of each other.
poem by Muhammad Shanazar
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Magshe
Dare to be different and dare to take up the task,
For i am from 'Mensah Sarbah Hall' to teach you;
And my mind is set up like Indiana Jones.
I am Magshe and you could be my grandfather,
But to wed the deceased on her dead-bed before burial;
For, i have no crocodile tears to shed on this issue.
Dumbfounded,
But, you must marry the ded body before burial!
However, deep inside me is the muse of love.
I am watching you under this microscope and,
I have the symbols of this story to tell from 'Mensah Sarbah Hall'!
For, someone did it for the frist time.
Your life is like a child's play,
With the cultures and the customs around you;
But i will never forget what you did to her,
And now, she is dead and gone! !
Share my thoughts if you have the muse of love,
For the gods are ready to talk today;
Because, the politicians are cheating us!
Of man's stupidity in the name of plenty,
And like the drunkard's stupor! !
But, are we all not human beings? !
For my eyes have seen and my hand will write them;
But, who else is guilty on this case?
You can achieve any heights in life if you believe in it,
Butm, you've now killed the lady;
And, you are now made rto marry the dead body.
poem by Edward Kofi Louis
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Phantom Bride
She was a shy girl from the lonely street
She had no job to do and no friends to meet
Shed sit in silence in her rented room
Dream of her childhood and invented truths
And in her mind shed drift away
A secret place to steal away
Dont you cry, dont you cry
Let me wipe away the tears from your eyes
Dont you cry, dont you cry
Let me wipe away the tears from your eyes
He was a good boy from the upside of town
Said her could treat her right said he could win her round
Her morning sickness and the kick inside
The phantom kisses of the phantom bride
And in her mind shed drift away
A secret place to steal away
Dont you cry, dont you cry
Let me wipe away the tears from your eyes
Dont you cry, dont you cry
Let me wipe away the tears from your eyes
And in her mind shed drift away
A secret place to steal away
Dont you cry, dont you cry
Let me wipe away the tears from your eyes
Dont you cry, dont you cry
Let me wipe away the tears from your eyes
No more lies
Dont you cry, dont you cry
Let me wipe away the tears from your eyes
Dont you cry, dont you cry
Let me wipe away the tears
Let me wipe away the tears
song performed by by Erasure
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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In the Dead of night
In the dead of night, a Sufi began to weep.
He said, 'This world is like a closed coffin, in which
We are shut and in which, through our ignorance,
We spend our lives in folly and desolation.
When Death comes to open the lid of the coffin,
Each one who has wings will fly off to Eternity,
But those without will remain locked in the coffin.
So, my friends, before the lid of this coffin is taken off,
Do all you can to become a bird of the Way to God;
Do all you can to develop your wings and your feathers.'
poem by Farid ud-Din Attar Abu Hamid bin Abu Bakr Ibrahim
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Tell It All Brother
Tell it all brother, before we fall
Tell it all brothers and sisters
Tell it all.
How much you're holding back on me
When you say you're giving all?
And in the dungeons of your mind
Who you got chained to the wall?
Tell it all brother, before we fall
Tell it all brothers and sisters
Tell it all.
Did you plant your feet on higher ground
To avoid life's mud and stone?
Did you ever kick a good man
When he was down, just to make yourself feel strong?
Tell it all brother, before we fall
Tell it all brothers and sisters
Tell it all.
Tomorrow just might be too late
Now is the time
To get your jumbled mind straight
And seek a new design.
Did you ever walk for a crippled man
Pretending you were lame?
And what made you think one feeble hand to God
Was gonna make him call your name?
Tell it all brother and sisters
Tell, Tell it all
Tell it all brother, before we fall
Tell it all brothers and sisters, tell
Tell it all brother, before we fall
Tell it all...
song performed by by Kenny Rogers
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Great Spirits
When the earth was young
and the air was sweet
And the mountains kissed the sky
In the great beyond, with its many paths
Man and nature lived side by side
In this wilderness of danger and beauty
Lived three brothers, bonded by love
Their hearts full of joy
they ask now for guidance
Reaching out to the skies up above
Great Spirits of all who lived before
Take our hands and lead us
Fill our hearts and souls
with all you know
Show us that in your eyes
we are all the same
Brothers to each other
In this world we remain truly
brothers all the same
Give us wisdom to pass to each other
Give us strength so we understand
That the things we do
the choices we make
Give direction to all life's plans
To look in wonder
at all we've been given
In a world that's not always as it seems
Every corner we turn
only leads to another
A journey ends, but another begins
Great Spirits of all who lived before
Take our hands and lead us
Fill our hearts and souls
with all you know
Show us that in your eyes
we are all the same
Brothers to each other
In this world we remain truly
brothers all the same
Brothers all the same
song performed by by Tina Turner
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Can't Cry Anymore
1000 years could come and go but we would never change
It doesn't matter how we try our hearts remain the same
You see how quickly distance grows close your eyes and it appears
And we've pretended long enough no more time no more tears
I just can't cry I can't cry anymore
While you throw our lives away
I just can't cry I can't cry anymore
While you throw our lives away Throw them away
Something happened long ago and we grew apart
We turned our heads the other way and so we turned our hearts
But girl I'm not blaming you and I'm not blaming me
It's just the way the story goes We grew up but separately
I just can't cry I can't cry anymore
While you throw our lives away
I just can't cry I can't cry anymore
While you throw our lives away Throw them away
song performed by by Kansas
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Close Your Eyes, My Angel
Close your eyes, my angel,
For now, you will see,
The wonderful, peaceful world
That once used to be.
Close your eyes, my angel,
In that world, you will feel
Gentle hands of love and
Laughter, for wounds to heal.
Close your eyes, my angel,
Your feet will take you where
No angel has ever returned from
And no pain shall trouble you there.
So close your eyes, my angel,
Here, your memories shall remain just
For that was where you came from
And that is where you shall rest!
poem by Tanmayi Mukundan
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Virtue
Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright
The bridal of the earth and sky:
The dew shall weep thy fall tonight,
For thou must die.
Sweet rose, whose hue, angry and brave,
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eyes:
Thy root is ever in its grave,
And thou must die.
Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie:
My music shows ye have your closes,
And all must die.
Only a sweet and virtuous soul,
LIke seasoned timber, never gives;
But though the whole world turn to coal.
Then chiefly lives.
poem by George Herbert
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A Sharecropper's Pantoum
'The drug cocktails that have slashed the mortality rate of HIV-positive people in the U.S. and Western Europe are all but non-existent in Haiti. [O]nly 3 to 4 percent of people with AIDS [there] have access to the newest drugs.'
-The Chicago Tribune,2003
Hauling this pine box on a black Chevrolet,
I pray to a candle at the end of its wick.
White burial clothes in a garbage bag,
I ride for a place to die.
I pray to a candle at the end of its wick
on the mud road home from Port-au-Prince
and ride toward a place to die
where mangoes hang and sugarcane turns.
By the dust road home from Port-au-Prince,
I am a black skeleton—6 feet tall, yet 90 pounds—
where mangoes hang and sugarcane burns.
I turned the earth before I got this thing.
A lesioned skeleton—a rainbow tall, now 70 pounds—
I dream across the waters and of the miracles there
and turn to earth in the jaws of this thing:
eyes—black holes, lungs—green clouds.
Dreaming across the waters and of the miracles there,
white burial clothes in a garbage bag,
eyes—black holes, lungs—green clouds,
I haul my pine coffin in a black Chevrolet.
poem by M. Ayodele Heath
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Wake Up (It's 1984)
Wake up! wont you listen to me
Wake up! wont you listen to me
Wont you listen to me
Wake up! wont you listen to me
Wake up! wont you listen to me
Wont you listen to me
Big brothers watching, we watch him back
We see right through his disguise
He tries to scare us, with angry words
But we all know that theyre lies
Whole world is waiting
Just see the fear in their eyes
Whole world is watching, observing every move
Is it beginning or the end?
Just like a chess game, but so intense
That I just dont understand
Anticipation
Its much to big to pretend
Chorus
(wake up), its 1984
(wake up), but weve been here before
(wake up), its 1984
(wake up), but weve been here before, (here before)
Big brothers screaming but we dont care
Cause hes got nothing to say
Think of the future, think of the prophecy
Think of the children of today
Big brothers marching
So we all stand in his way
Open your eyes, sisters and brothers
Neatly disguised, so far away
Open your heart, try to remember
Two worlds apart, but so close
(wake up), its 1984
But weve been here before
(wake up), its 1984
But weve been here before
All our lives leading up to this day, watching and waiting
Wake up! wake up!
Wake up! wake up!
Open your eyes, sisters and brothers
Neatly disguised, so far away
Open your heart, try to remember
Two worlds apart, but so close
Chorus
Whole world is watching
Anticipating
Big brothers marching
Is it beginning or the end?
Chorus
song performed by by Oingo Boingo
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Sweet Briars of the Stairways
We are happy all the time
Even when we fight:
Sweet briars of the stairways,
Gay fairies of the grime;
We, who are playing to-night.
"Our feet are in the gutters,
Our eyes are sore with dust,
But still our eyes are bright.
The wide street roars and mutters —
We know it works because it must —
We, who are playing to-night!
"Dirt is everlasting. — We never, never fear it.
Toil is never ceasing. — We will play until we near it.
Tears are never ending. — When once real tears have come;
"When we see our people as they are —
Our fathers — broken, dumb —
Our mothers — broken, dumb —
The weariest of women and of men;
Ah — then our eyes will lose their light —
Then we will never play again —
We, who are playing to-night."
poem by Vachel Lindsay
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357
tomorrow is another day
where you mark another boundary of awareness
your mind adds another layer
the layers of the past like onions that you peel
with your fingers
your eyes staring
taking each peeled reality as a must
the tears fall
your eyes dry
tomorrow you shall say thank you
you have lived and shall live some more
you shall be sorry for those who died
for those who left you
empty halls and empty rooms
you have more reasons to live and continue
what they have really wanted to do
but didn't have the time
hastily cut and utterly wasted by untimely deaths
tomorrow my friend
you must start wearing beautiful eyes those that smile
those that must assure the world
about a fulfillment of its dreams and wishes
those that must affirm beauty and wisdom and truth
shed off old skins and take the new ones
a brave mind, a calm spirit, a determined body
take a self that can hold much
because others are weak and failing
look out for dreams that shall make you whole
gather the fragments, make this mosaic of love and happiness
take the petals of happy moments one by one in your hands
put them in the bowl of your emptiness
put there the cool waters of your composure
take all sense and scents and sit in solitude
be not disturbed about sadness and insecurities
all these are now under the soles of your feet
all these are now taking their own defeat
you stand facing the sun, brave and bold
there is more to hold and to mold
there is more to be done in this world
there is more to be written and spoken to behold!
(happy birthday, one day more, another destiny)
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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On Your Birthday Tomorrow
tomorrow is another day
where you mark another boundary of awareness
your mind adds another layer
the layers of the past like onions that you peel
with your fingers
your eyes staring
taking each peeled reality as a must
the tears fall
your eyes dry
tomorrow you shall say thank you
you have lived and shall live some more
you shall be sorry for those who died
for those who left you
empty halls and empty rooms
you have more reasons to live and continue
what they have really wanted to do
but didn't have the time
hastily cut and utterly wasted by untimely deaths
tomorrow my friend
you must start wearing beautiful eyes those that smile
those that must assure the world
about a fulfillment of its dreams and wishes
those that must affirm beauty and wisdom and truth
shed off old skins and take the new ones
a brave mind, a calm spirit, a determined body
take a self that can hold much
because others are weak and failing
look out for dreams that shall make you whole
gather the fragments, make this mosaic of love and happiness
take the petals of happy moments one by one in your hands
put them in the bowl of your emptiness
put there the cool waters of your composure
take all sense and scents and sit in solitude
be not disturbed about sadness and insecurities
all these are now under the soles of your feet
all these are now taking their own defeat
you stand facing the sun, brave and bold
there is more to hold and to mold
there is more to be done in this world
there is more to be written and spoken to behold!
(happy birthday, one day more, another destiny)
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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