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Writer's picturePoetryzine

Allan Shawa: “Garden of bliss” and other poems

Poetryzine magazine presents the selected poems by the Zambian writer Allan Shawa



A glow for all


I adore the rainbow when non obscure

The absence of its glow is what I adjure,

It has radiance, so radiant and pure;

Healing all dullness in the absence of a cure,

I crawl towards its glow and allure

Calling it to wander within me, in my heart to tour,

A stable home for its splendor to endure,

To implant its sparkle and sprout for sure;

Its abundance has a hope to assure,

Strength eternal, for the soul conjure

A flame for the faithless, to warm the insecure;

An embrace for the homeless, to shelter the poor,

Despite the unbridled stares of the stars getting fewer.



Garden of bliss


Planted among men are seeds of discord,

Our hearts; the fertile grounds,

Bearing fruits of hatred,

Harvested by benevolent void entities,

Who possess personalities that stem from the soils of hatred;

While seeking to prune the yields of love,

Because love is the flower

That sprouts forth from a thorny bush,

Rising due to the light that engulfs the darkness,

Love is a flower

Endowed with a fragrance,

Purposed to eliminate the stench of life,

Its blossoms from the ground below,

Where our bliss once was buried,

Life is a flower

Deeply rooted to withstand the wind,

Never falling before adversity,

Love is a flower;

Its seeds implanted in our hearts

Springs forth a beauty

That nourishes the soul

By the endless deeds of kindness

That holds steady those who branch out,


Strengthening the strings that tie our hearts together,

While blossoming under the rainy skies.



House of shame


From a distance, her form is heaven sent,

With a stance grounded on a concrete pavement,

Her smile coated colorfully,

Paints an image so heavenly,

Endowed in a beauty needless of replenishment,

Our over the moon spirits never dwell in the basement,

The radiance of her eyes;

Shames the stars in the skies,

But the windows to her soul,

Exposes her broken home,

Because her nature is the architecture,

That structured her faulty future.

Her superior exterior glittered in splendor;

Is unlike the despair littered in her interior.



Yesterday


Yesterday the wind blew over,

Colder, stronger and never calmer,

Karma tightened its grip,

Stiff and steady, to never slip,

Lips of evil spoke woes into my soul,

Slow but surely dipping their claws,

Sorrow sought refuge within me,

Glee became a foreign philosophy,

Gradually seizing my light of day,

Yesterday’s darkness strayed along my way,

Stayed to eradicate the dwindling glow,

Rainbows glared at me never more,

Hollow and void was my yesterday,

But yesterday is now a distant past;

Cast underneath my dust,

Dusk; eradicated by my new dawn,

Gone, but not to be mourned,

Gone, for my new dawn to born,

Spawned by the birth of a new day,

As yesterday lays to decay,

Today has a new prayer to say,

Today has a new sun with a glare to lead astray,

As yesterday resides in the clay.



Wide eyed


I individualize the individual lies,

That paralyzes our paradise.

The disguise before our eyes,

That befalls from the skies,

Is what the unwise don’t visualize.

As days morph into years;

Our phase morphs into a maze,

Despite the sun’s generosity with its rays,

Upon its splendor, innumerable eyes seldom gaze,

Hence we stay lost in our ways.

As ignorance proceeds to rise,

It energizes the salt in our cries,

And decelerates the unlikelihood of our demise.



Trapped


I was engulfed by four walls,

So powerless was I to call for their fall,

There was no glow to find

In the dark trenches of my mind;

I was restrained by chains

That constrained my brain.

Silence was an absence in my endless plea,

Patience was an absence in my need to flee.

I perceived four walls

As I crawled on all fours,

Growling as I called

For the roof to fall,

Was there an escape?

Or one to show me my steps,

Hopelessness was abound

With no light to be found,

My depleted might

Impeded my fight,

Until I searched within

For the glow unseen;

Then the voices vehemently roared

And the noises repeatedly echoed

In my box void of contents


To enshrine the sentiment

That slavery is a gradual process

Enhanced by a depleted mental prowess.



Rainbow glow


As the jolly birds sing

And the holy words ring

Into the depth of my ears

To calm the wrath of my fears;

I hear the cries crawl into silence

As fear flies; it blows into absence.

As the mild breeze howls

I see the wild trees fall,

The dead leaves fly

To spread into the sky,

I see the sun with its gracious glow

I rise to run, to its infectious call

As I immerse into serenity

As to disperse all calamity,

And to drown in the wondrous beauty

That frowns upon the devious entities.

I see the concealed splendor

Morph into a revealed glamour,

I see smiles drawn in abundance,

And a gleefully spawned radiance;

A delight for the hopeless soul

That ignites a seamless glow,

The rainbow visible to my closed eyes

An internal sparkle; a peace for the lost and dry






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