George Momogos: Barefoot Poets, 14:00; Durban (South Africa)
Mari Pete: (South Africa)
Organized by World Poetry Movement
100TPC.org
100 Thousand Poets For Change
George Momogos: Barefoot Poets, 14:00; Durban (South Africa)
Mari Pete: (South Africa)
Organized by World Poetry Movement
Our event went off really well. We met at Erica Clark’s home and recorded our group and individual poems. I am busy editing the video now, and it will be uploaded to YouTube shortly.
Hello World Poets.
Here is our group poem video – enjoy!
http://youtu.be/JnVPJ2lm7kk
The poem:
BAREFOOTERS’ GROUP POEM FOR THE WORLD POETRY MOVEMENT
Erica: Words woven into our hearts can heal
Clint: Only together taking a stand
Clint: Will the world be as our dreams foretell,
Clint: Only we can cherish our water and land
George: While stars point out the Earth
George: As elements occupy us,
George: Mould the flesh substance
George: A fluttering renovates the air
Michelle: Nature restores what we desolate
Michelle: Employ our words as wings of change
Erica: We hold each other in a place of trust
Erica: Each sharing becomes a rich exchange
Timothy: The world gathers tears from dust,
Timothy: Silence fabled in choirs of rivers:
Timothy: Proud duty’s memory of her must
Timothy: Turn the frost to speak again- reverse
Janice: Rain forest, oh vale of tears
Janice: Being stripped naked over the passing years
Janice: Glazier mighty Natures’ sculptured face
Janice: Crumbles before us each dying day
Mike: Tell the world the sun is growing dimmer
Mike: Tell the world the clouds are rolling in
Mike: Tell the Earth its chances are much slimmer
Mike: And tell the world they’d better find its twin
Austin: The shadow of evil wings casts a pall over the world
Austin: As its peoples fall prey to self-serving politicians.
Austin: Let poets write of a better path to world peace,
Austin: Where rights are the offspring of truth and brotherhood.
Derrick: Evil feeds, its continuance based on greed
Derrick: Darkness covers those that plot their cunning ways
Derrick: Machines of war roar in rage to profit but a few
Derrick: Death the victor its blood soaked banners now parades
Wendy: How do we calm the rising roar of blood
Wendy: And starve the evil of its greed?
Wendy: We poets trust the harmony of poetry
Wendy: To tip the scales from war to peace.
Leah: In this world of darkness and destruction
Leah: Ignite a tiny spark of hope
Leah: Spread the words of Peace
Leah: To fan the Flames of Love and Light
Irene: A sighing whisper of dying songs;
Irene: Then FAITH returns to call all people.
Irene: If all of Earth is left to die
Irene: there’s nothing left for you or I.
© Barefoot Poets
Erica Clark’s poem
http://youtu.be/xFrxzTufHbg
I AM YOU
Ease from a place of comfort
We judge difference
Yet, with each passing comment
We become that which we judge
The more you take from me
With your words, glancing critique
Carelessly sliced into neat thoughts
Of how right you are, and how wrong I am
The more you become like me
In a dark convenient amnesia of self and other
The many small deeds of sabotage
The half truths, the omissions
How insidious the process
Each time we turn the other cheek
In fear of reprisal, knowing the darkness
The greater the pent up rage at your power
When I’ve nothing to lose
Watch the tide turn, untrammelled by thought
I have become you, your unexamined side
We are nothing without each other
Nothing remains concealed
Every thoughtless deed returns
Folds back upon itself, gathering momentum
In the depths of our own minds
We stalk ourselves as prey
When we leave the shores of kindness
When we follow competitive greed’s path
To our own demise
I AM YOU
Erica Clark 24 September 2011
Janise’s Poem
http://youtu.be/qOcqSGrM8HI
Signs
Signs of the times
Clear and evident
Send messages to man
Of what will soon happen,
The earth will die
There will be no tomorrow
If we do not put an end to
This road of sorrow,
We denude the forests
That keep the air pure
We poison the rivers
Without water we cannot endure
We are rapidly destroying
The ozone layer
animals and humans suffer
deprivation and fear.
Lessons to be learned
Reiterate their urgent call
Make radical changes now
Before the next generation is born
Heed the earth’s cries
Oh son of man
For now is the hour
That redemption should be planned
Janise Pears
2011-09-12
Clinton Armitage’s Poem
http://youtu.be/fjrotw4bg3g
For now (in honour of freedom of speech)
For now we have freedom,
For now,
My brother who speaks the truth speaks in freedom,
My brother who speaks the untruth, he too speaks in freedom,
My sister who speaks in pleasant love and my sister who speaks an offense,
Freedom is mother to them both, and so it should be,
We have freedom to decide what we will embrace but it must live for us to choose,
Freedom to live in the forest of diversity, our minds like the birds floating on the wings of tolerance,
Freedom to grow the wonder tree of our voices like a million beams of sunlight
For now freedom shines,
For now,
But ever the demon of silence haunts the democratic dream,
Censorship eyes not only the things we want to cut out,
But it hungers for all the words and ideas in all our heads,
And forever we must keep it hungry,
For now I write, and think, and speak in freedom,
For now.
Clinton Armitage
World Poetry Movement Poem 2011
George Momogos’ Poem
http://youtu.be/PZkhFwAwRJE
WPM 24 September 2011
Language fragmented into social words,
words strung together into sentences,
sentences with words that resonate;
a beat, a rhythm, a rhyme,
sentences stacked into stanzas,
stanzas that reach back into ideas,
ideas that lie in a birthing room of feelings,
feelings that cling like seeds waiting to be
ejaculated, conceiving an idea which
gives birth from immortal spheres into
words which are nurtured in sentences
which mature when stacked into stanzas
which live their lives as poems which
together make up poetry – with time
spent in a better world!
Michelle Dennison’s Poem
http://youtu.be/7r_KNHmJqKw
Save the Earth – Save Ourselves
Planet in harmony, blue and green
Animals thrive, water is clean.
That’s how our Earth started its life
‘Til mankind destroyed with our greed and our strife.
Smoke and smog from fossil fuels burning
Polluted the air – Black it is turning.
Extinction of wildlife and rain that can kill
Are some of the outcomes of taking our fill.
Early songs sang of us killing the Earth
We would destroy everything that’s of worth.
But new thinking has shown that the earth will live on
Life will continue when people have gone.
We’re not killing off earth, we are killing off man.
Extinct we will be if we don’t make a plan
Our hist’ry will end, our buildings will crumble
Computers will rust. Our monuments tumble.
Mankind must try to live lives that are wise
No longer be selfish – pull the wool off our eyes.
Be creative with fuel, explore solar power
Get in touch with nature; marvel at a flower.
For the Earth will return to blue and green
But people won’t be there to record the scene.
Michelle Dennison
February 2011
Tim Sparks’ Poem
http://youtu.be/am34Zyhcq7E
A Message in a Bottle
Dreams have a destiny
Beyond the shadow of a well of tears.
Falling bombs on Dresden render words simply
In the wide cold air of day, our fears
Leave behind proud sentences.
If time stopped with the rhythm
Of a walking man, you will wander with senses
Between the broken buildings, a hymn
Across a blue sea points the horizon beyond.
Declare the intent of love from depth,
An echoing letter for all the world.
And all the waves in glass become stone
White flags rise from the sea, furled
With knots blowing like opened vowels; sailing
Hands teasing words the draught.
There resting are the fingers,
Tracing through the earth her heart.
The sea-wind blows that is enough; lingers
For the facing, line on line, would we ever part?
23 September 2011
Timothy Sparks
Mike Valentine’s Poem
http://youtu.be/rRKMf6_E1kk
Copyright Mike Valentine 2002 ©
POVERTY
Wretchedness she brings
Like a leach she clings
This rabid bitch of blight
Neither sin nor crime
Throughout all time
Augments the human plight
Mans’ mortal coil
She sets to toil
The flesh and blood to mar
Yet we dare assume
To seal her doom
In hopes of Shangri-La
And though she tarnishes the frame
While playing out her role
Her might is bound
And through profound
She cannot soil the soul.
Austin Ikin’s Poem
http://youtu.be/KMUlCE14ehU
Greetings to all members of the World Poetry Movement. My name is Austin and I am a member of the Barefooter’s Group located in Durban, South Africa. I wish the World Poetry Movement success in al it’s endeavours to popularise and extend the influence of poetry worldwide.
The four lines I now present convey what I believe is a major thematic principle for poets
Let the rhymes of poets encircle the world
So the flag of freedom is unfurled
And mankind forge ahead in truth’s pure light
So that all may live in a future bright
Derrick Chananie’s Poem
http://youtu.be/aLuOu7bqfXs
The Shacks are burning
I am drawn towards the flames like a moth to a candle
Heat caresses my bare arms washing over me in undulating waves
The shacks are burning: I close my mind to the screams
Residents run aimlessly, without purpose calling shouting
The shacks are burning.
Sirens pierce the night sky adding to the cacophony, fire trucks circle
Where to start, there is no water, the shacks are burning
Rocks flying, a windscreen shatters, fire trucks retreat
A weathered hand claws at me, help me my shack is burning.
I turn to answer a stun grenade explodes I am knocked to the ground
air crushed from my chest
Tear gas drifts like clouds of mist cross the road, adding to my misery
Like the shacks, my eyes are burning
Deep rumbling I am alerted to impending danger I struggle to my feet
Avoiding the armored mammoth
Exhaustion overcomes me, I retreat to a ditch, lie there as one with the earth
Slowly chaos subsides, I lift my head, dawn is separating sky from shadows
Strange odors assails my senses, pervade my nostrils, death, burning flesh
Mounds of grey ash an amalgam of lives past dot the landscape, the shacks have burned
Expressionless faces, vocal Chords exhausted, huddling against the morning chill,
I pause for a moment’s reflection then wander off in search of an island of sanity.
Wendy Shepherd’s Poem
http://youtu.be/X_X4ayKDmB8
We poets
Of the world
Respect and hear the
Living word of
Diverse cultures
Poetry unites
Each and every soul
And through our voices
Cherishes the
Earth we share
Wendy Shepherd / WPM 2011
Irene Emanuel’s Poem
http://youtu.be/oqaG-RwO3KE
13-11-2005
WHEN BUTTERFLIES DIE
What if
butterflies die,
no babies cry,
birds don’t fly.
What if
rains don’t fall,
cats don’t call,
no sound at all.
What if
trees don’t grow,
it doesn’t snow,
cars don’t go.
What if
GOD is not there
to hear our prayer
and doesn’t care.
What if
GOD retires
and the world expires?
BY: IRENE EMANUEL
It was exciting to be included in Poets for Change. Our afternoon was special.
Leah Chananie’s Poem
http://youtu.be/SKk-mMe6ogw
Illumination
Like droplets of crystal,
Sparkling,catching love and light.
Igniting glimmers of hope
In a world in dark destruction
Flickering sparks together
United into a flame igniting the power,
To dispel and banish prowling night
In unison lets spread a flame of warmth and hope.
© Leah Chananie
Poet, means ‘maker’ – a poet’s action is of molding language into shape. This shape, a poem, lulls and sways, rises and falls taking our emotions along with it. Poetry reaches out to us with its energy, its mood, its vibration, that which the poet has conjured with words and images. The more subtle and refined that energy is, the more it can raise us to the best that we can be. Great to be making it happen…