ORGANIZER: Ken Bena

CONTACT: ragingpoet2000@yahoo.com

The name of the Event is:

Restoring The Dignity Of Motherhood

TIME: It kicks off at 11:pm
LOCATION: Tombai Square,Yenagoa
2nd Location: Peace Park Yenagoa

DESCRIPTION: The 100 Thousand Poets For Change Crew will converge at Tombai Square, Yenagoa at 11am wearing the 100 Thousand Poets For Change t-shirts & placards.

Tumbai Square

From there we hit the Market & distribute copies of the Anti-Cultism Handbook to market women & passersby.

Ellis Ebakor from Warri, Nigeria, Ken Bena from Yenagoa, Bayelsa State and friends

After the Market Stint we then head for the Second Location, Peace Park,Yenagoa. This event kicks off at 2pm.

Peace Park

Here we will be joined by Secondary School Students. We will talk about the vision of the 100 TPC & the need for change. We also will distribute the anti cult book to students, then round it up with Peace Poems written by the students. Also we will feature two budding Poets & myself. The event comes to a close at 6pm.

*    *   *

TIS A WONDER WHY THEY LOVE ME

Tis a wonder why they love me
Want me, hug me, nudge, follow me
Where ever, be it winter or summer
Is it because I rose from slumber
Syllables suffering from hunger
Threatened with extinction
But like the rising sun
I loomed upon their horizon
Despelling the gloomy years of confusion
Never again speak with lips mute
But swagger with pride like a piper blowing on A flute

Tis a wonder why they love me
Pen in hand,throat gone sour
Still they refuse to heed your call
Feel your pulse, walk through your thoughts
while i plead for a little respect
For your cause
But how they rage and curse!
When ever I plead or force
I quote “I swear they would not know Christ
If he stood in sight
In rags we walked, like a bunch of old hags
Tramping along these horizontal lines.
So don’t point fingers, or think hope lingers
For with them he fled to these hills
Where words struggle for space
Jostling for space.

The four day conspiracy

Wrapped like an Egyptian mummy
I play dead
Buried in a Stygian tomb
Filled with darkest thoughts
Waiting,praying he comes
Before insanity places me
In a guarded fort of violent worms
That awaits my limbs to stiffen and rot
So all can feast on the remains
Of the one called Lazarus

Four days and night without a light
While I sweated and cursed the darkness
Scorned the silence
Or was it the silence that mocked me?
As i wait for him to call,to come
Before my patience gets impatient
And scream!!

Sh! listen, he calleth, he cometh
But answer I shall not
Even if history falls on his kneels
And plead
Four nights of hell
He would learn!
For this Lazarus remains dead
Giggling as his voice panics
Calling, Lazarus! Lazarus!! Lazarus!!!

Angels In Rage
.
As the destined hour slowly awakens from his timeless slumber
About to descend the darkest pit
And ascend with a multitude of checkered sins
Soon they will be coming
An endless surge of lies, murders, deceit
And a flood of awesome cunning
Coming to shatter this perfect harmony
Found only within the serene landscape of heavenly realms
Yet in casting lots, we came up with a plot
As the destined hour seem to beckon
Made him drunk like the biblical one named lot
While they wait,endless days scorched
By the heat of their expectations
Waiting till eyes grow blurry with frustration
While the flesh splutters
And expires into the sand storm of disintegration
Better you pack and fold those visions of eternity away
Or be counted among the fools
Wearing a mask of hope
Still seen on many faces today.

THE MISCONCEPTION
.
The storm was chained by slavery
Self expression is a song sang
In the softest whispers
Or watch it turn into brutal lashes
Each stroke, ripping dignity into tattered
Rags of humility

This is for those fleeing the slave ships
Run faster! Faster!
Better to die free
Than smell the stench of a thousand fear
Cowering in fright in the ships hold

This is for those with legs spread wide open
Like women in throes of labor
A mixture of rum and a ebony virgin wench
Perhaps can cure the baas syphilis?
Claw! Bite! Kick! Scream!!!
And exist with flesh clinging to nails

They stood as still as the night
Inseparable like twin peas in a pod
Silent, shivering
But to despair?never!
Rather wait for dawn hidden in between
The words of Malcolm
From the coalmines of Johannesburg
To the plantations of West Virginia
They left no legacy of defeat
Just hot embers of courage and perseverance
Still glowing in the cold ashes of history

They ask no apology
Nor seek compensation
Who can repay dignity his years of toil?
Or can replace the virginity of chastity?
But like Christ on the cross
They stooped to conquer

So keep lips sealed like an Egyptian tomb
If thou dare speak of racial discrimination
And compensation
Tonight we came to bury discord
Not to mourn about colors or gold
But mans inhumanity to man
From Bosnia to nine eleven
Through the bloated canal of January 27
From the anguish cries of Iraq
To the freezing hell of Siberia
From the horrors of Hiroshima we flee
But how far and fast?

THE POET SPEAKS

The fire burning Inside
An hurricane of words,shrieking with the force of a storm
Sweeping through the misty fog of my restless mind
Leaving words reeking of immortality
Scattered across every line
So be warned!each time you seek to hear me speak
Transform your minds into the wick
Of an hurricane lamp, safe and protected
Lest the whirlwind of my thoughts
Extinguish the feeble flame of your myopic minds

Listen!even in the coldest winter
When words travel incognito
These pages still scream for breath
Each time my thoughts tread across their flesh
But if words could take on the shape of men
My lineage would be traced to the oldest of royal realms
Pages I have traveled,
Poets have dream to tread
Where they faltered and trembled
I made them words rattled and humble
For lions do not make pacts with men!

FORGIVE ME IF THESE WORDS

Forgive me if these words don’t put on the garment of my culture
For i was born into a time
When poverty, murders, arson and corruption
Fell like rain drops of torture
And our code of conduct?
A mere reflection of western horrors
Pardon me if I choose not to borrow
From What i despise
For like a fish brought ashore
I would die if I dare imitate the evil ways of today

I was born a Nigerian expected to live as an african
But there no Africans in Nigeria
They all fled in streams
Cleanse from the skin by some lotion
That causes cancer in slow motion
And prostitution?
I don’t recall to have met that shameless woman
In the good old days
When we all walked proud and naked all day
Yet here she is, walking around with a proud smile
Of wantonness
While dignity covers his head in shame
At such un holy business
Wait!dont flee if these words snap at the heels
Of your conscience
For if you think HIV a concept full of nonsense
Than wait till your bones become thin
And your flesh shrinks
While the lawyers are busy asking for your next of kin

This is not Africa but Nigeria
Here we are awaken
Not by the crow of the cock
But the alarming cry of a bomb
The bark of a gun
And the harsh glare of the sun
Maybe now you understand the reason
Why i don’t speak of corruption,hunger and unemployment
Who would listen?
Maybe the innocent laying sick in indifferent prisons
Or the homeless shivering under the baleful gaze
Of haggard bridges
Could be the pregnant mothers
Staring into the cold eyes of an empty kitchen
Parhaps the unnamed baby’s left to rot in rubish dumps
For no reason
Would they forgive and maybe some day listen?
I think not
For life in this country just aint easy.

***

As we walk towards keeping a date with History… We come not to flunt our Poetic Prowess. We come not to take Inspiration Hostage,naaw… We come to fatten up the Skinny frame of Poverty. We come to seal the lips of Racial Descrimination. We come to put behind Steel Bars, the Bloated body of Corruption. We come to transform that Lava of Hate into the ever cooling Fountain of Love. We come to restore the Dignity of Motherhood, to uphold the Sacredness of Human Lives. We come not with Drums of War but a oneness of Body, Soul & Mind… We come Singing Songs of Peace,because we rather be Free than be Alive in Prison..