Hardship Poems
Walking into the wind
by Chris Quinn
There’s nothing for it sometimes,
But to walk straight and face into it,
Eyes and nose running
from the frigid gale,
Wind pushing back like an indifferent mob
There’s nothing for it sometimes
But to throw your arms wide,
and push back
Looking to the joy of coming home
......
Vision
by Fauzan Mustapa
Vision flows through the pink sky
Oh no, Oh why
As thick as yours, as dark as mine
I ain't stressing.
Keep the thing on rewind
Oh no, Okay
But don't let it become a ritual
Cause if it is,
......
Triumphs of Life
by Bhaskaranand Jha Bhaskar
Gloomy darkness seems to have engulfed
The whole world of life
As light has hidden its head behind.
Sobs of sorrows are heard
Everywhere in each and every terrain.
The flocks are forced to stay back home in fear.
And I am glued to the scary news channels
In the hope of good news
That the hard times have passed
......
Self-worth
by Precious Whispers
People rejected me for the way I was,
The urge to change myself rose
more than ever just because
there was nothing else I chose.
I desired to be part
of my ''foremost'' friends
And took it to heart
that it had to make sense,
......
Shoulders To Cry On
by Bhaskaranand Jha Bhaskar
Deaths of young people, near and dear ones,
Their dead bodies float in mourning rivers
While we helplessly watch ourselves
Being carried away by uncontrolled tears.
They die in hospitals, built for saving lives,
And we stay back home or in quarantines,
Practising the precautionary measures
While honoring the helpless govt. guidelines.
......
Before I Finish Counting My Ceiling
by Fidelis Peter Olowu
Today, the first of a brand-new month,
Yet our pockets echo emptiness -
Our due wages lost
In the fog of bureaucratic forgetfulness.
I confess: I am bombastically bamboozled,
By this chronological altitude
Where salaries take sabbaticals
While sweat still glistens on honest brows.
This devilish delay
Be-devils the hoi polloi,
......
Tossed At Sea
by Jeff Bresee
This ship that I’ve chosen to sail be proven swift and strong.
We’ve weathered much together, she and I.
So many days amidst the wind and storms we’ve travelled long
to cross this mighty ocean here beneath the endless sky.
Sometimes it seems that this will be how I spend all my days,
like being tossed at sea is all there is.
It’s hard to hold out faith that there be more than endless waves,
but I am being true to his promise -
......
Beneath the Archipelago of Silence
by Mario Odekerken
Beneath a porcelain sky
where light walks on tiptoe,
lies a land that breathes inward,
drowned in the foliage of forgotten hours.
The trees whisper in a language
only memories understand,
with syllables of basalt and melancholy.
Time does not drip here;
......
Stonefall
by Md. Kausar Uddin Ahmed
The man you see
Hard like a stone
That forgets how to feel—
Once, he was a waterfall.
He laughed like falling water,
Ran toward light,
Spoke in sparkles,
And cooled every fire
With just his presence.
......
Surviving the unsaid
by Mario Odekerken
It sat between us-
not silence,
but the weight of everything
we never gave voice.
I learned to breathe around it,
to carry its shape
like a stone in my chest
that no one could see.
......
