Introspection Poems
Craving and Chasing
by Fidelis Peter Olowu
Mortal man! Oh mortal man!
Like a whirlwind in the Saharah
You blow and flow in every direction
Appearing to be so busy here and there
With no eternal value to show for it.
Like a hungry angry lion,
You chase every prey called opportunity
Paying no attention to this body wherein I live,
Having no time for meditation, togetherness,
......
Metamorphosis, interrupted
by Anjali Pathiyath
I sometimes dream I am a caterpillar
who forgets to grow into a butterfly.
I burrow into leaves, breaking through their delicate venation.
I funnel my uncinate feet through curling petals,
I glide through the pungent weeds of uncertainty
and hang from gossamer threads of doubt.
I sometimes dream I am a caterpillar
blending into the mossy greens growing on decaying walls,
lost in the intricate forest and counting the unseen stars,
......
Pilgrimage
by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu
I sit, this morn, on the bed of
A dried-up rivulet,
Head-bent and full of compunction.
It’s clam-quiet except for the impatient
Squawks above which prompt my heartbeat.
I raise my head, heavy with grief.
Climbers and weevils align in a silent choir,
Singing with precision the lines of a forgotten
Mirth.
It’s 5 o’clock in the morning — a time when
......
Introspection
by Igor Vykhovanets
Introspection
"If you’re bored alone with yourself, it means you’re in bad company."
— Jean-Paul Sartre
Bad company surrounds you still,
Outside, within—through mind and will.
The mind will fail; it’s always blind.
So seek the Light that dwells inside.
......
Isolation
by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu
I
It is dawn.
Brother, rise.
Let us give vent to the rising sun, and with claps of the
Mind, welcome its waking ecstasy.
Distances prevail — measured on the sun’s distance
From the soils.
Ephemeral, morn; so we shall set forth early to lay
In our wake prevarications of morn’s trite.
......
When the Sky Learned My Argument
by Oscar Auliq-Ice
It began without ceremony—
no warning worthy of memory,
no dramatic tightening of the horizon
like a curtain being drawn by intent.
Only a shift in the air,
subtle as a thought
changing its mind mid-sentence.
I was already unsettled that day,
......
The Room Where the Light Forgot Its Name
by Oscar Auliq-Ice
I keep returning to a memory
that will not stay still long enough
to be called truth.
It begins in a corridor of afternoon light—
or maybe it was morning pretending—
and a door half-closed,
as if someone had just stepped out of the world
and forgot to shut the idea of leaving behind them.
......
Craving and Chasing
by Fidelis Peter Olowu
Mortal man! Oh mortal man!
Like a whirlwind in the Saharah
You blow and flow in every direction
Appearing to be so busy here and there
With no eternal value to show for it.
Like a hungry angry lion,
You chase every prey called opportunity
Paying no attention to this body wherein I live,
Having no time for meditation, togetherness,
......
Hurting Others
by Fidelis Peter Olowu
In hurting others
we kill our own human nature
and die before death comes
We divorce our dirty ego
losing battles we thought we won
and winning what we thought we lost
We remain wise
until we use The Word of God
as our Mind-oscope to examine ourselves
......
Metamorphosis
by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu
Contrition for the recorded events of frugalities.
So abstemious have I been, thriving largely in
Defenceless glares of the four-eyed.
Now I have learned to creep alone and weep alone,
Closing tacitly the chapters written in mundane ink,
Reluming the smouldering logs of long slumber.
I have told every truth in loud moments
Now I have only but few lies in my saliva
......
