GREATPATH SPOKEN WORD ‪#‎WordForTheYouth‬

RHAPSODY /UCHE/ KEMISTREE

 

 

 

 

Also Featuring;

GLORYDPOET

JULIAN

J Y C

BENJAMIN (Osi-Ben)

CHIOMA UWANDU

CRYSTAL CHIZZY

NANCEE

CLEMENCY GREEN

VIC'ADEX

And Many MORE POETS!...

DATE: MAY 24TH, 2015

TIME: 4:59PM

VENUE: THE MANIFOLD PLACE 85 IKORODU
ROAD, FADEYI LAGOS, NIGERIA.

Watch GREATPATH SPOKEN WORDS TV SHOW on DSTV. KINGDOM AFRICA TV-DSTV (Channel 345) & KINGDOM EUROPE TV-FREEVIEW (Channel 248) airing every MONDAYS 7:00PM and every FRIDAYS 7:00PM, also airing on RAVE TV, STAR-TIMES (Channel 4) on TUESDAYS & THURSDAYS 11:00AM - 11:30.

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BAGA

I know I lack a retentive memory

But that explosion tattooed a name on my mind

And bought me a long term memory

That could only retain the storm of blood in Baga

 The one that disseminated grief and fear For,

ruthlessness got engaged with violence and exhumed  tears.

I had tried to count the birds

 that remain in the sky

But I could only find the aura of sorrow

Counting my confusion and lust for justice

But justice has lost its sight Justice is dying alive

 Strangling the neck of hope.

The storm of blood in Baga

Plucked my eyeballs out of socket

And disconnected my artery from the flow of joy

I saw tragedies unexplained, Lost the expensive gain

 The future of young ones, sucked out of reality

And was replaced with vicious end.

The bomb that tore Baga was no accident

 It was a nurtured cruelty on the mind of ruthless men

Men, who housed their conscience in the depth of destruction.

Ripped fleshes littered the earth in Baga

Like refuse in the dump No match for each eye,

nose and hand.

 No head, fits a neck Identification

is far from the brain Patching each body

Is like trying to hug the cloud I see Baga,

I see dreams unborn I see Baga, I see life in tears

Humanity has lost its dignity Justice has given up

the throne for injustice Terrorists are recklessly

distributing tragedies Peace could not find

a space to sit Memories no longer live in the past

As life, gradually looses its life.

INDEX:

Baga in Borno state, was a location of the Nigerian Army base that was the headquarter of the Multinational joint Task Force (MNJTF), an international force of soldiers from Nigeria, Niger, and Chad that was formed in 1994 to deal with cross-border security issues and more recently, combating the Boko-Haram insurgency. The attack on the town began on 3 January when a large number of the Boko Haram militants captured the town of Baga and overran the MNJTF headquarters and army base in town.

THE GIRL FROM THE SLUM

There is nothing new about being a slave of hunger
But its existence is the thing I ponder
I've had my hands fold
My heart cold against my bone
I've reached for height to stand
But still dropped in fear of having failure for result
Do you know the tale of my yesterday's death?
Never...
For the pains in stones that raped my heart are
beyond thought
Have you ever met life when naked with fears of
evil painted in its eyes?
That's the ballad of my death
When I still can't figure out a dream of being human
But only sorrow to wet my vein
And pursue one dream of stealing my mother's
tears
Under my roof
When it rains, I have my bucket on my chest
No brain to think of tea
Damn the mind set of warmth
When every step taken in finding a better sleep
Make you want to feel guilty of being born
I've plucked my eyeballs with the help of tears before
I crawled along life's speed
Knowing nowhere to heed
In silence of soreness, I selfishly enjoy my loop
Stepping on different hooks
I carried the whole world rock
Shattered in heart
Tattered In soul
Scattered in mind
In search of hope
Dead hope?
The on that creates in heart a deep hole
My pain I tried to fold
There she goes
To the heart of the rain with her load
Even when rain turns snow
Let sky break down brick after brick
I'll never grow sick
For I've died thousand times
Again rise
So my birth has become a song in full lyrics
Now I stand firm like a mountain
I soar higher than the peak of birds in the sky
I striped failure naked
For I want to be the head
I am failure worst nightmare
I'm the mountain,
am the rain,
am the wind,
I'm the sun
I'm the sky that birth them all
Failure is the greatest thing I lack
I'm the girl beyond imagination
Indefinable I am
The hotness in fire is me
Come thunders, come tempest
All of it I will throw to my t'aichi
My vein no longer grow phobia for fear
For I've climbed mountains
To the greatest height
I've walked darkness in search of light
I've lost diamond in battle for might
Now I've grown
And I have known
The fear of failure begins the death of life.

BY - KEMISTREE

WHAT IS POETRY

There are as many definitions of poetry as there are poets. Wordsworth defined poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings;" Emily Dickinson said, "If I read a book and it makes my body so cold no fire ever can warm me, I know that is poetry;" and Dylan Thomas defined poetry this way: "Poetry is what makes me laugh or cry or yawn, what makes my toenails twinkle, what makes me want to do this or that or nothing."

Poetry is a lot of things to a lot of people. Homer's epic,The Odyssey, described the wanderings of the adventurer, Odysseus, and has been called the greatest story ever told. During the English Renaissance, dramatic poets like John Milton, Christopher Marlowe, and of course Shakespeare gave us enough to fill textbooks, lecture halls, and universities. Poems from the romantic period include Goethe's Faust (1808), Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" and John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn."

Shall I go on? Because in order to do so, I would have to continue through 19th century Japanese poetry, early Americans that include Emily Dickinson and T.S. Eliot, postmodernism, experimentalists, slam...

So what is poetry?

Perhaps the characteristic most central to the definition of poetry is its unwillingness to be defined, labeled, or nailed down. But let's not let that stop us, shall we? It's about time someone wrestled poetry to the ground and slapped a sign on its back reading, "I'm poetry. Kick me here."

Poetry is the chiseled marble of language; it's a paint-spattered canvas - but the poet uses words instead of paint, and the canvas is you. Poetic definitions of poetry kind of spiral in on themselves, however, like a dog eating itself from the tail up. Let's get nitty. Let's, in fact, get gritty. I believe we can render an accessible definition of poetry by simply looking at its form and its purpose:

One of the most definable characteristics of the poetic form is economy of language. Poets are miserly and unrelentingly critical in the way they dole out words to a page. Carefully selecting words for conciseness and clarity is standard, even for writers of prose, but poets go well beyond this, considering a word's emotive qualities, its musical value, its spacing, and yes, even its spacial relationship to the page. The poet, through innovation in both word choice and form, seemingly rends significance from thin air.

How am I doing so far? On to purpose:

One may use prose to narrate, describe, argue, or define. There are equally numerous reasons for writing poetry. But poetry, unlike prose, often has an underlying and over-arching purpose that goes beyond the literal. Poetry is evocative. It typically evokes in the reader an intense emotion: joy, sorrow, anger, catharsis, love... Alternatively, poetry has the ability to surprise the reader with an Ah Ha! Experience -- revelation, insight, further understanding of elemental truth and beauty. Like Keats said:

"Beauty is truth. Truth, beauty.
That is all ye know on Earth and all ye need to know."

How's that? Do we have a definition yet?

Poetry is artistically rendering words in such a way as to evoke intense emotion or an Ah Ha! experience from the reader.

Pretty unsatisfying, huh? Kind of leaves you feeling cheap, dirty, all hollow and empty inside like Chinese food.

Don't do this. Don't shackle poetry with your definitions. Poetry is not a frail and cerebral old woman, you know. Poetry is stronger than you think. Poetry is imagination and will break those chains faster than you can say "Harlem Renaissance."

To borrow a phrase, poetry is a riddle wrapped in an enigma swathed in a cardigan sweater... or something like that. It doesn't like your definitions and will shirk them at every turn. If you really want to know what poetry is, read it. Read it carefully. Pay attention. Read it out loud. Now read it again.

There's your definition of poetry. Because defining poetry is like grasping at the wind - once you catch it, it's no longer wind.