MY SWEET SUGARCANE

 Brendah Edgard Abwooli,

My sweet sugarcane from Masindi.

You are the apple of my eye,

Your eye is a window to my soul.

The warmth of your embrace,

Makes me feel whole.

Out of the abundance of your heart springs the waters of life,

A touch from your soft mellow palms

Is akin to a refreshing sip of Lake Albert.

Every time I am near you,

I smell a thousand lilies fresh from Solomon’s plot.

Every time I kiss you,

I taste milk and honey from the breadth of Heaven’s pot.

Every time I am with you,

Leaves rustle in trees,

Every time I am with you,

Birds sing, and your nectarine nature excites bees.

 

Brendah Edgard Abwooli

Please!

Let me be to you a cup that does not run dry,

Let me be a man who does not make you cry,

Let me be your Knight in shining armor.

You are the most beautiful plantation,

So let me be your farmer.

 

Brendah Edgard Abwooli,

My sweet sugarcane from Masindi.

Thank you for choosing me;

Thank you for being an antidote to anxiety,

Thank you for pulling me out of the hole of uncertainty,

Thank you, for your eloquence has aligned my destiny

Thank you, for boarding this plane of eternity.

Written by Edgard The Bard 

EPISODE 2: MY LOVE!

 My love,

 

In the blackness of night,

When your eyes are only open to fright,

When shadows pounce left and right;

Forcing you to squeeze your pillow tight.

There, in the midst of your hopeless plight,

Shall you see my abounding light.

 

There, shall my hands embrace you,

Lock you

In the palms of power and might.

Enclose you

In the comfortable, subtle strength of peace’s delight.

My love,

Here I AM:

A strong tower,

Piercing through the charcoal night sky.

A vibrant force field,

Bouncing off vile creatures,

Darkness has no place in light.

 

My love,

When all is said and done,

When the fog clears,

And the sky opens,

You will see it:

I AM, standing there by your side.

Written by Edgard The Bard  

EARWORM

 

Every time I think,

My thoughts are drawn towards you.

Every time I close my eyes,

I see you.

A splitting image.

Every photo, billboard, poster, is awash

With your glowing eyes, your glittering face.

 

Every whiff of air I breathe,

Smells like nectarine, like you.

Every time I rub my palms,

I feel the softness of your deft touch.

 

Every love song I listen to

Reminds me of you.

Every time a voice is swept towards me

I hear the whispers of your sweet melody.

 

Every time I hear a cry,

I feel you on my chest

Squeezing my ribs

As I whisper:

“Everything will be okay.”

 

Every time I use a pen

You finish all its ink.

Even when I use a pencil

You make its lead go extinct.

 

Everything within me is screaming,

Beaming, teaming.

A passion so wild and true;

Pointing me towards you.

Written by Edgard The Bard

JOHN 3:16

 

JOHN 3:16

For God so loved the world,

He gave His only begotten son.

Whosoever believes in Him,

Should not perish but have everlasting life.

 

Do you really understand what this means?

 

For God so loved the world,

He gave His only begotten son

To a world where man hates fellow man,

Murder is permissible

Dishonour, fashionable,

And sin is our soft cushion:

Sons kill fathers

Fathers kill sons,

And mothers abandon their babies.

 

Where are role models for the gentlemen and the ladies?

 

 For God so loved the world,

He gave His only begotten son,

To a world where fornication is splendour,

And hypocrisy a constant action:

Man sleeps with man, woman with woman.

Father with daughter, mother with daughter,

 

And this, they call the new world order.

 

Nudity is in season:

Decency, an archaic, despicable style.

Forget marriage.

It’s nothing more

Than walking down a well-decorated aisle.

 

Dead bodies traverse the earth in artistic piles.

 

For God so loved the world,

He gave His only begotten son

To a world that doesn’t believe He exists.

 

 Behold! John gives us a new twist:

 

For God so loved the world,

He gave His only begotten son.

Whosoever;

Thieves, smokers, drinkers,

Prostitutes, murderers, fornicators,

Rapists, idolaters, even adulterers,

Believes in Him,

Shall not perish but have everlasting life.

(Written by Edgard The Bard. One of the poems in the book One Last Smoke).

I SPY WITH MY EYE (PART ONE)

 

Allow me to introduce myself;

My name is Lucifer.

I am he who comes to steal, kill and destroy!

Apparently, that’s all I am good for.

 

When I look at the church today,

When I look at the body of Christ,

When I look into your googly Christian eyes

This is what I see:

 

I see a culture of dishonor.

I see people that dishonor God

By living worthless pathetic lives that are

Contrary to the Old Man’s identity.

 

I see people dissatisfied,

Wallowing in the belly of mediocrity.

I see people resting in the sacred arms of poverty,

Investing in the tainted dollars of unbelief

And in the evasive art of lack of self-esteem.

 

I see people too attached to money;

Clamoring onto pieces of paper

Like flies to dead flesh.

I celebrate you for who you truly are:

A servant of idolatry.

 

My hollow soul weeps for you.

For when I look at you,

I see something that is worse than me.

…

I have weighed the value of your life

And found it worth nothing.

Darkness is rising!

I see it rise in your heart

Like a wildfire.

I see you breathe its air!

I smell it,

I hear its voice!

 

I feel it;

When you raise your voice in contempt

Of your parents.

I feel it coursing through your veins

Each time you insult and disrespect your President.

 

I see dishonor of the body.

I see my good old friend immorality.

I see fornicators and adulterous spouses

Clinging to the whims of the flesh

Like a leech hanging onto human flesh.

 

I see the reign of death!

 

I see marriage for what it truly is;

A deal that spouses make but can’t keep.

I see a body that happily embellishes

The prospect of sickness and disease,

You are too proud to believe in healing.

 

So, I see the reign of death…

EDGARD THE BARD: ABOUT ONE LAST SMOKE

EDGARD THE BARD: ABOUT ONE LAST SMOKE:  Grief. Grief is a shared unit of the human condition, an emotion that hard as we may try, we cannot escape. For many years, I had been runn...

ABOUT ONE LAST SMOKE

 Grief.

Grief is a shared unit of the human condition, an emotion that hard as we may try, we cannot escape. For many years, I had been running away from grief, particularly grief as pertains to the loss of a loved one. I often testified, thanking God that I had never lost anyone close to me. I never knew that portion of grief, I never thought about how it would feel. Even when people I knew lost their loved ones, I prayed for them, consoled them, but from a distance. From the safe position of not feeling the pain that they were feeling.

Feeling.

Then, the unthinkable happened. Like a thief in the night, grief made its move; swiftly, definitively. He struck, and immediately, I got added to the list of those who had lost a loved one. Someone I had talked to, someone I had shared a laugh with, someone I had prayed for, someone I had cared for, someone I had touched...someone that meant the world to my best friend. Unthinkable...I couldn't think. What happened next shocked me. In the hours that followed, I was bereft of feeling (weird right?). Nothing! No tears, no sadness, no nothing.

But as the days went by, I discovered that most of my appetites had deserted me. Sleep was a luxury, no dish or meal was worth putting in my tummy, and my beloved TV became a vessel transporting noise pollution. I was numb... numb to all but voices. Voices that debated existential notions; the meaning of life, the certainty of death, what happens after death, etc. Voices seeking words that could aid the ailing heart of a best friend.

The pen

Naturally, these voices longed to be heard. So I transferred them onto paper. The written word was the other appetite that remained alive. With each stroke of the pen, feelings I never felt frothed and heaved. Paper after paper getting overwhelmed with questions, with grief, with metered words to a best friend, with hope...with comfort from God.

One Last Smoke is a statement of loss; loss of life, loss of love, loss of hope. Loss of fear, loss of sin, loss of slavery, loss of rejection. It is a journey of reflection; fear, and sorrow, but also; hope, love, comfort, and transformation.  

My prayer is that with every title, every paragraph, every syllable, and every punctuation mark, you will be taken on a personal journey, a journey that will lead you straight home.

EDGARD THE BARD: JOB'S QUESTIONS (PART ONE)

EDGARD THE BARD: JOB'S QUESTIONS (PART ONE):   Question: Who are You? Are you who the Bible says you are? Which version of the Bible? Or are you who my Pastor says you are?   ...

JOB'S QUESTIONS (PART ONE)

 Question:

Who are You?

Are you who the Bible says you are?

Which version of the Bible?

Or are you who my Pastor says you are?

 

Who am I?

My apologies,

I speak with indignity coupled with an abject base of absurdity

Because I want You my Lord to listen to me.

 

Where do You come from?

Scratch that…

Where do I come from?

Sorry, I had said one question,

 

Mention;

Why is life so hard for me?

Alpha and Omega;

You promised, You promised that your word is true,

Tension, tension is what I feel after her latest abuse.

 

Question Two:

Where are You?

Where do you hide as I lay in here in these tears?

Why is it, why is it that when I seek your face in these desperate times,

I can’t, I can’t hear clear?

Where were you when she stabbed my heart with spears?

 

Where were You when she said no?

When I went on my knees,

Gave her my love

And she grabbed it,

And threw it out the window!

 

WHERE WERE YOU WHEN MY FATHER DIED?

Where were you when my mother cried?

I feel, I feel so low

Like, like depression got me hypnotized.

It swallows me so deep

That I can touch sorrow’s throne…

No! Not even hell is this low.

Ripped to shreds I whither in my pillow,

You say, you say

Be still, be still

But like a statue I am stuck

Sinking below sea level.

 

So where are you?

Why did you go?

Why did you leave me?

Why did you leave me all alone?

 

Written by Edgard The Bard

(To be continued...)

EDGARD THE BARD: I AM LOVE

EDGARD THE BARD: I AM LOVE: I am ruthless yet kind, You better be on the wrong side of the guillotine, For I have brought down the best of mankind. I have faced t...

I AM LOVE

I am ruthless yet kind,

You better be on the wrong side of the guillotine,

For I have brought down the best of mankind.

I have faced the sword of adversity,

Brutus’ sword at my throat,

Hitler nibbling at my heels,

And Amin’s gun at point-blank range.

 

I have derailed many a democracy,

And shattered many a dictatorship.

I disrupt the dispute within the institute and remain resolute.

I am the Lion roaring in the jungle,

I feed on those who purge, steal, and smuggle,

 

I criticize the uncriticized,

Satisfy the unsatisfied, and rectify the satisfied.

I am a rose of thorns, a piece of humble pie.

I am that which you use to crush a lie 

And turn its cry into a simple lullaby,

 

I am LOVE!

 

I am the shame that nags your bowels,

And the odor that terrifies your nose.

I am the youth that excites the hormones deep within your bosom,

I palpitate as you lift your chest.

 

I am a Father to the Orphans,

A monument of peace,

And a token that cannot be broken.

I am a light in the tunnel, a tunnel in the light,

 

I am the beginning and the end,

The Alpha and Omega,

I am the old school and the new trend,

I am the fathomed unfathomed reality that

Love will never end.

 

I am LOVE!

 

Written by Edgard The Bard.

EDGARD THE BARD: RECKLESS LOVE

EDGARD THE BARD: RECKLESS LOVE: You feed a rat You feed a snake You feed a mosquito You feed a bedbug, How much more do You love me? You feed a hyena You feed a vulture You...

RECKLESS LOVE

You feed a rat

You feed a snake

You feed a mosquito

You feed a bed bug,

How much more do You love me?

You feed a hyena

You feed a vulture

You feed a maggot

You feed a virus,

How much more do You love me?

You dress cacti

You dress weeds,

You dress thorns and twigs

You dress poison ivy,

How much more do You love me?

Written by Edgard The Bard

JUST ONE TOUCH

Shoving, crawling,                         

Scraping, chaffing.

My voice taut,

Bone and sinew stretched out.

My target;

The hem of Your garment.

 

For twelve years,

A filthy rag,

An ugly street dog;

That is what my mirror showed me.

 

For twelve years,

Blood and tears,

Pain, anxiety, and fear,

Are the friends that held me dear.

 

For twelve years,

Twelve dead rats,

Twelve dead bats,

Are the perfumes that engulfed me.

 

For twelve years,

Pill after pill,

Prod after prod,

Guinea pig, guinea dog,

 

For twelve years,

Shilling after shilling,

Doctor after doctor,

Eluded me, deserted me.

 

So I reach out:

Shoving, crawling,

Scraping, chaffing.

My voice taut,

Bone and sinew stretched out.

My target;

The hem of Your garment.

Written by Edgard The Bard