Tag: Flash Fiction

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The Pangs of Desire

This has been quite an interesting two weeks, thus my silence. I have encountered a whole host of people who are either unaware of the ill they do, or are aware and ignore the voice of conscience. Ok, I wont stand here and judge like I never disobey what my conscience says or even claim to have never caused any harm by my disobedience so take this toasted lament with a pinch of salt, a hint of pepper and some Marmite (which I hate by the way).

You are always righteous, O LORD, when I bring a case before you. Yet I would speak with you about your justice: Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all the faithless live at ease?

Jeremiah 12:1

The question that has been marinating in my heart is this. Do the wicked have no conscience or is its voice dimmed?

In my own life I’ve found it quite hard to make a cup of tea for myself without offering one to whoever was around me. I struggled to eat the last biscuit in the pack, and used to buy two chocolate bars so that when asked I had one to share. I try to do what I can to be a positive in people’s lives. This is quite difficult as my desire is to serve myself, thus wrought for others seems vain. My conscience however, loud as a drum, kicks in and wrangles with my self-centeredness whenever I turn away from serving others.

This moreover is a world full of people who can be ungrateful, and utterly selfish with no regard for their neighbour’s wellbeing, and seemingly get away with it. This makes the whole turn the other cheek thing tough; not because the other person is relentless but because deep down I wish I could get away with doing what they are doing. This is at the core of my complaint. It is such a devastating lens focused onto my own depravity: that it isn’t against the wicked that I lament but a desire at very center of my heart to be one. I genuinely love God and would like to think that my actions in line with His will are rooted in a love for Him rather than a fear of my actions’ consequences. But that root isn’t as straight forward as I find as similar a mystery as is the nature of Grace at the core of my desires.

I honestly do wish I could get away with half of what I have seen people do this week and am – like Jeremiah – complaining about it. At the same time, I know how harmful selfishness can be and am – in a small part – grateful that I know I wont actually get away with it. It doesn’t stop it being painful to witness, neither does it make doing good easier.

Our faith is difficult one. I suppose if you aren’t grappling with it constantly then you’re either almost in heaven or most certainly angelic. It’s answer to the pangs of desire is to ask us to pursue someone else’s: God’s. This doesn’t stop them from being pangs. I suppose the idea of ‘carrying a cross and following Jesus’ is this sense of doing something difficult for a cause that transcends our own. It’s a noble thought that like a drop of water skims the surface of a furnace almost mocking the hope of dousing the flames.

Evidently I am in complain mode so I will not put my positive thoughts. (Out of disobedience because I hear and feel the answers to my complaint: take what you will from that.)

 

 

 

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Poetry 022: Dust

Dust

The first breath,
Accompanied by the tears
And the lament –
That ushered in the embers
Of a rotting life –
Set the tone (of atoning strife).
Like my father I refused
To embrace my looming death,
Assured that the life breathed in
Would stay.
A gloved fist int he air
Spoke of my debonair rebellion:
The fruit forbidden was mine to eat,
My complexion a feat placed
Against the lightly coloured rules
That blighted my background.
These feet –
that from the red earth arose –
Were determined to wallow
In the sorrow-free days that’d
Precede my return to the dust.

© Denis Adide 2012

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The Service

My sister asked me, as we drove to church on Remembrance Sunday, if there was going to be a third world war. I responded by saying that if there was that there definitely wouldn’t be a fourth – misquoting someone. My wife cut an eye at me and reassured my sister that there wouldn’t be a third world war because it was something that no one would benefit from. It seemed a good response for my sister as she stilled; I was troubled by it. If the reason for a cessation of arms is a selfish one rather than a social one then is peace really a reality. I suppose it is one of those things that you have to accept when it comes rather then analyze. What is clear though is that there is a deep lament within humanity for rest.

I wonder what my Sister will say to my children, or my children to hers, about Rememberance Sunday?

Lines written after the service

I could hear the children making noise from the annex
as everyone else stood in the moments of silence.
Inside I chuckled in the realization that for the most part
the future has a way of, at it’s inauguration, forgetting the past

© Denis Adide 2011

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Poetry 019: The Seat

I often wondered if the world in darkness shone for itself. Maybe it is we, who look but never see, that are blind.

D. Adide

The Seat

A poem about a blind poet

Seated, he heard the foreign sounds
Of passing cars, of children, of hounds,
Of planes sailing through the clouds
Of silent moments, and of crowds.
The wind through the leaves whistled
The bamboo heaved along with the thistles
Distant worlds in torrents neared
But window blinds blocked out the mounds

Seated, he thought to find the nouns
For subtle smiles, for tickles, for frowns
For faces floating from the downs,
through greens, through forests, and through towns.
Deep within old cinders glistened
He strained his heart so it would listen
And the world without in torrents neared
But window blinds blocked out the mounds

© Denis Adide 2011

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Poetry 018: Talitha Koum

“Go” He said. With weighted measure we
Obeyed. With sword, bow and scepter our siege
We laid. In decadence we hewed out our footholds
In the foothills of grace’s dismay. With hands,
By architecture tainted, this earthen town we laid.
In thick steel our gates we made; their outward
Arrows sharp as gazes. So high the walls
We chose erect that the early breeze, once
Composed abated. The mighty streams, whom
Once in spring we bathed, in anxious zeal
Rose we and tamed; life we chained in hymns,
And winds to whom once in song we’d yield,
Chose we assail.
Was it for this, Accented Verb,
That the dream you fearlessly sowed within,
Turning even from thine own to share
In garment and kin, so vigorously denied
Yet still in song enchant, to reap deceit?
Look at your lands: barren and boldly fruitless.
In feeble might the sands, enriched by winter’s
Edifice, declare the winds immobile, the seas
Empty of power, the sun a stain, and seasons
Mortal. In haughtily chorused anarchy slayed
The voice which in their hearts you laid. Look!
These pews for joy, fill with hearts reticent,
These words for peace, impress the beasts intent
So we the coven away from peace repent;
Relenting rather into dirges’ cadence:
In songs for poise and praise we’d rather sleep.
Weep! For deep in time’s chains we choose
Our keep; a citadel from unfurnished bricks.
Her glory cursed slumbers windless still.

“I sought your hearts, knocked and waited as
You built these stone altars for yourselves.
Heaven is my throne, I dwell not
In houses made by human hands.
My spirit thus shall not contend with man,
For in wicked stain his heart is full versed.
Oh Jerusalem! City of grace and might,
For how much longer shall thy watchmen sleep?”

Is it for this that we now dream as hope,
Rooted deep in sightless depths unknown,
For breaths, as light though gone, were once our own?
In action sowing seeds away from rain,
With hearts content and minds commenting vain.
If walls we measure, then therein none’s contained
For weight of wrought. And all shall slumber lest
The heart is, once more, kissed. It is no less,
Away from the promise of deathless wist proclaimed,
And feet from breathless walks now found maim,
That from thy love to mountain peaks we fray
With limping hearts and conscience in dismay.
Whisper not for silence less assails.
Wretched hands what violence though avail.
Guide thy tongue from haughty vein oh soul!
And set thy sights on ancient heart’s abode.
We built these walls of sorrow high and steep,
And hiding in our laurels didst we sleep
In plundered halls as barren widows weep.
Our golden courts with haughty windows speak
Testing justice, resting in deceit.

“Oh Jerusalem! City of grace and might,
Thy line of measure mine alone shall be,
Thy walls a flame that I alone shall keep,
Thy hearts a seed that I alone shall reap,
As breath and life are mine alone to give.
For I gave you hope, and hope chose you to smite,
I gave you peace, but war chose you recite,
I gave you mercy, judgement chose you rite.
I saw your darkness, and chose to give you light,
But light fought you and chose to sleep in night.
Daughter of man! In sleep I would have left you,
But mine own hand of love would not forsake.
Though in the hymn of wretchedness you set,
The seeds I sow I once more will collect.
Talitha Koum!”

© Denis Adide 2009

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Complex, Intricate, Beautiful, Designed

“Oh, was there ever sailor free to choose,

That didn’t settle somewhere near the sea?”

Rudyard Kipling

I’ve tried hard to find a sort of niche from which to emerge from, but the thing keeps eluding me. When I attempt to rest on academic thinking and writing, I find a creative surge emerging within it – ruining the edifice from its foundations. When I try to find space within my creativity, my philosophical tendencies emerge and create such great hurdles and wind breaks so as to almost choke the continuity of my minds processes. When I return to reason and Logic, faith emerges and overturns all the senses of certainty from which I first embarked. Finally I find myself a sailor on a boat in a raging sea with no land or light house in sight.

I suppose this is what I get for trying to express myself as a sense making sentient. The most annoying part of it all is that my heart always knew that my place of rest wouldn’t be in any sort of rooted position. Rather that I emerge in routes through different anchors. Rhizomic then my expression will be: peppered with different windows into each of the various places I try to call home: Complex, Intricate, Beautiful, Designed.

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Poetry 014: A thousand drums

A Thousand Drums

Sometimes, In the silence, very faintly
I hear the sound of a thousand drums.
As the rumble brews I remember;
the smell of the plains when it rains and the sun
Reaffirms his place in humbled sky –
making the supple grasses glitter in his rays,
The sound of crickets in the darkness,
singing to the jittering fireflies as the day
Slowly slumbers, the warmth of the fire
as it’s flames fly among the crackling piles,
The soft red earth – still harboring day –
calling out to all who hear…

‘dance’.

But the wind awakes me.
Saddened I cry out onto the concrete,
wailing as the sounds fade.

“oh fastidious time,
Tread softly,
For it is upon a dream you walk”.

© Denis Adide 2011

 

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Short Stories 008: excerpt from ‘The Crossing’

She always put freshly cut flowers on the dining table, it helped soothe his mood. Awake from the tremor of persistent nightmares, they always reminded him that there still was beauty in the world. She had become accustomed to hearing him speaking in his sleep, at times even barking orders and shouting for her – or the other inhabitants of that stormy world – to take cover. She had watched as his hair had grayed and his eyes slowly sunk, the spanning time being marked solely by the changing scents that occupied their breakfast. I suppose his increasing silence encouraged her. The tears in solitude, that he used to succumb to in the early days, had slowly vanished. Occasionally he’d smile when he noticed her soft hands as they spread out the blanket over his legs. She’d cry when she recalled how they used to go for walks, swim in the hidden rivers, and climb trees. His speed then, was mighty. It would not have been wise for him now to see her in those sorrowful moments so she chased the nights and let her books welcome the mornings. The sun would send her out again in hope of coaxing a smile; she knew he had an affinity for orange roses.

© Denis Adide 2011

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Short Stories 007: The Princess and Me

The Princess and Me

I’d love to think that I’d still have been happy if life had ensured that we’d never met. However, the uncertainty that couples that thought makes me look upon the minutes we’ve watched flow by with such awe. The more you talk of our tomorrow, the more I feel my faith and love grow, and the more I learn how far from my wounds you’ve brought me. I thank the life that bent my steps, the moments that wrung the tears out of my eyes, the decisions that broke me, and the voice that led me your doorstep (or your hands to mine).

 

© Denis Adide 2011

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