A cure for the holidays

The holidays are over,

And it feels like the earth is pulling double Gs on you,

You look in the mirror and feel sick,

You tie your belt,

And everything suffocates below the waist,

The holidays are your enemy,

Or so it feels,

But there is a cure,

Though you might not approve,

It doesn’t matter,

Because there’s nothing better than,

Bicep flexing,

Apathy vexing

Hamstring tauting,

Knee haunting,

Suicide drilling,

No jokes grilling,

Basketball jumping,

Cross jacks stamping,

Football running,

More useful than punning,

Confidence building,

Teammate guilding?

Endurance stretching,

Mountain climbers reaching,

Core crunching,

Open palm punching,

And please no back-hunching,

Plank work supporting,

Mouth-breathing aborting,

BMI flattering,

Personal records shattering,

Calisthenics improving,

Downward-dog grooving,

Don’t look at me – get moving,

Endorphin churning,

Cholestrol burning,

Fire exhaling,

Poor health repelling,

Metabolism through the roof,

Better than fool proof,

Bad habits’ demise,

EXERCISE!

yep and a big ol’ stretch right before and after!

 

Different.

We’re different you and I,

And couldn’t be further away,

From being alike.

 

You cry more,

And I laugh less.

You write from left to right,

From right to left I write,

You like to sing and dance,

Singing while dancing,

I’ve done not once.

 

But…

 

We hear whispers,

Where others,

Only feel the fury,

Of wind,

We see tears,

In the rain.

 

We gaze upon the weary ant,

Trudging along the dry wall,

And wonder,

How her day was.

 

We blink at the milky way,

And think this is how,

We were meant to perceive,

The night sky.

 

We watch the wretched,

The poor,

The ‘ugly’,

Find peace within,

And wonder how anything else,

Can be called beautiful.

 

We’re different you and I,

In many obvious ways,

But we’re the same you and I,

In many different ways.

The Bedouin & The Dates

This story you’ve never heard before,

Of the Bedouin who terrifies his people so,

The amiable folk of Wadi Swaffah,

His name is Ali Hamza al-Jabbar.

 

See the earth crumple,

And squeal under his feet,

See it crumble and slowly wilt.

 

See the men scamper,

Forlorn and wimper,

As they crawl back into their mothers’ wombs.

 

See the ladies sweep his path,

With palm brooms,

And swoon in the aftermath,

Of his grand passage.

 

See him now,

Coughing and spitting,

His conduct unwitting.

 

See him look suspectfully,

At the tender dates,

Mixed into his meal most unsavory,

Of bony rats and slimy snakes.

 

See him shake his head,

And swing his sword,

At an enemy unseen.

 

See him wonder why,

One of life’s finer tastes,

Would make him question,

The sanity of his madness,

And claim,

The peace of his mind.

 

See him wander aimlessly,

Across the land,

Until he becomes the sand,

And the sand becomes him.

 

This story you’ve never heard before,

Of the Bedouin who terrified his people so,

The amiable folk of Wadi Swaffah,

His name was Ali Hamza,

But no longer al-Jabbar.

Original Image at: https://www.walldevil.com/517759-footprints-in-the-sand-dune-wallpaper.html

Kilimanjaro

I’ve been on the road the past two days to Arusha and back, and during the journey I must say I was really shocked to find Kilimajaro’s trademark glacier-covered top is not even close to what it used to be.
Even worse is that the amount of glaciers left on the mountain now is even less than what I saw four years ago when I travelled to Moshi. It therefore felt right to coin this poem as tribute to one of Africa’s  most iconic dwindling landmark, whatever difference that might make.

In his kilt of green,

The giant spread his boughs,

Behind a murky screen,

Of angry scheming clouds.

 

A marvel of history,

Shrouded in deep mystery.

 

Until the clouds parted,

The mystery lifted; departed,

 

And revealed was the giant’s familiar head,

In unfamiliar new state of undress,

Pensive villagers nodding in dread,

At what fury might conceive,

For the missing crown on the behemoth’s head,

When next it would its slumber leave.

 

Then the clouds once more hugged,

The giant in private passionate embrace,

Of furious tempest and granite stone.

 

And the villagers’ dread,

Was now as good as dead.