My Voice E-Book

Adnan K Mohsen

• Herausgeber: WS
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Serie: Poems of Peace
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 55

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

My Voice is a collection of my poems that I wrote over a number of years. They represent my reaction to world events, my world view, and some philosophical musings.

Every time I read my book it feels fresh and relevant. Basically I am anti-war poet and I believe in strong world governnace structures as the only means to guarantee peace, human rights and protection of the environmnet. 

Leseprobe

My Voice

COLLECTION OF MY POEMS

1st Edition

Adnan Mohsen

Copyright © 2022 Adnan Mohsen

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Publication Data available from National Library of Australia

ISBN 978-0-6454679-0-1 (ebk)

ISBN. 978-0-6454679-1-8 (pbk)

The right of Adnan K Mohsen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the copyrights Acts 1964 of Australia.

1st Edition

First published by Barklake Pty Ltd, 15A Glenview Rd, Mount Kuring Gai, NSW 2080.

To my dear wife Dr. Makarim Alomish

(Whose encouragement inspired this work)

OTHER TITLES BY THIS AUTHOR

Global Patriot - Normative exercise in International Politics (2018) (international politics)

Buenos Aires - Theory and Practice (2019) (Travel)

Contents

Introduction

ONE

Guns and Poetry

Doomsday

Yet another war

A Children Story

Death as a cure!

The beast

Harmony

Conflict To War

Coda

Zero

The Only Way

Who Am I?

Covid

TWO

Despair

Tik Tok

We are but

The Wall

Be Happy

Disagreement

Life was Simple

Tantrums

The Swift Parrot

Philosopher

Happiness

Caves

Burleigh Heads

Fear of Public speaking

Humanity

Meaning of Time

Altruism

Lady Luck

Harmony

Old Boat

My Hand

Anger

Free

True Love

Faith

Roses

Wedding Ring

Lonely

Who Am I

Mystery

The Hermit

Sarah

Lesbos

The Bicycle

The Palm Tree

Intimacy

Pronoun

Social Hierarchy

Meditate

Auto Deity

THREE

Shame

One Senator

Cannibals and Kings

Nit Picking

Orangutan

FOUR

My Late Mother

Self-Elegy

FIVE

Tango

Al Adaluz

Old Flame

Evita

Suicide note of Sylvia Platt

Introduction

This anthology is a collection of poems I have written over the last ten years. I have called it my voice because it represents only me and how I see the world and people around me. The reader will see the world through my very eyes by reading it, and I hope it will prove an exciting experience.

The poems I composed represent my essence during my life's concluding years. And, as such, offers my accumulated wisdom (or lack of it) throughout decades of working and living in different countries scattered over many continents.

I have not arranged the poems in any chronological order as I wrote them; instead, I have rearranged them into groups with common themes. This method affords a more logical and meaningful flow than otherwise. Also, I based the spelling throughout this collection on the American way, in case other English speakers find spelling incongruities.

“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world “, as Shelly wrote in his “defence of poetry” in 1821. Through the inspiration and passion of poetry, truths, morals, and preaching often shine. These golden nuggets of wisdom are necessary for a happy communal existence.

In this little collection, the reader will discern that the essential prerequisite to be a human is controlling the violent impulses that we are all born with. Such impulses, which can easily be tamed culturally by education and upbringing, are the roots of the despicable spectacle of war; when one human slaughter another just like monkeys do under the most indefensible, illogical, and wonton pretences. And instead of looking down on such abhorrent behaviour, societies glorify the process with words such as victory, glory, courage, alpha male, and so on. Wars should be discredited for what they genuinely are: inhuman, barbaric, refugee-makers, loser’s-game, subhuman, inglorious, lose-lose, zero-sum games, blood baths, hair-brained campaigns, and the like.

Human existence is full of paradoxes and ironies, too many and far too complicated to be guided solely by poetic inspiration, but one cannot give up and shrug them off. They cannot be set aside or ignored. Such conflicted existence is grist for the mill. It powers our imagination and fuels our mental and spiritual growth. Poets cry with tears and roar with laughter, and this is what art is all about, and without art, life is rather dull and vacuous. “Spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” is how Wordsworth described the art of poetry.

Political causes often arouse such spontaneous and strong feelings in poets, just like the beauty of a bunch of swaying daffodils. And in the last few decades, the political scene has been so polarized and divided as never before, stocking emotions on all sides of the political divide. This situation necessitates a more profound thought and a more robust expression in all mediums, especially the poetic variety.  

I touch on this aspect and flavour of poetry because I have a big axe to grind here. My biggest inspiration comes from my political philosophy, even if it is viewed by many at best utopian and worst unrealistic. My vision of eternal peace within human polity can only, and I repeat “only”, be realized through the establishment of a World Democratic Authority (WDA).  I have outlined my thoughts in a straightforward, rational, and practical way in my book “The Global Patriot”, self-published in 2018. But Lord Alfred Tennyson, in a few lines of poetry, summed up the whole vision when he wrote these lines in his long poem “Hoxley Hall”

“When I dipped into the future far as human eyes could see

Saw the vision of the world and all the wonder that would be

Till the war drums throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were furl’d

In the Parliament of man, the federation of the world

There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe

And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.”

The Poet Laureate said it all just in a few lines, no need for a voluminous tome full of details and archaic references.

Prose has its limitations in describing the horrors of war in intimate details. It is not as powerful as poetic lines written by the poet at a moment of grief, bewilderment, and shock. Prose can explain the workings of laws and governments but cannot do justice to the portrayal of the gore, blood, and death brought about by man's inhumanity to his brethren.

Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, in their description of the horrors of the Great War, is a good example. These lines by Owns in his famous poem “Dulce et decorum est.” aptly describe the emotional impact:

“If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues. “