All posts by nyonglema

I love to write to inspire, to salvage and to heal. I believe there's power in word and language that can cure all the ills which take away human love an life. Keep reading, you'll find yourself.
joy

Sleep …or not #insomnia

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The waves quietly pat the boat where the sheep jump the gates, the clouds float away, the squeegee mops away at the drowning noises of today’s hustle.

The buildings walk next to the roads in discourse about when they saw me, and invite a whole bunch of faces to their rave.

I reach out as they beckon, but there’s a clock wearing a silky tie, with the smaller side tugging on my wrist. The conversations turn into murmurs I want to hear, but

There I go, pulled to pixels, mouses (mice) and little squares taunting me, wishing to be poked at to make the DOW indices hop around.

Sorry guys, I have to pick the DOW

(c) Nyonglema

sadness

Wrong place #paris #kolofata

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Nine burnt souls float over roasted mayhem where souls are tugging their way out of resilient bodies.

All they remember is a bright light; the deafening din rushed towards their maimed bodies like Sir Hewett, and you know what they say about not hearing the bang…

They will no longer bathe in the bitter burnt flesh fragrance heavy in the smoke blundering through the debris.

They will not agonise with the grunts and moans coming from where wood and flesh, metal and flesh, and earth and flesh dance the Black Swan with darker shades of hell and oozing red.

But, they will nevermore hum a lullaby to the drowsy eyes of toddler dreams, nor bless the lips of a lover with a touch of their lips.

Their seat shall slice onions into the hearts of those sharing meals at the dinner table, and the past tense will follow every mention of the scathing memories of how happy they made this one or that one.

The media will mention their names for all to hear….or maybe not. This didn’t happen in Paris; who cares if 2 prepubescent girls blow up a refugee camp in Kolofata?

(c) Nyonglema
 

sadness

Dusting the pictures #immigrant #Libya

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I’m looking at my wall decorated with frames of different sizes, colours,
Most of eyes smiling back at me from years I have long forgotten.
The dust jealous sits upon them scattering the rays of sun that slowly pours
Into the living room to warm the day at noon and bathe my cotton.

This can’t be: my cloth takes them down one by one to clean.
I remember this day in the village amongst tall corn crops and loud silence
When we tilled the soil and planted corn, groundnuts , beans
And mum snapped away at you, me in the hoes and farm tools’ violence.

I remember this day in the village amongst tall corn crops and loud silence
We held hands and shared smiles and selfies, laughs and hugs. Then
Was a hell of a time. No TVs nearby to fill our joyous days with violence
Just you, me, holding hands while the tweets swung the leaves above them.

Look how fragile the kids look into your face staring at me,
The camera captured every curve of your face like sharp knives
Pointed at the salt trickling now down my cheeks. I just wish I could be
Wiping the dust off this with you, while we walk through our lives.

This one is a clipping from the news on that day..I won’t forget that day,
Black and white text to tell me that I’ll never see your face again.
The sea shall keep you safe, with our kids…why did you run away?
I wipe off the dust near “…boat capsizes over the Mediterranean… ”

(c) Nyonglema

anger

Scream #oldDictators

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“I can’t breathe!”, I screamed. “I can’t hear!”, was the echo.

Think about it,
It’s thirty years the first promise was crafted
Yet, nothing positive has been thought or drafted.
The promises turned back on the journey to greatness,
And pain ossified them on the spot into vain… but wait, let’s
Go in deeper.

Roads, buildings, hope, dreaming, ‘dults, children, pots, three meals,
School, jobs, lost meaning when you lost will and, I guess, hearing.

It’s thirty years the first promise was crafted,
Or more, I can’t see what weird appendage has been grafted
To the future of whole generations aspiring
To be something, but vainly perspiring
And this instant

Promises pile, plausibly nigh, but possibly high, impossibly Pi
That nothing’s decided, nothing resides in the blank page on this side

It’s thirty years the first promise was…well more,
And each one feels like a Cinderella-before-fame chore
While the voices rise from the depth of democratic thorns
And die unheard, buried in the land of miles of dictatorial scorn.

And nobody hears the screams:
Hearing-aids titter on the side of the screen.
(c) nyonglema

joy

Working for the white man #noRacism #coloursNsmells

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This is what I learnt from working for the white man:

  The rainy season will come each year, and so will the dry
  And bosses can be mean, they can be sad, they can be shy
  And life will move on even when the targets seem high
  And the team will be there, to scoff but sometimes say fie
  But they can lift you high with a good laugh, or just smile.
  I learnt to be humble in front of challenges, for God
  Put them there to shine through the successes we got.

Then,

This is what I learnt from working for the black man:

  The rainy season will come each year, and so will the dry
  And bosses can be mean, they can be sad, they can be shy
  And life will move on even when the targets seem high
  And the team will be there, to scoff but sometimes say fie
  But they can lift you high with a good laugh, or just smile.
  I learnt to be humble in front of challenges, for God
Put them there to shine through the successes we got.

And,

This is what I learnt from your puzzled mind:

We’re all the same deep under, and the colour doesn’t determine
  What success or failure or iniquity or sanctity you bring.
Black, white, dark, spiked, light, night, yellow, mellow,
  I’m looking at you looking at me, but we’re all one big shadow
On this sphere spinning in nothingness. That colours, smells
  Are just ways to make the labrador hate hounds and spaniels.

I learnt to be humble in front of challenges, for God
Put them there to shine through as we merge into one pod.

(c) Nyonglema

fear

Laudatur probitas #politics

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It all starts with a good intention

If I could change the world? 
The switching of seasons can’t bring constancy of reason,
Where my people live treason, and profound division
In silence, in a world
Where their full potential is nobody’s goddamn mission. 

And escalates with good intention

	And that’s insane! 
My damn mission is to alleviate your burdens, 
	Elevate the status quo, no matter what the wardens
	Say in this bloody prison, I’m breaking the chains
	I’m going to fight for you sisters and brethren! 

And intentions with fodder gain attention
And graciously turn to further actions
	
	Fight till my blood’s gone. 
	Walk with me, fallen and lost, walk with me past the present
	Into a future where there’s no sullen, no dreams evanescent
	Only throngs growing strong, 	
	And I’ll make you see Heaven on Earth when I’m president!

And the actions grow to the expectations
Of those good intentions

	And now I’m president, how much better!
	See justice live in day, live from vampirism of before, 
	See collaboration with the opposition, but I want more! 
	Let’s find solution to every matter 
	Through collaboration, I’ve told you I need more and more. 

And temptation comes to haunt the decisions
As attention clouds intentions, warping the actions

	I told you I need more, more! 
	Walk with me. What? I said coercion isn’t a foreign language,
	When the army can assuage, or assiege your verbiage
	Of disses to me, and my chores!
	Walk with me now, or you’ll be safe from hampering us in your cage!

And the actions warped by other intentions…

	For we must reach this target, 
	Set by him who pays our bills. We must comply with the majority’s wish.
	Nothing else matters than keeping this power I have, this power which 
	Ebbs from my assets, 
	And if you think of stopping me, we’ll have you served a gifted dish

And the actions warped by other intentions…

	And if anybody complains, 
	We are taking them out. Ungrateful lot, I made you who you are
	And now you question the very mind that took you out of mar
	Into a new existence plane?
	Damn you all, let’s see who can get me off this high of power!

And the actions kill the budding good intentions, 
As if good intentions were greed, 
Forgetting, where they came from, 
Forgetting that they were fighting greed.
 
And that all started with a good intention.

(c) Nyonglema
joy

Fear #nothing

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The roaches are tangoing with the spiders, near a tavern full of bats, humming the melodies snakes taught them. It’s dark, and ghosts look on at vampires going from bat to ghastly human…and they are all conspiring to do one thing: GET YOU!

Did I just describe what your fear looks like?
When your heartbeat sits on the top pike
And your breath loses control on the broken dyke?

Breathe, breathe. You break into sweat clinging at your sheets in the dark.
It’s just a nightmare: soon the sun’s light will bathe the singing of the lark.

(c) Nyonglema

surprise

Palms for murder #HolyWeek #Easter

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You know a human’s about to get you when the honours come out.
They raise you on a pedestal, higher than your donkey mount.
They hail you, with palms to grow on your funeral mound.

But that’s not today, today it’s Hosanna in excelsis
It’s blessings to He who comes from deepest exegesis
It’s wholly holy people praising salvation’s catalysis.

Not the funeral mound no! But seeking some greater cause:
Freedom from the Roman “alphabet” to “alefbet” theirs.
Freedom borne by a donkey marching majestically with no pause.

You know a human’s about to get you, when you’re set to fail
By their standards. We’re human, and when we start to ail,
Everything seems either brighter or of a darker shade of pale

We raise Hope on a pedestal, higher than a donkey can,
And wish the standards are earthly unlike the first Eden ban,
Or the Earth in glory bathed, but humble when it began.

And we miss it all, the real glitter that Easter brings,
Looking for the suave mauve of bigger and bigger kings,
In a manger, then a cross, then a tomb, then everything.

(c) Nyonglema

sadness

We only wear Boss, Hugo that is #racism #colour

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Adapted from 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Negro

How to judge a man? I got some inspiration below….hint smell is important:

The mention that mentally the leather fragrance wearer is inferior to the wood fragrance wearer, may be taken as generally true of that whole race: “the leather fragrance wearing children were sharp, intelligent and full of vivacity, but on approaching the adult period a gradual change set in. The intellect seemed to become clouded, animation giving place to a sort of lethargy, briskness yielding to indolence. We must necessarily suppose that the development of the leather fragrance wearer and woody ones proceeds on different lines. While with the latter the volume of the brain grows with the expansion of the brainpan, in the former the growth of the brain is on the contrary arrested by the premature closing of the cranial sutures and lateral pressure of the frontal bone.This explanation is reasonable and even probable as a contributing cause; but evidence is lacking on the subject and the arrest or even deterioration in mental development is no doubt very largely due to the fact that after puberty sexual matters take the first place in the leather fragrance wearer’s life and thoughts. At the same time his environment has not been such as would tend to produce in him the restless energy which has led to the progress of the wood fragrance wearer; and the easy conditions of tropical life and the fertility of the soil have reduced the struggle for existence to a minimum. But though the mental inferiority of the leather fragrance wearing to the wood fragrance wearing or floral fragrance wearing races is a fact, it has often been exaggerated; the leather fragrance wearer is largely the creature of his environment, and it is not fair to judge of his mental capacity by tests taken directly from the environment of the wood fragrance wearer, as for instance tests in mental arithmetic; skill in reckoning is necessary to the wood fragrance wearing race, and it has cultivated this faculty; but it is not necessary to the leather fragrance wearers.

And I believe this because if you smell different, you’re definitely inferior. I pick the woodiness of Hugo Boss. YOU ARE INFERIOR!

Oh, and also, I’m going to be judging you because your skin doesn’t reflect the same light wavelengths as mine…YOU ARE INFERIOR!

Then I’ll make up some excuses about your anatomy based on your fragrance and light waves…but bottom line is you’re INFERIOR! Deal with it.

(c) Nyonglema

PS: Colour ain’t a thing! Black, white, yellow, brown, green…doesn’t matter. I’m brown, you’re whatever you are…but we’re all humans trying to make sense of this big ball we’re on and what lies beyond. Let’s walk together. There are more reasons to think we’re similar, than to start limiting ourselves with colours, scents, and lame measurements.

 

anger

Unus pro duobus #unity #bringBackOurInternet

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Trust is the dragonfly of days of drench,
Though both brothers bother same from the same trench,
Wherein chains chip away their days into nothingness.
Their solace now whips around in he depths of the Loch Ness.

Universe 1: Damnation

“Brother conceal my future escapade cleverly
That I may bring panacea to you and me quite early”
But Trust had left the pit: “Together we are,
Together we remain or together to go far.”

“But, but two easy targets defeat our purpose!”
“But, but two easily defeat our perpetrators!”
“But the foundation of such a plan is our chains,
And one must be deception to the watching banes”

But Trust had left the pit: “Together we are,
And as am bigger, you’re not going far”
Trust is the dragonfly of days of drench,
Though both brothers bother same within the same trench.

“But…”, “I warned, and now your scorn means no lunch
Till your mind leaves the rocket of that mad hunch.
Together we are..” “And together we slowly fade
We won’t go far by licking their laurels of jade,

I stand my ground. Keep the food, but you shall
Conceal my escapade, or see the death of your pal.”
“Bluff, buff bluff! No food, let’s see the hourglass
Of your resolve heap hunger: Yes the idea will pass!”

Universe 2: Salvation

But in an alternate universe where Trust serves
The needy with new pathways out of tight curves:
“But, but two easy targets defeat our hidden purpose!”
” Yes, one safe, then two will easily defeat the perpetrators!”

Then the bigger worked at the weak link to free the boon
And Trust infused them with the will, and one was free
A shadow in the dim light of hell’s guarded cocoon
Saw light again, heard birds sing to the dancing trees.

The tears exploded out his accommodating eyes down
His cheeks, mingled with joy, and hope for a future
As he forged the mettle of captivity’s breakdown
One step of freedom at a time: the overture.

And Trust still lived with their click: “Together we are,
Together we’ll remain so together we will go far.”
“Yes, brother, let’s head to where we’ve sought long
And bring back ours. First water and food make you strong”

The battle brief baffled the captors, and the strong captive
Saved by friends welcomed Trust in the smiles of yesteryear,
Smiling the smile of one whom Genghis Khan would reprieve,
As they left what hell had become home for more than a 100 years.

(c) Nyonglema