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.
love

Sing for mum #ripNzie #Anne-Marie

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When you cross the Pearly Gates, will you sing for mum?

I recall those tender dew watered Yaoundé morns

When the cassette spun your voice out the Kenwood speakers,

Lulling my childhood ears to plains which white lilies adorn

And bees buzz the harmony to your vocals and the horns.

 

I recall especially as each new year died to birth another one

That mum would pop the cassette as metronome to the countdown.

And we would be eagerly watching the TV, eyes darting from clock

To TV, from clock to TV, holding on to the present’s each sound,

Conscious these moments shall roam hence only in Memory’s town.

 

The lyrics were beyond my mono-lingual grasp, but for “Liberté”

Where I felt freedom of my spirit soaring, and then “Bonne année”

Which nobody needed to explain. This is all I can take with me round

Memory’s town. But mum sure knew all the songs, and would sing away

As I watched in marvel as her lips waved a magical musical day

 

So Ma’am Nzie, this only I ask of you as you walk the path she took:

Let those words I didn’t understand but which my childhood shook

Pour once again beyond Peter, with love messages from me, three and more

And please, let her… please… harmonize once more every single hook

As once she did, but now in praise to my Maker as He lovingly looks.

 

(c) Nyonglema

 

 

 

 

 

joy

Your breath #refugee #humanCrisis

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Thanks to @CrisisHuman for pointing out that “refugee” is just a bad way to disguise human beings displaced from their homes due to other human beings. We live at a time where more and more humans are losing everybody and everything, and have only the choice to leave to live. To all humans losing all, never lose hope….and to all of us, when will our greed stop?

 

All I wish is to feel your breath in the morning.

The morning bombs thundered our bonds
In shards of glass, piles of dirt and torn mounds
Of once friends, while we planned quickly to abscond
To anywhere Death wasn’t the only sound in the towns.

The blood-soaked dew stained our silent feet
Wading through the floating rattle from shots
Breaking the harmony of our adrenaline chorus of heartbeats
As we walked to the unknown only fearing to be caught.

The camp’s sunrise with promise showed over the horizon
And we got welcomed to our new life with silence
And hurting souls bundled in teary memories and sad songs
But respite too, and hope, nostalgia, food and tents

But all I wish is to feel your breath in the morning.

To wake and look at your eyes bouncing about in a dream
Of our new home, smiling that we made it out of mayhem
To peace. To see your chest heave, to watch the sweat beams
Glide along the tracks of mosquito bites on your bare skin

To feel the warmth you exude as if 35° Celsius
Wasn’t enough, while your hair moves in rhythm
With your sleepy breath, then you turn, oblivious
To all the homeless with us from various schisms.

And breathe heavily as if a sigh of deserved relief,
With the smile of our would-have-been 5 daughter,
Sleeping my pain away in this instant so brief
But healing wounds which would beat our dead doctor

To feel your breath every morning, my only wish
To feel alive again, after my numerous deaths.

Yes, just to feel your breath in the morning
To know I haven’t lost you too this morning.

(c) Nyonglema

anger

YOLO #beFree #YOLO

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“You only live once.”  = “You only got one shot”

How did we get to such a conundrum:

“You only live once” = “Make it brief and intense”

“You only live once” = “Binge it regardless how it ends”

“You only live once” = “Get some drug addiction friends”

“You only live once” = “Lose your morals, and intelligence”

 

Now youth roam in confusion thinking of freedom

In magazine-imposed gear or dreams of TV show stardom.

While questions go Brownian within my cranium:

If it were a vampire movie, and it was the last silver bullet,

“You only live once” = “Waste that mofo like you got no sense?”

If it were a cowboy standdown, and you were on the other gun’s holster

“You only live once” = “Do the hammer dance, for it all ends”?

If you were at a job interview to feed  abandoned mom and 3 starve siblings,

“You only live once” = “Tell them it’s the job or murderous intents”?

All in the new politically correct nonsense: You have freedom!

Freedom to jump over the ledge, to keep your family on the edge

Wondering if you are alive or dead, wishing you’ll be back to bed.

 

I remember a Maverick changed the life of one hardcore YOLOer

And he realised bingeing it out just makes you a sad follower.

YOLO, YOLO, YOLO, YOLO

YOLO, YOLO, YOLO, YOLO

 

I see vomit pools, drunk pools, blood pools, lost schools

More fools, mere lost tools for whoever the system picks as more cool.

 

YOLO, wanna be my tool?

 

(c) Nyonglema

anger

Across the bridge #Soweto #Sharpeville

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                                        RIP to the fallen but: Non sine causa mortis. -Nyonglema

Why didn’t the police throw flowers instead,
As our Master recommends when your cheek gets beat
And you need to turn the other side of your head
In a Stephen forgiveness prayer in the battle heat?

See the children crying the tears of the future
They wished they had, fighting for generations to come
To see freedom and more, to dream of more than manure
And dung, to aim to the sky, but just that you stay calm

And listen. Why didn’t they throw flowers instead
Of gas to rose-prick the eyes, and blows to nose-bleed
Innocence, fighting back with stones, staring scared
But not afraid to give, give, give and sow this seed

Which was to be sown not in blood blood bloodshed?
Why let those lethal tubes let lead lash out
At Ndlovu, Hector, more, while others ducked, the floor red,
Life floating around clothed flesh wide-eyed open mouths.

See….see the children crying the tears of the future
Dreamed, which the next generation finally received,
And smile the smile of 100 years, sitting on pure
Bliss on a porch, like watching your eldest getting free.

(c) Nyonglema

anger

Pied pipers #fakePastors

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Tu-du lalilila lilila tudu la
Walk with me you who are broken-hearted,
When your soul knows but cold and loss,
And joy is the “j” word from childhood departed;
Walk with me , walk for all goals thwarted.

Hold my hand as we roll down the hill.
Solutions, solace, sold to you this instant.
Slowly? No! Speed must come at this cost
And miracles sweeping, seeking all those who want
Will pour out from Heaven till all clouds are bland

Tu-du lalilila lilila tudu la
Follow me gullible bank notes and more
Oh no my dear, coins will puncture the basket
But bills mean successful con errr -version
So walk with me greedy whose hearts are sore
For blessings for cash we’re sharing galore.

(c) Nyonglema

joy

April fool #rainySeason #spring

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The seeds are losing their coats of colours varied
Within the arid earth, looking to the sky’s greyness,
And the thunder oliphanting the triumphant outburst
From bustling clouds dancing the ball of the newly married,

In the loud wind whooshing and rushing about the dry grass,
Littering with dust our squinted eyes as the first drops
Jump out to wash away the drear of the season of nix,
The season of bare land, searing heat on soil like dead brass

The seeds welcome the drops intensifying with each step
Of humans seeking shelter, or humans going helter skelter,
April’s joy filling them as they foresee their plants growing
As the death of barren land leaves for fresh green and pep.

(c) Nyonglema

love

SO SEI ES

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Jetzt seh ich nur die Finsternis,

Aber es gebe Freude jenseits der Liebe,

Andererseits sei alles peinlich alleine.

Kommet die Heilung nur wenn die andere da ist.

Ich habe meine Gefühle nich mehr im Griff;

Liebe die Gelegenheit ergriff

Meinen verletzten Herz

Noch in Schmerzen

Zu stecken; verdammt sei der Anfang!

Kaum kann ich mich noch verstecken,

Cupidos Pfeil hat mir schon ein Leid getan.

(c) Nyonglema

surprise

Exiled #neoAfrican

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Urbanised, I grew near concrete and car honks, not farms and cow horns
Nor the chirp of birds harmonising farm hoes tilling the soil.
My streams had little fish, just plastic and plastic and sticks from corns.
Urbanised, I learnt to read quite young, and in books was embroiled.

But back “home” where they wake at 5am to prepare for a long trip
To the farm, with loads on your back to and fro, you went off to the farm
And through sun burns you got trained to live through your hardship.
But you forget I have my own hardship which I don’t need to wear on my arm.

Yes, you laughed because I couldn’t handle your condition, I buckled
You chuckled and gave me names to signify I didn’t fit in
And that made me shut down from learning the richness of my culture,
Then seek strength in all that the urban life had trained me in.

(c) Nyonglema

sadness

Lost #Alzheimers

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The fish wiggle in the noise of tweeting birds blocked out by the polluted water
Trickling away in a little creek, under the bridge of my childhood quarter.
I’m laughing, but I know not why, then reach, catch one, reach further
Get a pair in a container, of which substance or colour I can’t recount here.
My friends on my side are mere shadows saying silence that made me chuckle
And we’d take these creatures to our homes to put in spare juice bottles
And feed them, watch them constrained to swim in a narrow aquarium
And I guess I was glad, but must have cried when it was time for requiem.

The trees I climbed with my siblings are still green, and the leaves rustled
As we went up to grab fruit with more shadows. And the wind bustled
By on its journey, bringing farm scents to my nose, the good and bad jostled
There, and I don’t remember which dominated the other in that tussle
But only that they were there, as we climbed and laughed away care
Talking of our stories, football on the tarmac with a whole throng of peers
And I know for a fact we went to the funeral of one of them at some point,
Or their parent…If you ask me which it was exactly, I don’t know it.

I recall as we got older and dared to talk to the girls, shivering like rain-beaten reeds,
And walking together to watch movies straight from Hollywood’s steeds
And the advent of cable, and a bunch of stories of which I can but catch seeds:
My first cigarette, a horror movie, some novel dad bought, buying school needs,
The day I fell into the bush picking up a ball and gashed my shin bleeding,
Or the machete accident, or the shell on the house wall, mum crying at me leaving,
My best friend leaving, projects of flying cars, some intricate software,
Recording my first song, a piano, some notes, a chord, some staves, a snare.

Each meeting with one of these seeds from the shadow that lived before now,
Where I waded in gathering souvenirs which got broken with each new now
Is like a stab to Caesar’s neck, leaving me sad inside, beaten, for they feel I disavow
Our history, the bond…despite my craving to remember each low and each wow,
To recall when we were where with what and why, and how we made it through,
And my cats I fed and petted, and came back to hear had turned to evening food
And the rats we tortured, and the birds captured…all these I wish I still knew
The beautiful and horrible memories lost from my childhood and adulthood.

(c) Nyonglema

fear

On Addiction #slaveToPleasure

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It pulls you as much as you pull it
It pulls you as much as you pull it.

You’re both master and slave to each other,
Satisfying your raster of cravings in destructive instants.
And in those instants when the cage feels sweeter,
You’re trapped further by some form of trance.

It pulls you as much as you pull it
It pulls you as much as you pull it.

You draw it towards you, feeling like an eagle
Patrolling your turf, oblivious to the nails sinking into
Your hands, as delusional you feel you’re in control.
You’re not. Each pull of yours meets Newton’s memento.

It pulls you as much as you pull it
But won’t push you even if you push it.

What ?! That’s the puzzle that rings the alarm:
You’re stuck in a draining flooded tub
And elusive are the objects which could grab your arm
And yank you out. Even when this beast was but a cub,

It pulled you much more than you pulled it
It’s pulling you much more than you can push it.

(c) Nyonglema