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.
sadness

Confused #FarhadAkale

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RIP Farhad Ebanje Akale (March 15, 1985 – October 5, 2013)

Monopoly is quite a peculiar board.
It has always fascinated me from the days we
Heard the rain drops play on the roofs on Bamenda mornings,
But played on, played on…I won some, you won some,
Our siblings won some. The air filled with a peculiar
Smell of joy which only the carefree spirit of youth
Brings.
I remember the whole Griffin collection
We dove into and made believe and had fun, diving
In and out of the books until the holidays were
Over in 1993, and we separated never to see again.

What got me thinking about you is a monopoly board, Farhad.
Got me wondering in the cold being I’ve become where
The fountain of youth in the memories we both had
Hides. Life has surely thrown it’s curved balls at you too,
But I was sure within me you’ll be ok. You always were cheerful.

When I typed “Farhad Akale”, I was expecting to scour through
Myriad faces on Linkedin and Facebook to find my old friend.
I wasn’t looking for an obituary page!
I didn’t want to see Slink performing a tribute to you.
I didn’t want to drown in the words of a father washing the
Lifeless bundle of memories from cradle to mischief
To a bullet hole.
To the bullet hole, I say, why did you take my friend?
I’m here teary eyed to the kid I left behind,
And for the adult I never got to meet.

This is not even a poem, I’m not even on technique. My hands
Which are usually still in the face of the most horrid gore
Are trembling. I’m stuck in a loop of pain at the stranger
You’ve become but what part of me you go with is considerable.
Those were the days we smiled roses and laughed daffodils
On lilac plains, dancing in the fragrance of a dozen
Sunflowers.

You probably forgot childhood too, but I hope the Griffin is proud of your
Life, and that you find peace beyond the coffin within which is your shroud.

By the way tomorrow is your birthday, so to all the ones I missed, these words
And prayers are for you till we are on the other side re-imagining our worlds.

(c) Nyonglema

sadness

Coffin #emptiness #memoryLoss #alzheimers

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Once I woke in a Bafoussam street which owned my brother’s flat,
Cold dusty straight path, with potholes, and the noise of city
Bustle, horning bikes, rolling cows going to grassy flats
To eat the meal of death-row. The cold sight I met from balcony
Of coffins, juxtaposed with coffins, round, weird, flat

Had me thinking about this final abode where nothing exists,
Lowered below eye level with nothing inside, prayed over
With nothing inside, but hopes hovering round, tears persist
As the memories ooze from the pulpit and eyes of lover,
Family friend, looking at nothing lying therein like insect in cyst,

Quietly non-existent, just an empty coffin in an empty coffin,
And I think about the empty coffin my mind feels like when I try
To reminisce of my teenage fade, where computer boffin
I attempted, and wormed through library books, with tears not cried
And failed at football, made my grades, but missed all often.

You see dad and mum were going through a tough one for long
And I guess this painting was not what I had ordered, so daily
I pushed the present to a part where this present would long
To find it, and rummage through intellectual pillage daily
But only find science and raps from Marshal Mathers songs.

A coffin. The voids of the pain were blinded in the blare
Of a hi-hat, bass drums and wordplay, while life zipped past
Me, leaving flowers and scars, bringing blessings in blitz glare
But which my eyes would see, inspect, understand then blast
Into a space where even long term memory feels like the recent past.

And here I look at wooden Me’s littering this lively street
Where hammers snare on nails and the bass of humming saws
Echo the memories I can’t get, the lost days I shall never meet
The friends to grace with awkward moments of hidden dropped jaws:
“Who are you again?” and a quizzical look from Sesame Street’s

Muppets. “Aaaah! Yeah, I remember now!”, I’d lie to their face
And sometimes I feel their psychic minds dissecting my tale,
And it digs another hole in the already empty space
Where the coffin’s emptiness fills every painful piece like ale
Or the rope that hastens the ebb of life’s painful pace.

Sometimes I wish I remembered the………………and
The ……………………………………….. but this
Coffin walking about doubts whether this instant
And the next would even be similar to ………………..
But………………………………………………
…all disappears and I’m left clawing away in a blank land.

(c) Nyonglema

surprise

While shepherds watched #MerryChristmas

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While shepherds watched their flock by night,
Seated on the ground, the sheep kept going round
In telepathic discourse, full of questions as they might,
Talking to the other sheep whom divinity had found.

“What does He look like? Does He bear Mary’s smile
Or Joseph’s nose? Is Mary ok after the delivery
And who is tending her right now?” After a while
The response would come of Mary’s particular chivalry

To push in stable bear, and bear He to save us all,
And tend the baby dear, swathed in pieces of cloth
Torn off her precious dress worn, and Joe’s wool
Of brown and black and white, amidst the fleeting moths

Dancing in the candle-lit palace of the king of
The world born as lowly as a baby among the lowliest.
His message rich -Share,Love,Reconcile – may sound tough,
But those sheep were proto-us, living glory’s best

Oh that you may see beyond the glittering balls which hang
On the Tannenbaum, with blocks, and plasticky ropes
Shining light. Oh that His coming inspires, taking your pangs,
Bringing joy and peace to you, yours, and beyond your hopes.

(c) Nyonglema

sadness

Linux: Suicidal OS #ISupportJolla #linux #opensource

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Dear Linux and Afficionados,

You first flirted with my ideas in a school club as nonsense from a bunch of computer geeks punching the keyboard on a black screen reminiscent of my dad’s 3-and-half-inch floppy-booted laptop, without a mouse, without a gooey GUI floating about my face as in my modern Samsung laptop. At the time, you were Linux the other one, outside in the cold looking at Bill’s dream float in the minds of young and old, and it made sense to me: you were way too complex, despite my light fling with DOS.

Later I got to know your personality, and you were Red Hat or Mandrake or Ubuntu and frankly, it still made little sense: was this 3.1, 95, 97, Me, XP, Vista, or what were these names intended for? Wikipedia told me they were actually flavours, and not versions, and within each vanilla or hibiscus or chocolate flavour came various versions based on what else was tucked in within you. Linux. Linux. Distros, flavours, versions, and stable and long term versions within the versions….Linux: have you ever heard of “Divide and Conquer”?

When you look at your distros you see innovation, possibilities, custom-made OSes but all I see is egoistic innovation, wasted possibilities, and custom-made confusion. I see precious metals lying about like in the war-torn mine belt of central Africa, where the locals see disjointed Cobalt, Gold, Uranium, Diamonds, but the wiser put them together to drive the price up.

What do I dream of for Linux, the OS I’m growing to love? Yes LOVE. For the potential I see wasted, for the fact that hours of non-profit love and work went to make it what it is. I’m rooting for Linux as the mainstream OS. Why? I think we’re being taken for a ride by all the others, and Windows 8 was the final nudge to make up my mind to start experimenting with Ubuntu, realising that I could get stuck in the modern EI crazed world where beauty = functionality even when you just want a bloody OS which goes fast so you finish your work in time, not stitching up my threads into animations which slow me down when I have my 20 web pages open, 3 Excel instances analysing data into one Powerpoint presentation being fed by another 2 Powerpoint presentation, and collaborating with a colleague via Skype.

What do I dream of for Linux? Find a way to make Linux compete with the rest by putting your energy behind the scenes and ensuring that less effort is spent in forking as is done so often, but spooning all OSes together, no matter how different they are, to different front ends, to customisable backends. But fully functional and less buggy!

Why do I rant? I nearly saw Jolla die. Ubuntu went over the top on the phone and it went nowhere. Mozilla’s phone isn’t really it. Tizen is not yet ready. However, for each open source baby about to leave the womb of the community to shine in the world, and stop being what I perceived way back as geek toys, which dies, it’s a bit of Linux that dies.

What do I want? That you Thunderclap #ISupportJolla if you are down with Linux. This is the baby of the two “pure” Linux phones ever made by that once grand company Nokia. The Sailfish OS is the closest “pure” Linux has come to being mainstream. Ok Ok ok. Android is Linux. But that’s not the real deal here. I think Sailfish is safe and open, but can’t share all their secrets yet, because they’ll get beaten by the big boys (cf Apple’s latest battery pack “TOH”). To me pure Linux is about productivity (which doesn’t mean Uglifiability). You can build something truly productive and cute, and this is what Linux does. Not something cute then productive. It’s about priority. Pure Linux ensures you can do what you want to do as quickly as possible; Android has the most atrocious multitasking, sadly replicated in the rest.

What do I want? That you Thunderclap #ISupportJolla for you Linux guys have been suicidal for too long, holding on to your horses while the other horses on your team struggle…it’s time to push more Linux distros to the fore, whether you love Wayland or not, whether you love Mer or not. Hell, they forked whatever to get here, and you’ve forked whatever to get to where you are, like Unity, Gnome 3 etc. Just support these guys. They could screw us and Android the whole Sailfish OS in the future, or even Windows it, or even (whoa!) iOS it. Well, but by the time they get there, there’ll be another Maemo in the works, because I know you guys fork everything. Let the Kernel dominate then spread everywhere to compete against but still for itself.

Crazy thoughts from me…#ISupportJolla, please do.

Sincerely Yours,
(c) Nyonglema

anger

Angry Oil Price

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Like to gossip about some colleague while he lurks hidden,
And hears plots of redundancy (renewables for our children)
So does oil take serious offense
To solar, biomass and wind plants,
And keeps its price beyond the reach of sane investment.

(c) Nyonglema

sadness

Aid in Africa #blexit

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I heard them saying:

Fish, fish, fish
Free fish for the suffering African 
Your history's pain, and misery
Your misery's plain, and surely
Fish will make you whole. 

Your ancestors feeble
Fell to imperial machinations. 
Your past heroes were but pale 
Imitations of ours... here some fish. 
Your misery's plain and surely, 
You can't do anything without me. 

Your children are feeble, 
And can't learn anything. 
Fish will make you whole: 
Here grab a bite.
I got it where you can't go. 
Your misery's painfully surly. 
Cheer up, have a bite. 
Fish will make you whole. 

Fish will make you whole. 
Your history's all that matters. 
Here grab a bite. Forget potential. 
You don't have any. I'll save you. 
Your surly misery's painful
But surely miserly gains would 
Change it all for you? 
Free fish for the suffering African 
Who can't do anything today, 
Because history took it away: 
Fish will make you whole. 

I said no. 
Grabbed a fishing pole.

(c) nyonglema
joy

Wake Up #Africa #newEden

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Don’t you just hate the incessant annoyance buzzing out of a cellphone?
Your eyes are shut, and dreams are in you, swaying and cuddling you
And there’s this syncopated harmony floating about like US drones,
Like you’re going to get hit. Like you shouldn’t be sleeping, but you,
You love it here. The real world’s harsh with things to fear, fears to bear
Bears in the office, officials plundering taxes, taxes to be paid,
Payments you are owed, Owen missing goals, Goals not getting nearer….
Near this cosy cushion of dreams, the cursed music is played
By transistors you’d bash but for the fact that you’ll have to pay
For the pain of being able to make a call again….
But that’s not what I’m talking about today. No way.
Who are you going to blame when it’s time to feel the pain?
 
Africa! AFRICA! Hey! AFRICA! It’s 6 a.m. and it’s pouring.
You’re stuck in a past of pain, perjury and mourning, looking further back
To dream of glory, gumption in days when you built stone storeys.
Those stories are history…..hello! ….Wake Up!!!  Get out the sack
 
Generations boated in hordes, hoarded to shores where all fell apart
To generations hoarded on their own shores, robbed, tortured, more
To generations seeking for sure, for their brains have lost their heart,
And disconnected from self they float in hordes tormented and more,
 
Are your pedigree. Shall you stop to stare at the tripping stone there?
Shall you mourn the morning that brought mourning till it disappears
To some sugar candy mountain in purple pill colours, and hear
Psychedelic mushrooms hum soothing tunes into your crying ears?
 
Africa??? Who are you blaming now, while the shutters blind your view?
They enslaved you? You’d been doing it for ages and taught them too,
And caught and chose the ones to be sent off in balls and chains in twos
And forced them in exchange for glitter, clothes, status and booze.
 
They signed shady deals? Well not amongst themselves they didn’t!
Not like some shady deal CIA-hidden between Obama and Biden,
Or Paul and Phil. You were represented by the mice with hidden
Agenda at the cheese distribution party. So …..nope they didn’t.
 
Rather than mourn, and seek root in tradition tradition…tradition.
What’s tradition? And who said it was frozen in some distant time
Before others changed your clime? Your ancestor’s oral diction
Was altered, and clothing, and building and art and even clime
 
As you migrated from oasis to oasis, fleeing from wars and drought!
Tradition? That’s a 60s newspaper bashing Facebook for breaching
Tradition. Culture. I’m more for principles, which is deeper, without
Which our bearings are stuck in heavy rotation North East West South.
 
Rather than mourn, and seek root in tradition, reinvent your minds
Adapt, grow. Change is opportunity, and exclusion kills opportunity.
Reverse racism is two wrongs to a right, and no matter what fines
You would levy, exclusion is your energy spent to fix past iniquity,
 
But shouldn’t we be seizing that opportunity? Driving paradigm
Change in little and big ways, and saying to the plants in the garden:
It was tough, but soak it all up, learn from all and then you can design
A new way to live. Then call it culture, call it tradition. Call it Eden

 

(c) Nyonglema

joy

I am not rich #wakeupAfrica

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Her thoughts percolate into my ears like acid rain

Reined in, tied to loads of nonsense from new-world

Worldly thoughts I loathe, for venom is their ocean.

Oceans of bliss in their ignorance masks the ensuing pain.

 

Pride in her riches like my daughter’s first picture;

Picturing formless ink forms as more of number “1”s.

One day she’ll doodle and it will make sense,  but now

Nowhere near Picasso’s are the art in her feature.

 

Pride in riches: she called Africa the richest place!

Placing my bets carefully I side with her view.

She then said the diamonds and gold sustain that too!

Too much for me ma’am…but mine’s a different place.

 

For rich or poor is defined by so much more  than stones

Stoning soldiers to death, stone cold killers from kids

Kidding with adult toys (not those …jeez guys! Be adults!),

Adult toys that suck life and blood and call retaliative drones.

 

Come on! Those aren’t your riches…they are Earth’s;

Earthly things outliving our decaying remains,

Remaining for the next generation. We could have picked

Pickets as currencies, or flowers…just anything and set its worth.

 

For the real wealth is people together working equal,

Unequal, Good, evil. All people as long as they are happy.

Happens that that’s what also brings economic wealth.

Wealthiest nations have the highest density of people.

 

The leaves of her premise sway about on the roots of

Offish bar-talk: “They get raw and process and sell,

Sales price escalating in the process so the initial person

Persistently can’t afford what has come of his stuff.”

 

But maybe there’s the catch: It’s not your stuff!

Stuffed with plenty from mother nature you watched

Watches scattered in rocks and metal about your garden,

But never sought to assemble any, never used your stuff.

 

So while you hid and counted the talents in hand

Handymen handled theirs, building all that we see around.

Round the centuries Africa did, then Asia, then Europe, then…

Then Jesus’s talent parable’s paradox suddenly stands.

 

So while Africa whines about the stuff being stolen

The real loss is the exiled minds who’d fathom new ideas,

Ideally within their home. But there the hero is non grata

Grating his life away amidst corruption and opportunities stolen.

 

(c) Nyonglema

 

A lot of talk of how Africa’s rich for its resources, landscapes…blah blah! No! what Africa has is people. People abused for being honest, abused for seeking change. But people capable of great things, but pushed into egocentricity by the  artificial adversity created by the people appointed to get them out of adversity.

Africa’s quite huge, but this is the commonest trait. Our leaders spoil themselves on their people, and education suffers, then research suffers. The major cost of finished goods is the R&D we don’t do due to stolen (not embezzled) funds. Lots of wasted opportunities.

Africa’s time will come when Africa’s people’s time will come…when they shall be heard. When Africa stops looking for the fault everywhere and really introspects in a deep SWOT exercise. When leaders actually start to serve.

 

 

sadness

Downhill #despair #darknessIt

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It all goes downhill from here.
At home, I’m not the man I paint
On the wall of my dreams. I’m not he.
My kids see me, but I see a faint
Depiction of myself, riddled with fleas
I see a demon with horns in their saint
Advising, holding, downhill to hell.

It all goes downhill from here
When even at work your effect is faint
And your figures are wrong, targets wrong
And failure’s the only thing you acquaint
As the reports are filed and you’re wrong wrong.
Where did you go wrong in all that you meant
To achieve as you go downhill to hell?

It all goes downhill from where
Suicide lurks in the scripts on the page,
Taunts you with methods, means to fix this.
Gives you the manual to soothe and assuage,
In detailed depictions with diagrams and digits,
To stop decay and just leave it all without rage
Down down down down downhill to hell.

It all goes downhill from here.
Even the staff is broken, staring with rage
As you disgust in the reek of your failure.
The promises filled the meter, but didn’t meet the gauge
And your futile attempts to fix are lures
To aggravate the stench and meet Murphy’s adage:
“It will go downhill downhill to hell.”

 

What’s left? What’s left? What’s left?
Nothing. Nothing. Downhill downhill …to hell.

 

But it need not go downhill from here.
Your finger’s on the trigger of solace, or so you think.
There’s a Saviour in true panoramic review
Of the situation. He resets the stroboscope on your blinks
So you can see the brightness now out of view.
It’s never easy when the dishes seem to overfill the sink
But it always goes down down and away from hell.

For it only seem to go downhill from here
Because pain injects despair and shortsightedness within
And Hope’s disguised as sci-fi anime.
But if you look deeper, that veil will wear out very thin
And within God whispers each step of the way:
“It’ll be OK. Let me take you off the sand for a spin”
And your “Yes” will take you up up and away to well.

(c) Nyonglema

joy

His first poem #NatureIsSpeaking @conservationorg

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The little icons play games on the phone screen,
As my little monster muses playing Subway Surfers,
His new drug, my new bane.
Well we parents are keen
To teach him how to live through all life offers
In words, hugs and a cane,

If necessary. I grab the phone like to grab his attention
Fleeting from object to object like bees in a meadow.
But really I did,
I grabbed his attention,
Turned it to the page opening up poetic knowledge’s window
In words unhid,

Yet unknown to me yet. Simple words he must recite
To mum and dad, and Mr Grumpy tearing through age three
Happy to have the phone
Not even turning right
To see the first performance of the object of sibling rivalry
And true friendship shown.

“If all the seas…“, I interrupt the poet rudely
Mouth hanging on the words, longing to utter and make
His parents all proud
Of his bright memory,
“Bow, say your name, then go” I say to the second take
Then he does, opens his mouth

“If all the seas were one sea…” gesticulating as words
Swam out his mouth, climbed the trees, building a massive
One, next to a massive sea.
Waves wrapped round words
Flowing, leaves fluttering on branches with bird nests give
The Axe a legacy

Even more vain. That Axe wielded by that one great Man
Whose only great feat was to chop down the great Tree
And have it fall dying,
Gasping and cursing man,
Gasping and drowning in a Splish Splash which brings glee
To the words flying

Out my boy’s happy countenance splash-washed by accomplishment.
We clap, but those words have left me wondering
As I oft do
Little things made big events,
Why would the great man not wield greatness to support underlings,
But hack on wood

Innocent wood minding its business by the sea, giving you and me
Oxygen, protecting us. That great Tree, now a log in the Great Sea.
Oh what tragedy
Quite Shakespeary
To spear the listener’s heart by killing the hero through his adversary:
Great Man sometimes scary.

My hero hops on me: “Dad it’s your turn”, and I obey
Bow, say my name. Wrap up my congratulations in kind words
Telling him how great
He did just convey
The poet’s message. He’s happy, I’m still secretly thinking his words
Great Man axed Tree Great.

(c) Nyonglema