The flies hover round, humming a dinner song.
The smell is marvelous, and taste builds a throng.
Rigor mortis holds their feast in place like pebbles
Laid round hand-decorated ceramic on tables:
Once, he moved around and guided with orders,
To sway his country good and keep its borders.
Then, HE decided. Not anymore, no, no more.
"Fact" is dead and "I heard " took over this shore.
And suddenly judging a presumptuous bribe
Is wiser than doing so for an actual bribe diatribe
(c) nyonglema
Category Archives: fear
If only…
If only I had done more, been more, prayed more!
The sand and the mud are all mixed up
And the sun fish lie dead on the shore.
I wonder how they gasped for air, while the
Waves beat the sand, sending ripples of
Soothing sound through the air they couldn't breathe.
The plastics of the tourists are crab obstacle courses,
Once filled with juice, once desired
Now cast aside. Filth all around, and death follows.
If only I had done more, been more, prayed more!
The sand once a sheet of beige now is polka-dotted.
The dye finisher botched the mix, and the chaos
Created is just plain filth, and death follows.
I watch the Church tearing itself apart from inside
Like an infiltrated Iron-Man suit; from the inside.
(c) nyonglema
New Classes (by Balla 9yr old)
Whenever I go to a new class,
At the door I feel a chill on my back
I get so scared
I just stare
But it's okay
to be afraid.
Everyone is nervous sometimes
But they become brave sometimes.
(c) balla
Because colonisation
The wheels on the bus fight round and round
Round the ground, stones around,
The wheels on the bus, have gone aground
In holes in the town.
The driver of the bus says move on back,
Far to the back, far to the back,
The driver of the bus stays in his shack
While sons and moms drown
The baby on the bus goes where'd I go?
Where's that hope? Where's that road?
The baby on the bus thinks Paris stole those
While leaders put on a frown
The mummy on the bus goes France did this
France did this, In the 1960s
The mummy on the bus says France did this,
While leaders steal her gown.
The wheels on the bus have left the ground,
Go round and round, round and round,
The wheels on the bus go off road guards
And starts plunging down.
(c) nyonglema
To the Modern Parent’s kids
Dear all of you living in the 21st debauchery
Of feel good madness, zombies gawking at shiny blocks
Of plastic, which spew tonnes of nothing to capture
Your minds.
I’m sorry that your freedom is freedom to do the same
As everybody else. The advertisement industry
Finally got your flag, and you’re raising your arms
To hail symbols you don’t understand.
You’re Chinese mercenaries in a Trojan war,
African slaves running the slave market.
I’m sorry that your parents gave up.
Literally gave you up to the television, internet
And everything else that added sand to their hour glasses.
There’s hope for you, but till then, I’ll pray for your freedom,
And that parents will actually look after the root of every kingdom
(c)nyonglema
Free thought #politicalcorrect #PC
Politically I correct in white blobs the lines
Of the words I wrote for his eyes;
Well, for their ears in a voice so
Powerful it could start wars or more.
“You can’t say this.” The cat purrs
Nonchalant, rubbing against my foot.
It’s hungry, but I can’t say that.
I must say it needs food as I part
With part of my chicken wings.
“You can’t say that.” It claws away,
The poor creature I saved.
It was a sunny hour on a tired day
With sweat camped on my face,
And work slowly eating up my brain.
I saw it homeless…hmmm, no…street camping
With one eye gouged, scraggly fur
And dark…hmmm…coloured blotches.
Compassion picket it up and cleaned it home.
“This just won’t work!” I asked myself
Who’d want it blind…hmmm…of poor sight?
Tended is caked wounds…hmmm…skin lesions
And brushed dirt off its fur. The speech
Was looking whiter and whiter, though.
But it just chewed away like on the fist day,
When delicious milk in my silver bowl slithered
And constricted grave hunger. And I kept
Blobbing out: “weak”, “pain”, “man”, “black”
“Woman”, “white”, “poor”, “rich”, “tears”, “God”.
(c) nyonglema
History, unloaded
And they gouged its eyes, and ripped out its ears
That no future generations could hear of all the pain
Caused by pseudo-science or thoughts born in fears.
When you think you know what you do not know,
And leap off the ledge into the burning desert snow
You don’t realise how terrible is your crazy show.
But your kids will, and they’ll start screaming
How silly it was not to consider the heat, and that’s
Where we are today, we know more about being
Human. We know that skin colour is just a DNA
Variation, that language varies like wind directions
And that cigarettes will mess up your later days.
But we don’t know if skin colour will stop causing pain
Nor if language modifies the way we live or think
Nor that weed will mess up your later brain.
But I do know that by wiping the mistakes, hiding
Cracks in our foundation, we’re building a shaky future
Where the politically correct act or denying
History was nasty, by renaming, breaking, burning
What once was celebrated for valour, just to fit our mould
Creates ignorant youth who’ll start the same wheels turning.
(c) nyonglema
Ego #divorce
What are we teaching our kids? Life is becoming so demanding, that we don’t tolerate each other. Life has become so artificial, that we have forgotten that we are just apes trying to figure out how to make each day better.
As more and more couples break, I cry for humanity whose young are learning that this is normal, and our society which teaches to give up once they going gets tough, as if relationships were a bottle of vodka at the corner store: if you don’t like this one, you can have that one. Let’s walk the pain of life and relish it…that’s the only solution to abuse.
“Be strong, my child, never give up!”
The surgeon is pulling my soul out with kind words,
No anaesthasia, just kind swords hacking at me,
Taking away myself in lumps of tumour.
It had metastasised and eaten the bond away.
The bond that made me. The bond that made me me.
“You must be strong in the face of adversity”
Said he as instead of treating his humour
He became weak in the adversity of his university love.
I remember the smiles and kisses they told;
Stories of times that now seem wrinkled and old
Where they held hands, and wore bands
And raised lands, and made me.
“Never give up, never ever!”
Said he who was giving up on us
Giving up on me, because he couldn’t stand
To sacrifice anymore.
Because she couldn’t stand to grace his side no more,
No submission from either.
My tumour had birth a pride so big
It ate the bond, the bond, the bond that made me me.
“Learn to tolerate tough situations, they make you strong”
And two wrongs, only make me write
Pain in the blood of my cornea, calling to the corners
Of their hearts where love is boxed in, caged in,
Fighting larger-than-life versions of themselves
And losing, like my soul’s pain loosened to wander,
Yet I should bend only to my will, and tolerate
To be as successful as they’ve been along the way.
Ego.
Tolerate?
Ego.
Never give up?
Ego.
Fix me up, fix you up, fix us up?
Ego?
Like “No” from the depth of a grave,
I killed my family in Latin.
(c) nyonglema
Positive hate #right/wrong
I hate you !
But only for the good reasons, so
It’s positive, right?
Remember when your leaves casted a shade
Over my growth, took the drops of sunlight
And stunted me amongst the undergrowth?
You kept the air for yourself, and took the water
On the shelf, and used it to seize our light.
Well we’ve got a fix here:
We’re both plants, right?
Your greed is killing our breed! You’ll stop.
Then we’ll need to ensure that we’re all even.
So, till I reach your height
You must stop growing.
I’ll take your light, the water off the shelf,
Stunt you till you’re undergrowth with every drop of sunlight.
But it’s all positive right?
(c) nyonglema
Shooting your foot #Cameroon
I told him exactly the same as I’m telling you now:
The gun you point at your people is a gun you point
At your pupil, or at your pupils, or through a peephole
Into a future with LED lights lining trees capturing
Sunlight, and lightning, a future enlightened
By the lightness of the smiles of generations to come
A peephole looking back at the nozzle of a barrel.
I knew he wouldn’t listen, for without the ash splattered
Against my mane wisdom cannot be part of my game.
All their epithelia are the same, waiting for epitaphs
Epilogue to tales where epic lies dominate photographs
Of instants of truth, painful truth….like the peephole
And the barrel, and they’ve seen it all, the seed to the tree
The stream to the river, the whole range of our history
I knew he wouldn’t listen, nor read, nor taste of my sweat,
But maybe my blood, so I painted myself like the others
Vehement in thoughts dancing entrapped in cages of fear
Where the lines on the 60 leaves plane-leaved exercise book
Jump off the page where you jotted your deepest hopes for
Change, change into pain, twist your arms and pull your fingers
Around them. They turn into metal, and you’re looking out,
Wishing for a desk, a pen, but not even a toilet for your rear’s near.
But I know He will listen. He doesn’t read these words
He feels them. He sees my prayer that we’d stop crowding Peter’s
Waiting room: the logistics department had to order new magazines,
About cars, about medicine about emptying magazines on citizens,
To accommodate the throng waiting for their lift to the final
Destination: Heaven or Hell. The water dispenser needs refilling,
This place wasn’t designed for such affluence…well there was Noah,
Or better still his time, but there was enough notice for facilities
To be put in place. Not this time…but I know He listens.
So, they told him exactly as I tell you now:
When words can save the souls of many,
Lay Guns to rest by Pride’s old body
And dare to save another’s soul today
For face to face mountains all decay.
(c) nyonglema
waghni 