Category Archives: fear

fear

MIDNIGHT CANDLES (2002) #halloween #ghost

Leave a comment

Eerie winds slithering over their breathing;
Flickering flames: little fireflies in the cold night.
Twinkling stars, no moon, five hearts beating,
Calling on the phantom that had inhabited his body;
Many bright dots on the slope flanking the apical church.

Mounds of earth lying by pounds of cement,
Crosses sticking out from each morbid rectangle,
Five brains wishing there was that sky crescent.
Five murmurs whispering the antique incantations.
In spite of the wind, the lurching little bright dots could not be botched.

Many frightened hearts beating, eyes observing the dark building.
What could five and candles be doing in the cemetery?
The dead are put to rest, and rest they should till the Lord’s wielding.
Five bodies ghastly illuminated by frail flickers,
Ten lips moving to disturb his rest.

Many cars honking below, noisy engines working;
Deep in their covers, many snoring unsuspecting;
The bats are squeaking, crickets screeching;
Nuptial croaks from the stream, that’s what some are hearing.
But some are eagerly watching,
In their eyes, the reflected bright specks are fluttering.
Five people are waiting in their hum for this appearing,
Five souls waiting to communicate with his ghost.

(c) Nyonglema

fear

Fading Smoke #collateralDamage #stopWar #peace #bombs

Leave a comment

I wave my blistered hand before my bleeding face,
Waving gunpowder smoke and blood fumes in the mist
To see the survivors, to see hope.
But all I see is crushed bones and leaking skulls;
All around the steaming tarmac lie lifeless lads,
Lost lives fill the air with more choking tears.
But we can’t cry now!
“Run! Run! Before they cast another bomb on us!”
I’m on my feet, staggering forward like an alcohol keg,
Surprised to be running alone to the porous camp shelter;
Oblivious to pain, oblivious to care, I stagger on.
Hoping to get my weapon and answer their fire.

It is then it dawns like a wooden blow on me:
I’m no soldier; they aren’t either!
Infant body parts entangled with women and men’s blood
Litter the town square, and I’m staring at the military shelter:
A wooden icecream stand with holes on the whole frame,
And blood , and burnt flesh reeking in the foetid smoke;
And… I break into tears.

(c) Nyonglema

fear

The other side of Freedom #theOtherView #EvilBegetsEvil

Leave a comment

They said they loved me.
Then, the metal beasts came, soaring over me
Heaping dust and blood on our city streets,
As their lethal load hit like rain sheets.

I watched their love puncture the city walls
And sever the sinews off the boy and his ball
Leaving the mother crying for her son, then his dad
Till her tears meant nothing in the wailing myriad.

I saw the hate build with each blood drop
Drawn from the soldiers and innocent. Drop
For drop, survivors intend revenge upon this love shown:
This false love which spurs only hate till we’re all gone.

(c) Nyonglema

This is a view from the other side of fanatism. Taking more weapons to the Middle East will only push more bereaved honest Muslims in despair to take up arms to avenge their lost ones: in that state where all is lost, the fanatics find fodder for their ideas, and turn these honest citizens into murderous terrorists. There has to be another way. A politician suggested diplomacy and negotiations. May another way be found, for bloodshed will only lead to more bloodshed. May the souls lost in the wars on both sides R.I.P.

fear

The Irony of the Red Smiling Cyclops #nuun #nassara #genocide #isis

Leave a comment

It appeared on the doorpost as a Cyclop’s smiley face
For some Cyclops WhatsApp icon, but red-themed application
Yes gruesome red, in contrast to the expectation
You would get from a smiley face, even for a Cyclops.
It quizzed my curiosity and I dug further on Google’s interface.

It appeared on the search page as the queen Isis,
Long told in Hieroglyphics, Cyrillic and Roman alphabet,
Patroness, mother, queen, blessings with love met,
But unlike these grim Arabic script in an ominous logo,
And tales of death, pain littered with deeper crises

It told of “nuun”, 14th letter of a blessed script
In which many beautiful and wise thoughts found life,
A letter which told of blessing and not of strife
Being in a position multiple of seven, a number blessed
By God Himself when he Earth and Heaven in 7 breaths whipped

It told of the Magen David, a shining star, which should be a good thing
Only that it brings memories of gaunt bodies piled in trucks
And human experimentation, and as history at our door knocks
And Isis or Isil opens to let in what we dread most
“Nuun” is stuck in my iris with pain and scary sting.

For I have seen the blank stare of heads painting in red drips the pickets
And Leonidas’ 300-style gore re-enacted in modern city streets
As heads are divorced from bodies and all around are scared heartbeats
For even bloodied child clothes cover head-less bodies,
As Christians are beheaded like one would roast crickets.

It brings back memories of my ancestors up in the Samba regions,
Fleeing the harsh choice given to them by the jihadists:
To adorn the village picket or join the cause of the Islamist,
Forced to create a third choice, which was to leave their homes,
Friends and family to pseudo-Islam or lurid lethal lesions.

Is it that time again for Iraqi Christians?
Shall the world once again watch the Red Indians’,Tutsis’, and Jews’
Story take gruesome form and hack through human sinews?
How many litres of innocent blood, and kilogrammes of hacked human flesh
Are needed to realise the vanity in the life of Homo sapiens?

(c) Nyonglema

fear

Evil Begets Evil #theChainofEvil #theChainofGood

2 Comments

“Evil begets Evil”

I read upon the derelict arch,

Engraved in the stone: a warning to all

Who to these ruins would march.

“Evil begets Evil”

 

“Evil begets Evil”

Even the welcome mat

Reeks of waste, not welcoming at all.

Just cracks with invading moss matte

The Evil regrets of Evil

 

Evil besets Good

When a family neSt/bed

Through greed and hate after inheritance

Deep to murder instincts is infested

Evil arrests Good.

 

“Good begets Good”

The cracked frame read

Lying in the rubble like a forgotten fossil

Covered with dust and shoe tread

“Good be-” *crack* “gets” *crack* “Good”

The words nobody heeded

Till Evil bore only more Evil.

 

(c) Nyonglema

fear

Para Bellum

Leave a comment

Arm deals and more arm deals, that’s all I see.

Calibres change, the type of artillery

Changes, the game players grey and go and

Are replaced by darker capillary

With greater thirst for bleeding enemy

And with more dangerous artillery.

 

Deadly toys in the hands of eager youth,

Intended for warding off intruders:

Scaring them with heaps of artillery

So that they would harder prepare soldiers

If they should covet and desire to loot.

In their minds they have peace in their brooders.

 

But to brood over unused firepower

While only playing with blanks on dummies

Kindles unquiet thirst only blood can quench

Kills empathy for sonless war mummies,

And in blasts of gun smoke the youth’s flower

Drowns its thirst in the thud of fall’n bodies.

 

(c) Nyonglema

fear

HOME (2007)

Leave a comment

Home’s laughter and joy, where good thoughts mature;
Home’s water for life, and without colour or odour;
Home makes eyes water, but beneath blesses each smile.
Not home the seat of vile yoke-wielders Satan couldn’t beguile.
Not home despair growing from the tree you didn’t help spawn.
What’s home when your peers relish as sadness does you a turn?
No! Not home if I can’t rest at night and wish the morrow.

Home’s children in the present hopeful and eyes turned to the future;
Home’s elders drawing the past to give the present’s pleasant contour;
Home’s youths building the future with the puerile and senile,
All hand in hand lifting Home higher in each while.
Not home hearts buckling under unfulfilled dreams, hearts that yearn!
What’s home if children’s present shames elders’ past, and in turn
Home’s youths’ future condemns their very life so hollow?

Home’s working for your bread and to your produce more manure;
Home’s doing what you crave and in your grave be happy manure.
Home’s scorn for the hedonists, respect for the agile.
Not home the heart-tearing feeling of drying the Nile!
Not home where your greatest achievements meet the urn!
What’s home when greater achievements are mere kindergarten turns?
No! Not home my teary eye sharing in my fellowmen’s sorrow!

Home’s being satisfied that all one needs is secure;
Home’s not wants achieved, but necessities from the store;
Home’s absence of frustration at getting blamed your job’s an empty vial
Because home didn’t offer the tools you needed, though they’re there all the while!
Not home when the doctor gets blamed that the propellers don’t turn;
What’s home when the shoe mender mends body burns?
No! Not home a place where squares fit circles in a mentality so shallow.

There was home in my heart as TV waves my growing heart would lure.
Homewards, I’d think, into prospects of rejoicing in a reality so pure;
Reality, home to opportunities, possibilities: me and my dreams down the aisle,
With home’s resources building a mighty Rome in the eyes of a little child.
That was home as my blood pumped and I awaited my turn
To give home all my feeble self could afford. All I could learn
As age called was broken dreams, and the pain of a morose morrow.

(c) Nyonglema Pisoh