Category Archives: joy

Cheerfulness (Amusement, bliss, cheerfulness, gaiety, glee, jolliness, joviality, joy, delight, enjoyment, gladness, happiness, jubilation, elation, satisfaction, ecstasy, euphoria)

Zest (Enthusiasm, zeal, zest, excitement, thrill, exhilaration)

Contentment (Contentment, pleasure)

Pride (Pride, triumph)

Optimism (Eagerness, hope, optimism)

Enthrallment (Enthrallment, rapture)

Relief (Relief)

Crowd-sourced morality

Come, Eve, come
Tell us what the bite taught you,
What Muse did it point to
As a source of hope in the garden?

Shall this Muse guide us right
As answers evade us while questions assail
Us like trying to tease truth out with a flail?
Shall we live lives not requiring pardon?

Hey, Adam, hello
What wisdom did you gain in that instant
When you tasted freedom from commandment,
Wisdom to take away this yoke?

My peers all wear the uniform:
You only live once so make the “most” of it
By spending it all to appease pleasure’s heat
Submitting to what the body needs

My peers all seek a breed of freedom
Where you do whatever can and calls to be done
Unstopped by anyone, untethered from bonds
Till pleasure’s heat’s quelled

For carpe diem before it’s dark
Nothing comes after, so heal your temporal urges
And let the foolish waste what could be splurged
On fever dreams from Tiberius’s era

We from you have learnt
To fall upon our will to chart our way
Yet the murders, the exile make me sway
Away from such false faith

Oh, Adam, Eve, while you mended,
Eternal unions now end on the slab of heartless courts
And spiral into lost children and broken hearts
That fight each ex-spouse to the death

Tell us how you turned back
Once banished from the garden, how you bore Seth
And how reformed you taught him with every breath
To trust the Master’s manual, and not lying snakes.

Show us again how to love,
How to live fully alive with a renewed purpose
How to be as happy as Dave Ramsey would propose,
But even more, as faith should impose

(c) nyonglema


Renewed

Dark clouds and shadows in the evening sky
Where you expected golden sun
It’s dark again with tonnes of tears to cry

Panic beats your heart, but you’re numb inside
Where warmth had lived before:
Curled arms, elbows pressed to your side

What bent head tear-filled pain hits your eyes?
What can closed eyes see?
Misery piling upon failed tries and woe’s sighs.

What can closed eyes see, if they turn upward
To where many have seen lots
And thereafter moved steadily forward?

Look to the wind blowing a crack through the gloom
And a single ray wriggle through
Letting a smile drawn in light appear in your room

The cold window warms up and takes up new hues
Your arms loose, eyes healing,
The warmth fills you inside as you take up a new you

For darkness was vanquished, and this you knew
But didn’t know-know so
End of day brings in light to you, and with faith renewed

You ponder what you had been told: “He’s with you!”
Not just for part of the pain
But through it all, till tears are dried and the smile is new

Like words floating through space to deeply embrace you
The clouds float away from darkness
And the pounding stops, the flowing tears are growing few

For nothing is so great as to prevail over His tender hug
And His promises are true
Nothing so heavy that following His lead you cannot lug

(c) nyonglema

Class is in session

You thought the learning was over
Chalkboard blowing chalk into the air
Teacher scratching discomfort into your ear
Chalkboard saying things you won’t hear

Class is in session, but the lesson’s eerie
Who brought horror into a classroom story?
Forgive how many times?
Tolerate how many crimes?
The toilet seat meets the dumped socks
In the quagmire of unadulterated ire
Where soccer games and that sucker’s booze
Meet to sink like rugged rocks,
Sink to spark disgust, a horrid fire
Where nobody wins, everything gets loose.

Class is in session, but the lesson’s creepy
Who brought gore into a “love”-filled story?
Keep listening for how long?
Say sorry when I’m not wrong?
The know-it-all yet mostly right attitude
Boils with the demands for attention
And contradicts those moments of little ruse
When the obvious vanishes in in-exactitude:
Hyperboles, irrational outbursts of emotion
Where nobody wins: everybody will lose

The School of Love is in session
“I do” is the entrance exam in grand pomp
Who brought horror into a classroom story?
Or gore into a “love”-filled fairy tale glory?
A cross! A cross! Who drew a cross on the chalkboard
Complete with dying man, scarred with hearts
Crowned in despicable desiccated dead plants?
It’s gross! Yeah, gross! This isn’t the promised reward
That movie with hearts had at the best parts,
When we watched and built all our horizon’s plans!

The chalkboard says He designed it
And tells us how to take it to make it
But why? why is the manual nailed with blood
To Roman torture perfected? Shall we bleed
To get the certificate at the end of this road?
“I do”, the ring, a dress, the suit… a casket?
Buffet, the ball, bouquet, …. a wreath?
Die in order to love?
Die in order to live?


You thought the learning was over
But you just entered the school at Golgotha,
Chalkboard blowing chalk into the air
Laden with a mother’s tears of joy
Teacher scratching discomfort into your ear
As creation is renewed in flesh joined at the altar
Chalkboard saying things you won’t hear
Unless you listen: class is in session. “This is how
You love one another”

(c) nyonglema



The Battle for Witnesses

The war cries deafen in thunderous dust: 
Churning Earth with mortar,
Bullets pelleting dead soldiers,
Muzzle flashes barely visible through the crust
On their viziers. War scars
Will form years after marching orders
For those who must live with memories of the lost.

Now, expletives at pain inflicted in the battle.
They tumble, we crumble,
Bone fractures, cursed mumbles.
Blood’s a minor distraction in this macabre hustle.
Eyes half open, mouth blown off,
The bodies in cursive in troughs:
Friends will mourn friends in memory of this tussle.

OR
thank God for the life of the fallen —
Who, rosary in hand, went forward
With the proficiency of the Bard,
Wrote, even with axe threatening, for our calling
Into the New deadly Way,
That brings life for aye,
That speaks truth to spear, arrow, or cauldron.

The great news of Life abundantly given.
Nero, Napoleon… all failed!
The martyrs live even impaled
For victory in human view isn’t so in Heaven.

(c) nyonglema

Going up

Higher he soars, the one who calls us to more
Eyes stare, the clouds do pirouettes
A silhouette against the advancing sky
Some cry distraught at it happening again:
What's to gain if the Master disappears?

Memories of the first mass
Bread broken, wine shared
Hope poured out, on sandy stone
On a hill gasping with bare bones
Break oh break, hard heart of mine
As our Lord leaves to another sublime clime.

Oh wake, oh wake hard heart of mine
The promises form out of the clay 
Of the fabric of time before me
Hope covers my shivering body 
In quotes of all that He uncovered
From our knowledge new discovered
What wisdom we missed, Isaiah!
For now, a silhouette against the advancing sky
He goes before us as advocate: 

He lives.

(c) nyonglema

Never Stop

Lord, You never stop. 
You pour out blessings without measure
To soothe my heart and heal hope's rasure

The blessings just flow
From icy Everest to shimmering sea,
With fireflies lighting the shore with glee

My ways You straighten 
Undeserved, even when all seems lost
You're flicker to sun to defeat the frost

Lord You never stop, 
For great are Your ways to those who love
To those who trust, and put none above.

Lord You never stop, 
You seek the single, you search the void
Ninety nine wait till one hears Your voice

Lord You never stop, 
You call sinners to the feast beyond
Where mercy offered makes guilt abscond

Lord please never stop, 
My only hope, my only treasure
My life and love, Your Word my pleasure.

(c) nyonglema

Kid Poems on Space #JPL

S.P.A.C.E
Space is a 
Perfect place, 
Almost peaceful. 
Coming and going days
Everyday I enjoy on earth.  

(c) Balla  (10yrs old)

Moon 

The moon is a wonderful place
Oh just look at its wonderful face. 
It shines so bright
Oh just its light 
Will guide my path a while. 

(c) Meuna (8yrs old)

Like me
Jupiter and Mars are planets 
Because of rocks. I drew girls
On Jupiter and Mars dancing
Ballet like me. 

(c) Penna (7yrs old)

Walk on Water

The lessons of the gears that power the universe
Pour forth in ambitious drips into a bowl
To build an ocean from simple watery smears. 

From Egypt slavery one was chosen to show the signs, 
And staff and cloak he led the scowling whole, 
Across the river; he parted it to stay dry from brine. 

Before reward for courage to preach against the abhorrent,
The prophet chanced upon the Jordan's deadly bowl, 
And with his student, parted it for dread of its current. 

But when the promise long foretold at last came to pass
God Himself, didn't take a staff, or cloak, 
But let the water be, and showed His friends His glory. 

(c) nyonglema

Joy

Speak again wind, blow through the virtual hair of my head. 
I hear my children's voices in the yard,
I hear them gone on the stairs. It's hard,
But I can't touch them anymore than a jump to the ceiling.
They became beard-faced altered versions of me bustling
Through the challenges of life, baritone on the phone
Ordering me around, but basically never around.

I hear their children's voices in the yard,
I hear them going up the stairs. It's hard
To believe yesterday's a shadow I throw over dinner when
We meet to walk back to the plaid sheets I tugged over them:
Baby smiles, baby cries, dancing around to close baby eyes.
All those I have bottled inside, like chutney on a shelf.

(c) nyonglema

Falling #RegimeEnd

The reign is falling on the pain at the window, 
The "Hail" didn't come as royalty crawled
Out of its chair, senile and broken, like a widow's
Golden anniversary in black. Heroes sprawled
In the canoe, going to nowhere in the torrent.

The reign is falling on the pane of my window,
As I watch time unfold the end as scrolls
From the Dead See, anachronistic and cold,
Yet reel. Nobody foresaw the end of the troll
That brought so much destruction on the roots.

The rain is falling on the pain at the widow's:
Chaos spells letters of clouds over the silver lining
It's a bright loud zigzag that dares to show
And scare the crowds. There's hope for less pining
When the seed dies and a new reign renews.

(c) nyonglema