Lily fragrance dances about my nose like lasses in a mall,
I soak it all in: bees and butterflies want nectar like I muesli.
Flying about like happy tweets, the birds colour the sky with cheer and fluff
Enjoying the blue sky, like I the breeze; did You make all this just for me?
Nyonglema
Category Archives: joy
5 – 10 – 15 #WorldTeachersDay #5thOctober2015
5, 10 and 15 are the hours my body chooses to remember:
Waking up abruptly to the hateful chorus of mechanical clocks
To face the day at 5am with short thermometer fluids.
Then at 10am the buffaloes stampede to the stream, the slide,
A swing overworked while a throng stand and wait to turn,
Unable to see 10h30am where the fun all ends. The balls are working too,
Until all have to wear sad faces at the classroom door.
15h00 to familiar aromas, tastes, visuals, and instead of homework,
I’m studying stage 2 of Super Mario Bros with A-B-C, then X-Y, then L-R
Hoping dad and mum are late enough that I finally make it over
The mathematical complexity of leaping over this gorge!
However, between the 5, 10 and 15 is the treasure my brain will remember.
Glue, match sticks and cardboard were Picasso’s iceberg tip, like me
Then letters like weird glyphs found meaning in a word ballet
On the pages, chalkboards, white on black wisdom screeching in the heat
And my eyes were still sleepy from late night Nintendo adventures.
The smiley faces became ticks, the ticks became grades, the grades
Became appraisals, and each aimed to keep me from straying
And make that other kid proud that he stayed furthest ahead of the pack.
The pressurized air bounces around the room sans-echo:
Years of research presented to my ignorant brain in seconds
And over and over again, I finally get it, and scorn those blokes
Of years past who couldn’t figure out that the apple WILL fall down.
Do it like this, not like this! Manners, planning, praying:
I soaked them all up in floating waves around my ears near my peers,
Till soon I was so filled, I was letting them out to other sponges.
Sadly, none of that ever fixed the chicken scratch I call handwriting!
5, 10 and 15 those three numbers which represent all you were to me:
End of nursery, end of primary, end of secondary and start university!
At each junction you stood, waiting to direct me, and whip…mean correct me.
Thank you the teachers who’ve made me who I’ve become today,
Who shaped the words I’ve chosen to write
And the way I say the jokes which make the souls of friends light.
You’re the garden of the world, for all that is dark and all that is right,
The under-looked power changing the world with red pen, white chalk and black board.
(c) Nyonglema
R.I.P. Mum…you’re the teacher I miss the most, till we meet again!
What would you do if it were you? #refugees #syria #RCA #somalia #eritrea
There are guns shouting fear through your window shutters,
A bomb blast breaks your neighbour’s home and you’re running down the street.
The kids don’t get it. They don’t get it: why is there blood in the gutters?
Why are hands without bodies, heads with gaping mouths, missing severed feet?
The screaming gets louder, and it’s on your spouse’s and your shoulders
To save them from a threat, unarmed, untrained and the closest
You’d come to death were those Expendables movies in your hard disk folders.
The banks are shut, the bus system is shut, you never even had a Toyota starlet.
What would you do if it were you? If you’re playing metal gear solid in your own town?
Only this time, you have one life, no continue nor save, and to your untrained self are tagged
More untrained and even naive souls counting on you’re strength in this showdown.
What would you do if the only option was either death by exhaustion or having your head bagged?
(c) Nyonglema
My Weight Loss Routine Part 2/2 #freeWeightLoss #health
“You’re too sedentary” I recall my parent’s warning
As I swam in bites and kilobytes on a monitor
Forgetting the world, forgetting to exercise, eating junk
And battering my circadian cycle to a pulp.
And I made up my mind: I’ll get the Best of Both Worlds
(Not the K&J album…but my passion and my health)
Through a plan that’ll fix the issue at hand
And shut the mouth of that mocking sphygmomano.
So my 3 point plan was :
1. Eating less overall by halving breakfast and supper all through and lunch until my body stops groaning when I’m not stuffing more than I need into my mouth
2. Bye bye snacks and irregular meals. I shall have no more than breakfast, lunch and supper and damn you for taking me to that “soya” spot during off-meal hours!
3. A couple jumps before, while (if safe) and after I shower when the sun defeats darkness and when darkness gets its revenge. Then a diligent stretching session before I sleep.
It’s 2 years now and I’ve been failing then trying my scheme again,
And I’ve beat the scale, sphygmo and the jeers:
I’ve been at 83kg now for quite a while,
And I didn’t have to pay anybody a cent to pack this smile
(c) Nyonglema
My Weight Loss Routine Part 1/2 #busyPeople #freeWeightLoss #health
Oh! I still remember the blow the scale dealt
As my feet finally feared less enough to step on
And my eyes lost the fight, staring down
At the figures flashing, then fixed against the screen.
95kg?!! How…when…wait this isn’t working.
This isn’t happening! How could this happen?
“Wait”, I said as off unbelieving I reset the lie
But felt the shock as I to myself no more could lie.
The funny looks of mean bastards jeering,
The rejection felt in taxi seats, public places
The TV’s bashing of me, through photoshopped “perfection”
And the promise that this was all going to get worse!
Oh crap!
So here I am in a world new to me, unknown to me,
Wishing to step out of the discomfort I face.
I still love me, for all God gave mummy to give me
But the sphygmomano also dealt a worse blow:
As my heart flirted with pressure beyond what vessels could hold.
I had to make a plan.
(c) Nyonglema
The answer to Life #whyAmIHere #theBigQuestion
The beauty of being alive, to me it was belied,
Is to indulge in each minute knowing someday I’ll die!
This macabre thought walking with me through strife
And through joys made both seem shamefully alike.
The long face came a long way to mar
Each minute – that long face I pulled.
I’d curse and hurt, wishing for a better star
And miss each occasion to smile in a better style.
And if 50 was right about happiness and pain?
Then I think grandma’s passing is fully explained;
The tears poured on the grave to water the grain
Of happy memories saying “Would you were here again!”
And if Nas was right about life how you make it?
Then that thought’s had me wearing mine down to naked;
Chasing the wind surely never wrote Ecclesiasticus,
It was purpose pushed Sirach to inscribe “All’s vanity”.
Yes! Purpose, the diamond in the rough,
The needle in the hay, like finding on earth divine love:
All I learnt to seek like wading in a mangrove
Looking for gold. I have my sieve ready to go!
So why should I think death as time rolls,
And live death, even before my Holy Lord?
As I kneel down, conscious of my Purpose or God,
I’m thinking: “Why bother, when Your Will will be done?”
(c) Nyonglema
Existence #alive #lifeIsGood
A heave of my breast and the crawling in of air,
That stealthy walk of air on each piece of skin
As the wind blows, and I see beauty with this pair,
Tell me I exist, but does the manikin?
Rugged surfaces my fingers would play across,
And rustle the leaves lying lazy on the grass;
Maybe that’s the difference! And that I can feel loss
when a peer surpasses Time’s hourglass.
Surely the manikin knows nor pain nor joy,
And love is but letters on silken embroidery.
And that manikin can’t choose to hate corduroy,
And less choose to indulge in day time reverie,
And the fragrance of the flowers or Boss perfumes
Stealing a smile from my face at this instant.
Surely the manikin can’t enjoy the jolly tunes
Of the choir or the visual excitement of a playing infant?
(c) Nyonglema
Not today #Gore #Slavery #Wilberforce #Racism
A Homo negus sits in a sardine can,
With many more like him, squashed together,
All in fetters, with 10kg dissuasion strapped
To them. He’s bound on a journey he hardly can
Comprehend, nor knows he where this pain goes
Despite avoiding capture before, while watching departure of many a brother:
He watched them go and never return to their homely coves.
A Homo negus sits in a sardine can,
Smothered by the stench of piss and soulful dirges,
Singing of shark food, once valiant men, women, sons, daughters.
These actually died, but all are bound to death in some living land
Where they’re less than dogs, they’re told, and everything goes.
Survivors of the murderous voyage are tools to quell carnal urges.
They’re no longer shackled in twos, but living in groups on life’s borders:
Whipped, weeping, weak, but forced to do exactly as they’re told.
A Homo negus gets pulled out of the sardine can,
Shackled in twos, they shuffle towards the waiting room
(A claustrophobe’s hell) each pressed against the other’s 3-month filth.
Through the narrow door the red sea screams with the blood of many a human
Who challenged this madness or got sick in these conditions.
He waits for the order to board the floating tomb.
But, he doesn’t know that today this trade will be killed;
That he shall go back home to heal, and heal a nation.
(c) Nyonglema
After meals #kidsEnergy #Energiser
When energy has been injected into the atom,
The electrons start jumping from level to level.
In the case of kids, that’s table to table,
And round the whole space, making mum
Wail inside with the noise, while dad cringes
Each time they miss a dangerous fall by inches.
(c) Nyonglema
Sacrifice #Ebola #nurse #doctor #Liberia #SierraLeone
Dedicated to the soldiers in the Ebola fight: all Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea nurses and doctors, and international volunteers. Below some names of soldiers alive or dead who’ve helped our humanity in no particular order:
Pauline Cafferkey, Abraham Borbor, Samuel Brisbane, Victor Willoughby, Diana Sarteh, Teresa Romero Ramos
__________________________________
The alarm growls “Wake up!” in song into her sleeping ears
As slowly she opens brown blood-shot eyes
To swipe upwards at the pulley menu on the buzzing screen
To dismiss the noise and jump out of warmth into ice
Cold morning brings to her bones with draughty jeers.
Off into the cold she drags her tired body.
Off to the hospital where she spends long days and nights,
Fighting death in guerrilla battles – some she’d win
Some would come back as knife-sharp nightmares and fright-
As she cared for the mildly sick and critically sick bodies.
“Today is special though” her fear-stricken heart surmises
As she walks in and switches apparel and goes working.
Today’s different: the heat in the astronaut gear;
The multiple scrubs; the care to take everywhere you’re walking;
The hope…no….prayer that your bit suffices to grow survivors;
Living the working day through a visor: Different.
This deadly virus vying for plague of the millennium
By bringing entire families to the pier of the Styx,
Fills the ward where she must administer care and calm delirium,
While calming her pulse enough that she would be efficient.
Can they hear her heart beat? Can they smell her fear?
Just a drop from the wrong spot on her exposed skin
And she’d join them here without the white armour,
Swinging on the balance of life from a kinked shoe string,
Unable to bring the love that brought her here.
Yes. She knows it might be over at any time:
Her ardour, her love, her care, her own piece
To the fight against the miniscule giant threat.
But she takes up her arms to fight the disease,
A soldier of love giving new hope to the living and the dying.
(c) Nyonglema
waghni 