The waves pull at the lugs of the wind-smiling boat
Where jokes are thrown, and hope of home stays afloat.
But beneath the wood, in dark damp despair
The souls piled in bodies in chains gasp for air.
Captured in fields of butterfly-filled chanting grass
Where children's smiles once lit love in these paths,
Now wishing death, escape, drowning, as the waves tossed
Their past away, carrying them to the land of the lost.
Finally off the cramped hell of human faeces and decay,
On a dais where bids are called, and theyget whisked away
To serve the farm. This was freedom from seaborne pain
Just to be enslaved, and cut and hurt once again.
Their brothers off to Arabia, or further to the same fate
Had warned of this predicament, and now they're in their state
Hoping for a day when a heart is changed and the impossible
Becomes blood on this continent to unhinge their shackles.
***********
What's freedom?
The shackles have fallen off the scars
That held back my breath.
Opportunity smiles the seduction of the 14th of February
And I say yes, reach out, looking to a future, looking
Beyond to joy, beyond death.
The eagle soars to survey and seek its prey, as I ride
Peacefully building a future where my kids will be eagles
To pray the prayers that freed my heart, to dream the dream
That Washington, Lincoln and Martin Luther King dream, and
Put the whip back into its sheath.
***********
But my brothers are still stuck.
I watch as I soar how the nest of worms appeals to them.
The chain is gone.
They seek a new master to shelter them from the
Predators of the world;
They call to this master to take their cross, and bear
It, and give them some cotton to feed their fears.
Melanin comes to the table.
He builds a bull of gold, and they bow.
"Oh Melanin, you brought us out of the slavery in Egypt
Out of the Slavery in Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait
Out of the bowels of the slave ships on the Atlantic,
You brought us out of slavery,
Now enslave us to your will.
Make us wholly thine. Where you command we will go"
So he did.
And beautifully decorated by their bull,
Now, their lives matter.
(c) nyonglema
Category: sadness
Suffering Agony, suffering, hurt, anguish
Sadness Depression, despair, hopelessness, gloom, glumness, sadness, unhappiness, grief, sorrow, woe, misery, melancholy
Disappointment (Dismay, disappointment, displeasure)
Shame (Guilt, shame, regret, remorse)
Neglect (Alienation, isolation, neglect, loneliness, rejection, homesickness, defeat, dejection, insecurity, embarrassment, humiliation, insult)
Sympathy (Pity, sympathy)
Categories
Enough #needVSwant
I've had enough of babies whining with beards, Like the umbilical hair under their noses were trunks To feel the ground for the hole in the chest thump. I need, I need, I need. That kneads folly into dough for a cake of hate Just because nobody had enough of cake...or of greed. I want to tell you the tale of how to tell apart The want of the brat to the needs of the heart. One word fellows, one word: ENOUGH. When the desire is infinitely insatiable, Then you're sure a want sits at the table. You can have enough love, Yet no number or size of glistening carbon Can adorn the beloved to satisfaction, And no white dress is beautiful enough. You can have enough hope, To go through the enemy's fray, but No number of weapons, nor manner Nor style is enough to guarantee victory your way. You can have enough food, But Twix, Snickers, Rafaelos, Mars, Fazer, Ragusa, Mambo, Rondo, Soya, can all be In infinite supply, eaten ad nauseam You can have enough water, But crates go down the toilet pipes And vodka drowns the neurons, and Amarula bottles are best when see-through. Indeed, as you can see it clearly appear, Needs enough, wants feed eternal greed: And since ingratitude blinds the boundaries of all, When the desire is infinitely insatiable, Then you're sure a "want" sits at the table. (c) nyonglema
Categories
The Joneses
The in-crowd is where the ornaments Dangle and glisten like snow-clad trees Only It's not snow-clad in 35°C humidity with dust Clinging on the squinting bike rider's eyes, As I arrive my destination and see the neighbours Boasting with their engines, and wheels. I'll get mine some day. Judas borrowed life for a day to make Something, Something's what I need now. Brand new car. I'll sell a soul for that. Mine? Yours? Lend me yours, or part of your chores. No not the chores, but what the bank sees. I'll pay you back just after this Louis V, This Choos by Jimmy, and after I have my GL 550. Yes I'll pay you...believe that! I'm just trying to stay ahead of the pack, Where I've always been at the back . (c) nyonglema
Categories
Agreed #not
1961 it was agreed....not
1972 it was agreed....not
1984 was not agreed...but
1996 it was agreed....not
2008 was not agreed...but
2019 it will be agreed...but
The problem falls flat on its face and dies in indifference
When the math problem is set all wrong: what + what = 552?
The commissions are the sub-plots of a Disney movie
Where we know the hero gets the girl, the bad guy goes boo-hoo
There's a guy for comic relief, and everybody is a virtuoso.
What + what, comes with degrees of freedom
That you will not have when you start with the solution.
The minds of people bubble around the room,
Vain pain; Cain would be proud of what the Maestro said:
"I wanted to dialog, but you didn't come
I even gave you everything, yet you want this to burn?
Well I've tried it all, boss! Artillery, its your turn (again).
(c) nyonglema
Categories
Where is Ambazonia?
Where the grass grows in zig-zags, and the trees
Planted in rows, lift their weight to offer to God.
Where the pavements long for walking, and the
Buildings ache to breathe, choked in silence.
Where the hearts beat to the rhythm of barrel drums,
And the ears listen for smoke, blood, and laughter
Where the buildings pick up circular pieces to hide
Their Dalmatian-themed painting of despair and calibres
Where brother kills brother for dialog to be stifled;
Where words are stabbed with the bayonet and hope gets rifled.
Where once great minds spoke English, planned futures,
And debated all the various features of said futures.
Where once you lived, and smiled, and laughed to care,
But now duck and shiver, bleeding and gasping for air.
(c) nyonglema
Categories
You are racist
I still remember when being called "Racist"
Meant the end for anybody...You'd break in fits
Like " ...Gabadadadja...me? Racist???! Nooooo way!"
But when the word gets wrapped in political cloak
And swung around to avoid clarifying what one spoke
Then we have a reaaaaal problem, a biiiiiiig problem.
If you criticise a black person, then you're absolutely racist
And if you think black people can excel with only bases
Their brains, brawn and determination....it's like "whaaaaat?"
Noooooo, the past was a one-sided bloody calculated joke
On this poor folk, they will never get up with broke spokes!
They can't pedal out of shit creek, we need a loooong rope
They're Princess Toadstool with a white supremacist Bowser,
Waiting for Mario (the white not-supremacist brother)
Who believes she is equal to him, but must saaaaaave her
Like he couldn't ask her help, because being equally capable as him
But of course incapable of healing from the tears of a past so grim ,
She needs help, and couldn't contribute even ooooooooooooone bit.
I still remember when being called "Racist"
Meant the end for anybody...You'd break in fits
Like " ...Gabadadadja...me? Racist???! Nooooo way!"
But today, some fools have made it okay, and real racism hides out,
And no, history and facts show it's not in today's White House,
It's those creating minority victims by whining more than the bereaved.
(c) nyonglema
Categories
They steal our resources #DonQuixote
What stories were you told as a kid? Bedtime stories?
The wall whispers to me "You'll be nothing!
It's been rigged, see, the Earth is being pulled off
To show what lies beneath, and "They"
Want a crater beneath that."
"They" sounds like a strange name for anybody.
I hear "They" colonised African countries ,
Then "They" took all the resources,
Then "They" kept Africa under 1 dollar.
"They" have power.
While "We" pilfer the poor's taxes,
Build roads in an Oculus Rift, "We"
Mass-murder those who think different,
Take off those brains so all stop thinking,
Take off the teachers, the doctors,
Lest one takes a needle to stitch one back together.
"They" tell us what to do, and not wanting our welfare
Give "We" loans, and aid, and technology, and more
Well "They" want what's in our soil,
And "We" sell it to them.
Only you can't complain when you sell something can you?
Like Mugabe seizing lands traded for weapons or more
Or Africans asking the return of their wares' descendants,
Or at least some reparation, for the low price got on
Their brothers: some sort of bonus for good performance?
So you get to be paid double, and get back what you sold?
When I hear that wall whispering, I think of the poem
Dad told me to recite: "Mr Nobody" written by nobody.
I guess it's easier to swing your sword at virtual windmills
Than at yourself when you are the source of all the trouble
And "We" still pilfer everything we own,
Thinking what we own are rocks beneath the Earth,
While the children are either buried in those rocks,
Or their education forgotten till all actually become rocks.
(c) nyonglema
Categories
My country
Is made of strangers, living next to strangers.
Not with them.
Indifference is king, and the king is indifferent.
Tears have taken Oxygen's place in our atmosphere,
And we breathe them in, and exhale stale
Bravura to match King Arthur.
Only, in my country, hearing aids are radios,
And the television is Braille.
The tales fail miserably to push us to excel
As we look round, and our senses are tricked that
That tears are oxygen, and pain is a toy,
Blood is water, and water is abundant.
So our indifference remains king,
And the king isn't different.
(c) nyonglema
Categories
The dog ate the baby #Cameroon
Daddy hears the baby cry, but he's on his phone
Flipboard's louder than Crowder, and Facebook,
Oh, faces booked with tags look good to mum
The tears scatter across the molecules of the room,
But the care resonates with nothing.
But the dog, it usually plays with the baby,
Licks its pretty plump face, and jumps around.
Daddy thinks this could work, this could
Be the dam to the distracting noise of need.
Off you go doggy, off your chain, be dad and mum
To the ball of pain confused in its crib.
And off it went, off its chain, past dad and mum,
No Flipboard article or Facebook stream could
Deter it from its goal. For you see, it couldn't hear
the baby's cry from dad's and mum's absence:
The grumbling of its stomach bacteria was louder,
Maybe the smell of a wounded infant had reached
Their empty abode? Maybe this was their chance?
Maybe they could shut this best friend's will,
And make everything silent again?
Daddy hears the baby cry, but he's on his phone
Flipboard's louder than Crowder, and Facebook,
Oh, faces booked with tags look good to mum
The blood scatters across the molecules of the room,
But the care resonates with nothing.
(c) nyonglema
Categories
Lies #facts
What tales are you telling your thoughts today?
Walking to face your Facebook feed elated,
Post pictures of you in Adonis' heyday,
And thumbs up fast to keep reality sedated
Motivational merchants pick them to hawk wares
And tell the youth of paths that lead to heaven
Only the trials you bear beset like grizzly bears
When you close your eyes to walk to heaven.
As if ever anything came from being chained down
They offer hope as: "Be yourself", "Keep your booth"
You fight with Science, seek solace on tainted ground
While soaking pillows in salient prayers with solid truth.
(c) nyonglema
