Category Archives: 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)

sadness

Wrong place #paris #kolofata

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Nine burnt souls float over roasted mayhem where souls are tugging their way out of resilient bodies.

All they remember is a bright light; the deafening din rushed towards their maimed bodies like Sir Hewett, and you know what they say about not hearing the bang…

They will no longer bathe in the bitter burnt flesh fragrance heavy in the smoke blundering through the debris.

They will not agonise with the grunts and moans coming from where wood and flesh, metal and flesh, and earth and flesh dance the Black Swan with darker shades of hell and oozing red.

But, they will nevermore hum a lullaby to the drowsy eyes of toddler dreams, nor bless the lips of a lover with a touch of their lips.

Their seat shall slice onions into the hearts of those sharing meals at the dinner table, and the past tense will follow every mention of the scathing memories of how happy they made this one or that one.

The media will mention their names for all to hear….or maybe not. This didn’t happen in Paris; who cares if 2 prepubescent girls blow up a refugee camp in Kolofata?

(c) Nyonglema
 

sadness

Dusting the pictures #immigrant #Libya

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I’m looking at my wall decorated with frames of different sizes, colours,
Most of eyes smiling back at me from years I have long forgotten.
The dust jealous sits upon them scattering the rays of sun that slowly pours
Into the living room to warm the day at noon and bathe my cotton.

This can’t be: my cloth takes them down one by one to clean.
I remember this day in the village amongst tall corn crops and loud silence
When we tilled the soil and planted corn, groundnuts , beans
And mum snapped away at you, me in the hoes and farm tools’ violence.

I remember this day in the village amongst tall corn crops and loud silence
We held hands and shared smiles and selfies, laughs and hugs. Then
Was a hell of a time. No TVs nearby to fill our joyous days with violence
Just you, me, holding hands while the tweets swung the leaves above them.

Look how fragile the kids look into your face staring at me,
The camera captured every curve of your face like sharp knives
Pointed at the salt trickling now down my cheeks. I just wish I could be
Wiping the dust off this with you, while we walk through our lives.

This one is a clipping from the news on that day..I won’t forget that day,
Black and white text to tell me that I’ll never see your face again.
The sea shall keep you safe, with our kids…why did you run away?
I wipe off the dust near “…boat capsizes over the Mediterranean… ”

(c) Nyonglema

sadness

We only wear Boss, Hugo that is #racism #colour

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Adapted from 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Negro

How to judge a man? I got some inspiration below….hint smell is important:

The mention that mentally the leather fragrance wearer is inferior to the wood fragrance wearer, may be taken as generally true of that whole race: “the leather fragrance wearing children were sharp, intelligent and full of vivacity, but on approaching the adult period a gradual change set in. The intellect seemed to become clouded, animation giving place to a sort of lethargy, briskness yielding to indolence. We must necessarily suppose that the development of the leather fragrance wearer and woody ones proceeds on different lines. While with the latter the volume of the brain grows with the expansion of the brainpan, in the former the growth of the brain is on the contrary arrested by the premature closing of the cranial sutures and lateral pressure of the frontal bone.This explanation is reasonable and even probable as a contributing cause; but evidence is lacking on the subject and the arrest or even deterioration in mental development is no doubt very largely due to the fact that after puberty sexual matters take the first place in the leather fragrance wearer’s life and thoughts. At the same time his environment has not been such as would tend to produce in him the restless energy which has led to the progress of the wood fragrance wearer; and the easy conditions of tropical life and the fertility of the soil have reduced the struggle for existence to a minimum. But though the mental inferiority of the leather fragrance wearing to the wood fragrance wearing or floral fragrance wearing races is a fact, it has often been exaggerated; the leather fragrance wearer is largely the creature of his environment, and it is not fair to judge of his mental capacity by tests taken directly from the environment of the wood fragrance wearer, as for instance tests in mental arithmetic; skill in reckoning is necessary to the wood fragrance wearing race, and it has cultivated this faculty; but it is not necessary to the leather fragrance wearers.

And I believe this because if you smell different, you’re definitely inferior. I pick the woodiness of Hugo Boss. YOU ARE INFERIOR!

Oh, and also, I’m going to be judging you because your skin doesn’t reflect the same light wavelengths as mine…YOU ARE INFERIOR!

Then I’ll make up some excuses about your anatomy based on your fragrance and light waves…but bottom line is you’re INFERIOR! Deal with it.

(c) Nyonglema

PS: Colour ain’t a thing! Black, white, yellow, brown, green…doesn’t matter. I’m brown, you’re whatever you are…but we’re all humans trying to make sense of this big ball we’re on and what lies beyond. Let’s walk together. There are more reasons to think we’re similar, than to start limiting ourselves with colours, scents, and lame measurements.

 

sadness

The ivory factory #poaching @ConservationOrg

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Ivory chase

Horns quickly bring wealth
Where putrid pellets of sand
Lie with drought and death.

Ivory staged

Desert death row meal
Now watched through a visor
Going for the kill.

Ivory made

Smoke and unseen flash
Rustle leaves and burst through skin:
Beast and money crash

Ivory cased

Litter carcasses,
Vultures humming eulogies
While horns live with man

(c) Nyonglema

sadness

Einsamkeit #loneliness

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It’s funny how “einsamkeit” (German for loneliness)  sounds like “ensemble” (French for together), although both are so opposite one to the other…This is my painting of the most murderous mood a human can ever die into:

 

 

Frozen synapses:

Dosing awake, collapses

Into nothingness.

(c) Nyonglema

 

sadness

Gabonese truth #Gabon

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In earnest beyond the Pings and Bongs of firearms
And call to live your life on the ground with raised arms
I see one dying people
Taking shots from lying people
And, they, dear friends lose again amidst the hearse’s palms.

(c) Nyonglema

 

sadness

Lost #Alzheimers

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The fish wiggle in the noise of tweeting birds blocked out by the polluted water
Trickling away in a little creek, under the bridge of my childhood quarter.
I’m laughing, but I know not why, then reach, catch one, reach further
Get a pair in a container, of which substance or colour I can’t recount here.
My friends on my side are mere shadows saying silence that made me chuckle
And we’d take these creatures to our homes to put in spare juice bottles
And feed them, watch them constrained to swim in a narrow aquarium
And I guess I was glad, but must have cried when it was time for requiem.

The trees I climbed with my siblings are still green, and the leaves rustled
As we went up to grab fruit with more shadows. And the wind bustled
By on its journey, bringing farm scents to my nose, the good and bad jostled
There, and I don’t remember which dominated the other in that tussle
But only that they were there, as we climbed and laughed away care
Talking of our stories, football on the tarmac with a whole throng of peers
And I know for a fact we went to the funeral of one of them at some point,
Or their parent…If you ask me which it was exactly, I don’t know it.

I recall as we got older and dared to talk to the girls, shivering like rain-beaten reeds,
And walking together to watch movies straight from Hollywood’s steeds
And the advent of cable, and a bunch of stories of which I can but catch seeds:
My first cigarette, a horror movie, some novel dad bought, buying school needs,
The day I fell into the bush picking up a ball and gashed my shin bleeding,
Or the machete accident, or the shell on the house wall, mum crying at me leaving,
My best friend leaving, projects of flying cars, some intricate software,
Recording my first song, a piano, some notes, a chord, some staves, a snare.

Each meeting with one of these seeds from the shadow that lived before now,
Where I waded in gathering souvenirs which got broken with each new now
Is like a stab to Caesar’s neck, leaving me sad inside, beaten, for they feel I disavow
Our history, the bond…despite my craving to remember each low and each wow,
To recall when we were where with what and why, and how we made it through,
And my cats I fed and petted, and came back to hear had turned to evening food
And the rats we tortured, and the birds captured…all these I wish I still knew
The beautiful and horrible memories lost from my childhood and adulthood.

(c) Nyonglema

sadness

Confused #FarhadAkale

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RIP Farhad Ebanje Akale (March 15, 1985 – October 5, 2013)

Monopoly is quite a peculiar board.
It has always fascinated me from the days we
Heard the rain drops play on the roofs on Bamenda mornings,
But played on, played on…I won some, you won some,
Our siblings won some. The air filled with a peculiar
Smell of joy which only the carefree spirit of youth
Brings.
I remember the whole Griffin collection
We dove into and made believe and had fun, diving
In and out of the books until the holidays were
Over in 1993, and we separated never to see again.

What got me thinking about you is a monopoly board, Farhad.
Got me wondering in the cold being I’ve become where
The fountain of youth in the memories we both had
Hides. Life has surely thrown it’s curved balls at you too,
But I was sure within me you’ll be ok. You always were cheerful.

When I typed “Farhad Akale”, I was expecting to scour through
Myriad faces on Linkedin and Facebook to find my old friend.
I wasn’t looking for an obituary page!
I didn’t want to see Slink performing a tribute to you.
I didn’t want to drown in the words of a father washing the
Lifeless bundle of memories from cradle to mischief
To a bullet hole.
To the bullet hole, I say, why did you take my friend?
I’m here teary eyed to the kid I left behind,
And for the adult I never got to meet.

This is not even a poem, I’m not even on technique. My hands
Which are usually still in the face of the most horrid gore
Are trembling. I’m stuck in a loop of pain at the stranger
You’ve become but what part of me you go with is considerable.
Those were the days we smiled roses and laughed daffodils
On lilac plains, dancing in the fragrance of a dozen
Sunflowers.

You probably forgot childhood too, but I hope the Griffin is proud of your
Life, and that you find peace beyond the coffin within which is your shroud.

By the way tomorrow is your birthday, so to all the ones I missed, these words
And prayers are for you till we are on the other side re-imagining our worlds.

(c) Nyonglema

sadness

Coffin #emptiness #memoryLoss #alzheimers

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Once I woke in a Bafoussam street which owned my brother’s flat,
Cold dusty straight path, with potholes, and the noise of city
Bustle, horning bikes, rolling cows going to grassy flats
To eat the meal of death-row. The cold sight I met from balcony
Of coffins, juxtaposed with coffins, round, weird, flat

Had me thinking about this final abode where nothing exists,
Lowered below eye level with nothing inside, prayed over
With nothing inside, but hopes hovering round, tears persist
As the memories ooze from the pulpit and eyes of lover,
Family friend, looking at nothing lying therein like insect in cyst,

Quietly non-existent, just an empty coffin in an empty coffin,
And I think about the empty coffin my mind feels like when I try
To reminisce of my teenage fade, where computer boffin
I attempted, and wormed through library books, with tears not cried
And failed at football, made my grades, but missed all often.

You see dad and mum were going through a tough one for long
And I guess this painting was not what I had ordered, so daily
I pushed the present to a part where this present would long
To find it, and rummage through intellectual pillage daily
But only find science and raps from Marshal Mathers songs.

A coffin. The voids of the pain were blinded in the blare
Of a hi-hat, bass drums and wordplay, while life zipped past
Me, leaving flowers and scars, bringing blessings in blitz glare
But which my eyes would see, inspect, understand then blast
Into a space where even long term memory feels like the recent past.

And here I look at wooden Me’s littering this lively street
Where hammers snare on nails and the bass of humming saws
Echo the memories I can’t get, the lost days I shall never meet
The friends to grace with awkward moments of hidden dropped jaws:
“Who are you again?” and a quizzical look from Sesame Street’s

Muppets. “Aaaah! Yeah, I remember now!”, I’d lie to their face
And sometimes I feel their psychic minds dissecting my tale,
And it digs another hole in the already empty space
Where the coffin’s emptiness fills every painful piece like ale
Or the rope that hastens the ebb of life’s painful pace.

Sometimes I wish I remembered the………………and
The ……………………………………….. but this
Coffin walking about doubts whether this instant
And the next would even be similar to ………………..
But………………………………………………
…all disappears and I’m left clawing away in a blank land.

(c) Nyonglema

sadness

Linux: Suicidal OS #ISupportJolla #linux #opensource

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Dear Linux and Afficionados,

You first flirted with my ideas in a school club as nonsense from a bunch of computer geeks punching the keyboard on a black screen reminiscent of my dad’s 3-and-half-inch floppy-booted laptop, without a mouse, without a gooey GUI floating about my face as in my modern Samsung laptop. At the time, you were Linux the other one, outside in the cold looking at Bill’s dream float in the minds of young and old, and it made sense to me: you were way too complex, despite my light fling with DOS.

Later I got to know your personality, and you were Red Hat or Mandrake or Ubuntu and frankly, it still made little sense: was this 3.1, 95, 97, Me, XP, Vista, or what were these names intended for? Wikipedia told me they were actually flavours, and not versions, and within each vanilla or hibiscus or chocolate flavour came various versions based on what else was tucked in within you. Linux. Linux. Distros, flavours, versions, and stable and long term versions within the versions….Linux: have you ever heard of “Divide and Conquer”?

When you look at your distros you see innovation, possibilities, custom-made OSes but all I see is egoistic innovation, wasted possibilities, and custom-made confusion. I see precious metals lying about like in the war-torn mine belt of central Africa, where the locals see disjointed Cobalt, Gold, Uranium, Diamonds, but the wiser put them together to drive the price up.

What do I dream of for Linux, the OS I’m growing to love? Yes LOVE. For the potential I see wasted, for the fact that hours of non-profit love and work went to make it what it is. I’m rooting for Linux as the mainstream OS. Why? I think we’re being taken for a ride by all the others, and Windows 8 was the final nudge to make up my mind to start experimenting with Ubuntu, realising that I could get stuck in the modern EI crazed world where beauty = functionality even when you just want a bloody OS which goes fast so you finish your work in time, not stitching up my threads into animations which slow me down when I have my 20 web pages open, 3 Excel instances analysing data into one Powerpoint presentation being fed by another 2 Powerpoint presentation, and collaborating with a colleague via Skype.

What do I dream of for Linux? Find a way to make Linux compete with the rest by putting your energy behind the scenes and ensuring that less effort is spent in forking as is done so often, but spooning all OSes together, no matter how different they are, to different front ends, to customisable backends. But fully functional and less buggy!

Why do I rant? I nearly saw Jolla die. Ubuntu went over the top on the phone and it went nowhere. Mozilla’s phone isn’t really it. Tizen is not yet ready. However, for each open source baby about to leave the womb of the community to shine in the world, and stop being what I perceived way back as geek toys, which dies, it’s a bit of Linux that dies.

What do I want? That you Thunderclap #ISupportJolla if you are down with Linux. This is the baby of the two “pure” Linux phones ever made by that once grand company Nokia. The Sailfish OS is the closest “pure” Linux has come to being mainstream. Ok Ok ok. Android is Linux. But that’s not the real deal here. I think Sailfish is safe and open, but can’t share all their secrets yet, because they’ll get beaten by the big boys (cf Apple’s latest battery pack “TOH”). To me pure Linux is about productivity (which doesn’t mean Uglifiability). You can build something truly productive and cute, and this is what Linux does. Not something cute then productive. It’s about priority. Pure Linux ensures you can do what you want to do as quickly as possible; Android has the most atrocious multitasking, sadly replicated in the rest.

What do I want? That you Thunderclap #ISupportJolla for you Linux guys have been suicidal for too long, holding on to your horses while the other horses on your team struggle…it’s time to push more Linux distros to the fore, whether you love Wayland or not, whether you love Mer or not. Hell, they forked whatever to get here, and you’ve forked whatever to get to where you are, like Unity, Gnome 3 etc. Just support these guys. They could screw us and Android the whole Sailfish OS in the future, or even Windows it, or even (whoa!) iOS it. Well, but by the time they get there, there’ll be another Maemo in the works, because I know you guys fork everything. Let the Kernel dominate then spread everywhere to compete against but still for itself.

Crazy thoughts from me…#ISupportJolla, please do.

Sincerely Yours,
(c) Nyonglema