joy

Turtle passion #poetry

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The slow passion that ebbs and flows
From the mixing of words into some story,
Some hope from some other joyful or not story,
Unexpectedly grips the silence and grows
The words on the pages into hyperbolic worlds.

Then you’re hooked to seeing pages come to life
At the corner of a library aisle, where books
Watch you drink in the words. Those moments are
Magic to your soul as like through butter with knife
You wage epic battles with fantasies unknown.

Then the pages that your consciousness builds
Slowly unfold in Roman script on some page
As you strive to share that passion that ebbs and flows
From the mixing of your words. You’re now part of the guild
Of wordsmiths building hope one metaphor at a go.

(c) Nyonglema

anger

Power #africa #cameroon #noViolence

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Is it the dark tunnel through which the bullet
Travels to draw blood and replace breath
With the reek of death?

Is it the bland plunder in schools of the culled kids
For their colour or deep rage born
From the system’s scorn?

Is it the grab-n-lockup foolishness you’re pulling
When any born cause is a menace for you:
Jail or the Reaper’s costume?

Is it the canisters seeking kids’ gullets
With gaseous odours of real painful
Teary eyes, pitiful?

Where’s your power? In the uniform or weapon?
In the blood on the floor, or the one on your hands?
In the lives of the sons and daughters not to see tomorrow?

Where’s your power? I would have thought of more
In food for the poor, sick souls’ solace, in infrastructure!

Where’s your power? I guess we’ll never know.

(c) Nyonglema

anger

Destroying a country

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Ever seen termites work a mighty tree down to a heap of saw dust and firewood? Out in Babadjou in Cameroon, I saw a couple of these, and it made me consider what happens when our politicians pilfer to fuel their expensive lifestyles….little things can break great things.

 

First, add a male and female termite.

Bullets and teargas canisters waltz on innocent citizens
And smoke and mud mingle macabre muffled paintings.
They are chanting “Freedom” to an invisible steel prison.

Then give them a tree to infest.

Angry the mob drenches the streets with angry chants
Division wrought by the Puppet Master now works its magic
The brother is the enemy, the cause is forgotten, just angry rants.

Then leave them to grow in might.

You bemoan the infection to  your brother so different but similar in pain,
But, they keep pushing you to see the messages not on the wall with cryptic
Words and thoughts from their hearts making them look better than your disdain.

Building hoardes of this pest.

The words they utter offer no solace, but promises on sandy beaches where
The crab harvests the turtle’s eggs, and multiplies to infest the beach
Where hope was born still, barren, hopeless, but unaware

Riding the bark, then diving inside.

That the votes that put them there were in good will, with faith and hope as motivators
While the campaign swishes were but fantasy to match the populace’s wishes
To have political saviours, but now clad in the armor of the captivator

Working the bottom to the crest.

Infernal  infestation by inhumane inhabitants instigating abominations,
Abrogating harbours, abolishing honour, abridging hope, love, faith,
And leading desperate souls to enlightenment in self-termination.

There: a wooden giant just died.

(c) Nyonglema

joy

INTJ

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I feel your pain, can you feel mine?
The tattoos of life on your skin weave deadly mines
Within my being, for I can feel every grain
Of ink jetted to form joys and pain,
But that soil is shallow and all go off too suddenly within.

No I don’t resent you, do you me?
Your invitation boomerangs through trees
And my fears are the curves that drive it back
To sever your wish to walk within my abyss, dark
Lonely, painted vividly but in shades of grey and black.

Parasitic larvae are sipping me away
And growing on the leaves of my happy days.
Though no beauty shall come of feeding your pain to this monster
My fear forces this only fodder  into my shelter
Where hope died with care and nothing is better.

I feel your pain, can you feel mine?
Please do, for I can’t carry either, yours or mine.
Rainbows and flowers are just physics and biology
But pain grows to towers when I delve into your psychology
A little too easily: homicide from unbridled empathy.

(c) Nyonglema

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

 

anger

Another type of love #politics

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They said they loved us.
They said what had hovelled us this long
Would melt in the ideas they’d put to physical form, fixing the forms, printing new laws to make more feasible new morns where dreams grow, where the beams of oppression become beaming faces facing greatness in all facets of a society phasing out the old, and phrasing in the new, and enacting, and without feigning bringing hope and growth anew.

They said we’d love it.
They said the picture would be bling
To the point of our dreams’ Everests, that they’ll brave the storms of whether to go with the hot or the cold, with the dry or with mould, or the new or the old, or whatever internal or from other holds could chip at our wishes, that they’d protect us, shield us in a new shell more robust than the previous, and keep our homes, culture, and aspirations safe anew.

They said they loved us.
The said we’d love it,
And this they said in words we’d listen to and miss the meaning shrouded like a zombie’s soul within idioms and colourful slogans painting derelict walls of our city gloom, and filling the air of family time with promises of Utopia today, Utopia tomorrow after Hell yesterday, and trickling out as if not premeditated and making us believe in Canterbury tales anew.

But now they hate us,
And hey! We don’t love it,
This stagnation like mosquito larvae infested ponds leaking putrefaction to our already putrefied systems, with corruption and stealing…no… embezzling being the order of the day, and deleting competition or young petitions to fix the predicament with silent words halted by violent wars. This stagnation so old we’ve lived that it even starts to feel like new.

Oh how they hate us
And hate that we don’t love it,
For to lord it over us longer they need us to be coy, kowtow, and shut up like Guantanamo torture secrets or that moment in a gory movie you are caught up between darkness and the bloodied blade and to speak your mind would Soweto you and your family in one instant, and depending on the riches you had, it will be featured, or not, on the news.

Oh how they hate us,
And how we wish we could change this
Situation with feeble will to exchange our lives with joy in the future generations as others before bothered to, feeble strength we are deluded to have whereas Gandhi taught us all by shooting up the opposition with words and Christ-like pain affliction and acceptance.
(c) Nyonglema

love

Sing for mum #ripNzie #Anne-Marie

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When you cross the Pearly Gates, will you sing for mum?

I recall those tender dew watered Yaoundé morns

When the cassette spun your voice out the Kenwood speakers,

Lulling my childhood ears to plains which white lilies adorn

And bees buzz the harmony to your vocals and the horns.

 

I recall especially as each new year died to birth another one

That mum would pop the cassette as metronome to the countdown.

And we would be eagerly watching the TV, eyes darting from clock

To TV, from clock to TV, holding on to the present’s each sound,

Conscious these moments shall roam hence only in Memory’s town.

 

The lyrics were beyond my mono-lingual grasp, but for “Liberté”

Where I felt freedom of my spirit soaring, and then “Bonne année”

Which nobody needed to explain. This is all I can take with me round

Memory’s town. But mum sure knew all the songs, and would sing away

As I watched in marvel as her lips waved a magical musical day

 

So Ma’am Nzie, this only I ask of you as you walk the path she took:

Let those words I didn’t understand but which my childhood shook

Pour once again beyond Peter, with love messages from me, three and more

And please, let her… please… harmonize once more every single hook

As once she did, but now in praise to my Maker as He lovingly looks.

 

(c) Nyonglema

 

 

 

 

 

joy

Your breath #refugee #humanCrisis

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Thanks to @CrisisHuman for pointing out that “refugee” is just a bad way to disguise human beings displaced from their homes due to other human beings. We live at a time where more and more humans are losing everybody and everything, and have only the choice to leave to live. To all humans losing all, never lose hope….and to all of us, when will our greed stop?

 

All I wish is to feel your breath in the morning.

The morning bombs thundered our bonds
In shards of glass, piles of dirt and torn mounds
Of once friends, while we planned quickly to abscond
To anywhere Death wasn’t the only sound in the towns.

The blood-soaked dew stained our silent feet
Wading through the floating rattle from shots
Breaking the harmony of our adrenaline chorus of heartbeats
As we walked to the unknown only fearing to be caught.

The camp’s sunrise with promise showed over the horizon
And we got welcomed to our new life with silence
And hurting souls bundled in teary memories and sad songs
But respite too, and hope, nostalgia, food and tents

But all I wish is to feel your breath in the morning.

To wake and look at your eyes bouncing about in a dream
Of our new home, smiling that we made it out of mayhem
To peace. To see your chest heave, to watch the sweat beams
Glide along the tracks of mosquito bites on your bare skin

To feel the warmth you exude as if 35° Celsius
Wasn’t enough, while your hair moves in rhythm
With your sleepy breath, then you turn, oblivious
To all the homeless with us from various schisms.

And breathe heavily as if a sigh of deserved relief,
With the smile of our would-have-been 5 daughter,
Sleeping my pain away in this instant so brief
But healing wounds which would beat our dead doctor

To feel your breath every morning, my only wish
To feel alive again, after my numerous deaths.

Yes, just to feel your breath in the morning
To know I haven’t lost you too this morning.

(c) Nyonglema

Words from today to stir a new tomorrow from yesterday

Nnjika

Count your blessings

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Hit the mark more often

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