Happy Easter to all my readers. We celebrate the greatest miracle of our existence, a symbol of hope as we witness one of the greatest tragedies of our generation. Pick up your heart, somebody needs it now, and also tomorrow...hope never dies. Rise from the squalor of the promise of death. Your wrongs hold you down like ladders fallen To the ground, broken, crying. The stone off your back rolls to the ground; Your shoulder speaks out-of-breath to your brain, And mixed with stress, the message is amplified. Let it roll to the ground, this is a new day. "Mother, behold, I make all things new". Mother torn trying to grip the wind on its Way to the mountains. How do you hold the wind? How do you hold fear? How much pain can one mortal vessel hold In drips of blood on stone, and gasps for Air on wood standing in stone? All things are new. Behold, the rainbow Shoots an arrow of renewal past the sunlit Perfumed clouds. It's all so beautiful that I forget the nails, the thorns. The rungs of This ladder lead to a new height. Rise from the parlor, and celebrate far away From family and friends. The electrons will Bring your elation all the way: It's resurrection time. Do this today; tomorrow we'll all be back to our Day to day. (c) nyonglema
Counting
They were not perfect squares, you know, those hard plastic Sticks of myriad colours that between my teeth like grit Sent weird signals of unevenness to my infant brain. If you take one green, then blue, red, then green again, Addition turns into 4 unicorns you can right with an equal sign. They aren't perfectly sinusoidal, those hard to bear curves On my screen, with lab coat, glasses, and eagerness to serve Me the death toll...like I should pay for a Wuhan virus. I love when up it goes, peaks, and down comes the sinus Like sunset announcing a new dawn or some equal sign. Some say stop counting the dead, for dread needs a father. So as I toss and turn, afraid the virus gets anymore fodder, I count my blessings, like the song taught me and my Siblings to do when you'd rather shiver, melt and die. Naming the inanimate heals they said, you'll be fine. So I'm counting oxygen molecules for free floating around, I'm counting a bed shared, the hugs and smiles, sound From little children goofing around, arguing about nothing. I'm counting parents, siblings, forgetting squabbles frothing, For life's a dainty petal dancing on sun-bathed silver lines Of air, scintillating in a million diamonds of green leaves Whistling a new tune of spring, dancing with the puffs above. The birds flap their garments of rainbow gliding on sheaves Out of the sky to brighten a smile I bear like finding love In powder and smoke. Darkness is where these blessings don't shine. (c) nyonglema
Coal #hope
Do not be discouraged. Don't lose your heart as everything seems to fall apart. A chick will emerge from the shell; always does. What do you see when the rough fire eats at wood, Softly sintering what was splintered? It's weird that pain brings togetherness Where handshakes were fake, and escape Was the constant. Now we crave to touch, We crave so much as the mask falls off To reveal the despair on the decaying Banana on the medic's lips. Last touch Gone. What I see is pain, but not like Cain's on Abel. I see the pain of a pierced side, or thorns Crowning the start of a battle for souls. I see the pressure of nails dodging wrist veins, But getting some, missing the bone, hanging on. I see years of preparation, patiently waiting For that moment: the filth of coal felt like Victory to the Virus smiling. The crown of the Start of the battle, rattled to the ground. Pressure, battle, the victor won without a sound. I see Sunday morning, Peter's out of breath Chasing John, chasing Mary earlier in the morn. I see a cloth there, bare, where coal had dared To start tears down my cheeks with biers. See, The wood destroyed slowly became the coal of pain, but What I see is not coal on worldometer's charts; I see diamonds form, Love's pressure on the Sacred Heart. (c) nyonglema
Face #covid19
Itches are like flies, carrying pestilence From ranch to branch, restlessly destructive. Where do they come from? Nobody nose! The ice of their land went dark when sunlight Left them nomads on the human body. My fingers have a fancy for them, my hands Dart to dance to their fickle rhythm. Van Gogh possesses the evil paint, and my fingers Like dry brush upon easel, screech out The Scream: Nobody ears it, nobody ceases. In that moment Death plots with the 19th crown to walk into me. My lungs want to heave But my face takes its leave. (c) nyonglema
Corona
And to crown it all we're all going to die! Or not. Despair is the flare from the barrel Next to the six-foot deep hole holding my stare: I can't climb out of CNN reporting in quarrel After quarrel that the air is filled with ire Not fire. They crawl up hands, to faces And dig into alveoli where life lies waiting To exhale through foetid mucus, a James Whale scare As the doctors bounce of beds defibrillating In vain or with success, but all in phases. No I chose hope. New phrases like social And distance breathe oxygen into more men Than the global promise of living without care! Oxymoron is the new hope for this ill omen! Greet-distance, Meet-noone, Work-home, travel-local. Hands-clean, touch-no face, calm-panic. But how not to panic in the face of a pandemic? The old, and vulnerable are main victim to evil's fair, But all carry the burden even in transparent tunic Taking some under for failing their civic duty. (c) nyonglema Stay safe. We can beat this. Wash hands, follow the hygiene and other instructions. By minimising the spread, we make more healthcare available to the more vulnerable. Don't panic, God's got us, and we got this.
No End #stopwar #ambazonia
In a conflict, the more sensible person should call for a negotiation, whoever that person is. Guns only call more guns. Where the sunlight gives a dying kiss to the watery ripples Of orange despair, my mind wanders like a lost soul. Souls get trampled under dusty boots on the drying Bahama grass, bent over and trying to recoil when The foot leaves it; it has lots to say but its lips are sealed: Children played here under hopeful stars yesterday, While their crease-browed parents argued about the Next stop in their journey to nowhere. The neighbours Looked at their Cicam cloth on the floor in jealousy; Theirs was bare soil, and little food for their brood. Children sprayed bullets at soldiers yesterday While their wide eyed friends laid in red cells, Staring into the distance, avoiding the sight of Brother hacking brother. The macabre sacrifice of Cain, The macabre machination of Nagato Pain unleashing Upon the calm Harmattan smoke-laden wind. My mind wanders where hope and despair clash with rage. Everybody's right in the painting. All that's left, Are corpses, explosions, revenge, decapitations, and a Government that threatens extermination of vermin For foiling their plans of total control and greed Makes you only vermin to be eradicated, cost what may Come what may! Vermin is vermin even in a cradle. (c) nyonglema
Woman
Why did you forsake the Roman empire? The Egyptian Empire? The Ottoman Empire? The French Empire...every single Empire! You got comfortable and forgot your role: To point the sword away from human ire And build towers to the highest spire! The words become banal, and the world Becomes masculine debauchery now hurled On the walls of the castles, battles unfurl And you get the grass treatment when bold Warriors wield gashes into history's burl And curb progress: all speak "ber ber ber" You got comfortable, you who heroes check, You who feed us from embryo to adult wreck, And soothe, and build. You are she who make The human race, and decide which way it goes When you set your eyes upon your role. But heck. It gets boring pointing the head as the neck. When did you forget your strength to chase Hammering out resolve to each case As would men? Why down the staircase? Oh, while you aim out of your cross-hairs Remember that every civilization's fate Equals the height of value its women encase. (c) nyonglema
Can’t stop, won’t stop #ngarbuh #fongum #more
Who cares? The tears dry up into bitter red salt crystals On the petals fallen to this ball of water and rocks, muddied In lush vegetation trampled by boots, slippers, silent cymbals. They clang, but the ears float far away, like the soul halo In the backlit fumes of fresh foray against foe and friend, For revenge is mellow so that metal and more can billow. But who hears? The blue bird chirps its pain in arrows And hearts, and graphic designers design gore for that Yet the glass stays cold despite blood, char, and ash it shows. It stank to them who stole the pictures to horrid memory, But not to me. No phone can relay those chemicals to me Or the emotions that come with walking on war territory So I smile, and swipe left. Denial is the media's vial, Filled with self-loathing poison, the ministers love it too. More bullets, more fire, and less genocidal survival. (c) nyonglema
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
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
waghni 