Tag Archives: Cameroon

What could have been?

What if the presidents cared? 

They said victory was imminent. 
With evil intent, with barrel on fatigue, 
Beads on mud-caked scentent string, 
Leaves so scared they're now silent, 
Trees hearing the slaughter of a pig, 
While life goes on in the battle ring. 

Few years back there was a mountain
Where silicon budded genius software jigs.
Yet eyes were closed on everything. 
Where were those billions you're now bent
Over backwards to send over leagues 
To warring factions wearing hope thin? 

Yeah! What if the presidents cared? 

My people die for lack of wisdom. 
Life is nothing but an excuse to loot. 
Life is nothing but dirt to be trampled
Upon when upside down is the kingdom,
Wishing to have a neck under a boot
As a solution to pain,  Wishing that ample

Resources can paint the soil crimson. 
Did you care when they dropped out? 
Did you bear those same veins on your temple
When hunger ravaged the mother's bossom? 
Where were the millions to soothe
And bring hope and make nimble? 

How many books did you garrison? 
How many teachers did you arm? 
How many laboratories have  you loaded
With new tech to break them out the prison? 
For cultures have marched out of harm 
By focusing on growth not the goading.

So the victory still seems imminent, 
With evil intent, with barrel on fatigue
The kids out of school, the schools on fire, 
Leaves so scared, they all went silent, 
Trees hearing the slaughters on the hills,
While you fuel the hateful mire. 

(c) nyonglema

Kumba, then more.

Nimbus clouds in the horizon cause me to panic. 
Growing up in the heart of the tropics 
Where storms would rush in and push down crops, 
Screaming at our windows, banging with water, 
Asking me to open and taste Noah's flood, 
What comes after nimbus seems familiar to me. 

The temperature drops, as the wind rises, 
And the sky goes from the blue that smiles
On glistening leaves on grassy hills singing hope
To a grey gloom gathering pain to dump on us. 
Expectant I rush to close the windows, 
Take in the corn, the egusi, the clothes: 
What can I do about imminent bad weather? 

Nimbus clouds in the horizon caused me to panic. 
Growing up in the heart of the trouble, 
Where storms would rush in and burn down crops, 
Screaming at our windows, banging with boots, 
Asking me to open and taste my own blood, 
What comes after greed seems familiar to me. 

When peacemakers were sent to jail
To keep illegal funds alive for all, 
I saw bullets raining down on innocent
Lives seeking justice, but seeing just this:
Death, fires, death, destruction, death. 

What has been the darkest period in this? 
24/10/2020? Or the baby in the bubbling oil? 
Or the beheaded teacher, or the beheaded cop? 
Or the razed villages, or Ngarbuh, or 
Fake dialogue, or refusal to bring peace? 

Nimbus clouds in the horizon caused me to panic. 
Not anymore. 
The rain pours from my eyes seeing dreams 
Splattered in pools of blood on school floors. 
"We will protect them!" Nobody did. 
The teachers, the parents are incriminated
As grief seizes their hearts and constricts
To kill, and swallow. 
But who cares? 7 dead, many living 
Where the bullets can still take them out. 
We focus on the dead, forgetting the living 
Living in a hell that bullets can't end. 

(c) nyonglema

Eis requiem aeternam Dei : 
Victory, Jenifer, Princess, Telma, Rema, Syndi, ....

Vestigial

What got you here, won't get you there.
-Marshall Goldsmith
-------------------

Curls of hair tumbling down my chest, 
Falling from my neck, The black on my face
Say I'm ready for battles to mate. 

Each strand whispers to the other: 
"I'll protect you from the strikes", 
As they expect a foe, similar to me, 
To punch, bite and scratch. Protect the vitals: 
A cushion for blows to the head, 
Where the control tower plans the win strategy; 
Another for blows to the chest, 
Where energy is supplied to the weaponised sinews;
Another for blows to the groin, 
Where the prize of all this mayhem sits safely. 

The times have changed, though, and such fights, 
Are not the path to procreation. 
Neither are our socialist governments
A path to independence. Protecting us
From blows from foes, similar to us, 
They once curled, and some were cut out. 
They took the blows, that we may be
Free.

But, the times have changed and such fights 
Are not the path to civilisation. 
They seek to control the head, 
They seek to constrict the chest
They seek to conscript the groin. 
They give the blows, that we may be
Free to do their chores. 

In truth, the times have changed, 
And even if the policies look great
It's time to go bald. 

(c) nyonglema

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


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


Butterfly effect #ambazonia

Spare the son. 
But kill the father, kill the mother, kill the brother,
Kill the sister, kill the baby, and let the son get vengeful, and
Spare the son.

But kill the father, kill the mother, kill the brother,
Kill the brother, kill the dog, kill the baby and let that son get vengeful, and
Spare the hospital,

But burn the houses, burn the father, burn the mother,
Burn the cousin, burn the uncle, and let the healed get vengeful, and
Spare their buddy,

And let hell drop red upon the fuming ashes of fresh baked
Black human flesh in their wake, and let their buddy get vengeful and
Spare a cousin,

And....

(c) nyonglema

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

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

	

Because colonisation

The wheels on the bus fight round and round
Round the ground, stones around,
The wheels on the bus, have gone aground
In holes in the town.

The driver of the bus says move on back,
Far to the back, far to the back,
The driver of the bus stays in his shack
While sons and moms drown

The baby on the bus goes where'd I go?
Where's that hope? Where's that road?
The baby on the bus thinks Paris stole those
While leaders put on a frown

The mummy on the bus goes France did this
France did this, In the 1960s
The mummy on the bus says France did this,
While leaders steal her gown.

The wheels on the bus have left the ground,
Go round and round, round and round,
The wheels on the bus go off road guards
And starts plunging down.

(c) nyonglema