Tag Archives: Christ

love

Myriam Batjoachim #motherofGod

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The Angel offered to seize it all:
    Your peaceful days gathering water
    Your anonymity doing God’s ways,
    Waiting for your spouse to take you
    In order to save an ungrateful people.

You said yes!

The governor forced you on a census, with
    Baby pressing your bladder,
    With back ache, spots on your face
    No room to calm Braxton Hicks
    Just you Joe and the animals
    And the grass the animals ate
    And when it was time to push,

You said yes!

The prophet embarassed you with your newborn,
    He promised you the grace you knew
    He promised you lots of pain new
    And you pictured the sword, your heart
    And figured greatness breeds pain
    And looked at Joe’s encouragement,

And said, well, yes!

And at Cana, where the harps hung on empty cups
    You turned to your baby boy
    All grown, all full of hope,
    And bade him do them a favour.
    Yes, you set it all up, for his
    First miracle, and the Lord

Said yes!

And throughout his ministry, he would taunt you with denial
    To teach love of neighbour beyond family
    But you were the first disciple,
    You rode his pain, you shared his joy
    And I can picture the conversations of
    Mother and son, advise shared, wisdom shared
    And through rain, sun, hail, gale, miracle,

You said yes!

And when his coronation came close on a donkey and palms
    You saw the blood that would end
    The journey of love; you saw the manger
    The temple, the sermons, the crowds,
    The miracles, the thorns, the cross,
    The blood that would end it all.

Yet, you said, yes!

And as John watched your tears reflect his blood, whence
    You couldn’t parch his raging thirst
    Nor re-nurse those childhood wounds
    Nor hug the pain out of infant tears
    Nor sing a lullaby to ease the sleep
    Nor rub his back to heal the pain,

Your tears said, yes!

And as they took the nails out his hands, as he lay on you,
    And love slithered to constrict your chest
    And the tears bubbled out to heal his death
    You sought to comprehend it all
    And prayed the roles were reversed,
    And God said, you’ve done well my child
    For the salvation of many, and again,

You said yes!

(c) nyonglema

love

Searching for Eggs #HappyEaster

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Happy Easter to all of you; Seek the Light as it pours into your hearts

Where can those chocolate eggs be?
Eggs beaten, made into omelettes.
They said you can’t make one without breaking eggs.
So God took a pan and broke a few…they sounded like bones:
The egg white as water, the yolk as heavy as blood.
Mine was, anyway, the promise of Adam.
I saw a curtain rip the Earth apart,
As a cross took God on a roller coaster ride
To a destination we all must go…but all fear to go:
Like wanting to go in a public toilet…but…
The yoke was heavy on humanity, and God broke it
He made us new, and I saw Mandela’s advice:
It went something like:
Aim not for your fears, but for your hopes.
So God bled tears on stone, and went for one hope:
That your soul (well our souls) would find light
Even in the deepest darkness!
He accepted the treacherous lips of death
And the deprecating thorns and cape that drew his blood.

He did it for you, that you may have new life with him
On the day He gave new life to Himself. Amazing right?
God died our days away with His pain, love, and light.
Those eggs look pretty that way….if any of this was about eggs anyway.

(c) nyonglema

joy

Alleluia #Easter #newBeginnings #spring

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Everyday is a new opportunity to get a new beginning in your life. Life walks around distributing lemons, what are you going to do with them? Make lemonade or leak tears?

A man used death to save the world!
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Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia

  The Lord is risen, the flood in Eden
  Has ceased this morn, Alleluia !

  My joy was hidden, in death’s throes shivering
  Till bright light shone, Alleluia

  My soul met Evil and thought it was even,
  But oh…hope won ! Alleluia !

  Alleluia, the choir’s wings shiver
  To swell up the storm of Alleluias

  Alleluia, the choir sings forever
  Alleluia, Alleluia

Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia

  Darkness broke with the wake of the globe.
  As it spun the light into sight, Apostles woke
  To the shrill voices of hope who’d gone with balm
  But brought back joy that whole nations will calm.

  Alleluia, no tremors no splinters
  When my Lord came hither, Alleluia

  Alleluia, off came the fetters
  When the Word came home, Alleluia

  God’s face was my brother, the cross brought bother
  But oh…hope won, Alleluia

  Hope’s all my fodder, but life was asunder
  Till bright light shone, Alleluia

  Yes, He is risen, my soul praise the heavens!
  Death ceased this morn, Alleluia!

Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.

(c) Nyonglema

surprise

Palms for murder #HolyWeek #Easter

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You know a human’s about to get you when the honours come out.
They raise you on a pedestal, higher than your donkey mount.
They hail you, with palms to grow on your funeral mound.

But that’s not today, today it’s Hosanna in excelsis
It’s blessings to He who comes from deepest exegesis
It’s wholly holy people praising salvation’s catalysis.

Not the funeral mound no! But seeking some greater cause:
Freedom from the Roman “alphabet” to “alefbet” theirs.
Freedom borne by a donkey marching majestically with no pause.

You know a human’s about to get you, when you’re set to fail
By their standards. We’re human, and when we start to ail,
Everything seems either brighter or of a darker shade of pale

We raise Hope on a pedestal, higher than a donkey can,
And wish the standards are earthly unlike the first Eden ban,
Or the Earth in glory bathed, but humble when it began.

And we miss it all, the real glitter that Easter brings,
Looking for the suave mauve of bigger and bigger kings,
In a manger, then a cross, then a tomb, then everything.

(c) Nyonglema

surprise

While shepherds watched #MerryChristmas

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While shepherds watched their flock by night,
Seated on the ground, the sheep kept going round
In telepathic discourse, full of questions as they might,
Talking to the other sheep whom divinity had found.

“What does He look like? Does He bear Mary’s smile
Or Joseph’s nose? Is Mary ok after the delivery
And who is tending her right now?” After a while
The response would come of Mary’s particular chivalry

To push in stable bear, and bear He to save us all,
And tend the baby dear, swathed in pieces of cloth
Torn off her precious dress worn, and Joe’s wool
Of brown and black and white, amidst the fleeting moths

Dancing in the candle-lit palace of the king of
The world born as lowly as a baby among the lowliest.
His message rich -Share,Love,Reconcile – may sound tough,
But those sheep were proto-us, living glory’s best

Oh that you may see beyond the glittering balls which hang
On the Tannenbaum, with blocks, and plasticky ropes
Shining light. Oh that His coming inspires, taking your pangs,
Bringing joy and peace to you, yours, and beyond your hopes.

(c) Nyonglema

joy

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

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Two thousand years later, and we still long for the star
Of Bethlehem shining over our worn with work eyes.
And though love and joy and hope may seem far
Remember this season that: Love can thaw all ice,
That joy falls aplenty like a paddy of rice
That hope was born that day, but never it dies
If you share the love, joy and hope like He who brought that star.

To you and your families and loved ones, near or far,
(To the lonely take the joy to other lonely lives),
May He be born this Christmas  within your hearts and hearths
To guide and guard. Merry Christmas and Happy New Life next Year.

(c) Nyonglema

joy

The Chosen Father #Joseph #Christmas

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Oh Bethlehem of glorious fate,
You through love became so great,
For within your walls in lowly plate
Joe’s heir laid down His Godly state.

The gusty winter blew in the cold
As wife and Son in his cosy hold
Sought the heat cold morn denied
As if the manger’s shame to deride.

Loud clouds told the shepherds how
From Heaven to cradle God did bow,
And jump and run with sheep did they
To see the Saviour curled in hay.

In wisdom, three the star did see
And off to worship the Lord went they
To Herod, then to stable where
Joseph received gifts and wisdom rare.

And in that darkness shone that Light,
Of the world from that lowly site.
And Joseph, Mary, Jesus slept
In peace while God their spirits kept.

(c) Nyonglema

joy

The Desert I Sought

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One step on the white blistering sand,
Sandals in hand, turban shrouding my beard
From the gusts of arid wind sucking my sweat
And burning my skin and mucosa.

I looked ahead, raising my hand
To block the sun and see the herd
Of camels ahead, and beyond the dunes,
The promise of death from thirst and hunger.

I saw the cactus hold firm to the sand,
And scavengers in the form of an innocent bird
Swimming overhead as if to admire their work:
Meatless bones basking lifeless in the sun.

Was that my fate? Lifeless in the sand
Going through the process to be bird turd
As they pecked and relished? So it seemed.
I pulled myself on, and my body protested.

Is this why this route was so bland?
That civilisation despite its million nerds
Had not found a way to profane the dunes
And  enforce its will on Nature’s plans?

But I keep on with the target at hand.
Oh…I forgot to give you the Word!
Great promise lies ahead, beyond the pain,
Beyond the thirst, beyond lurking death.

Behind me lies a devastated land,
The old me: wicked an absurd.
Beyond the pain lies Life, and just like a newborn,
I shall bear the suffering that takes me Home.

(c) Nyonglema

joy

PHOENIX (2009)

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A new day will come, when from ash,

The glory of the golden feathers,

Sprayed in red and brown and ash

Shall rise. And in those weathers,

A flamboyant flame so hopeful bright

Announcing, like the Star of old:

“There shall pass some event of delight!”

Shall spark and spread like a manifold,

Piecing together the splendour to be born:

Bones and blood, cloak and claws;

Picking carefully each colour for scorn

On other creatures (even man) victim to death’s jaws.

Yellow more than yellow, red beyond red!

Gold in every nook, look at how rare

It sparkles in the sunlight royally shed

On the Phoenix, in the splendour of December.

(c) Nyonglema Pisoh