Tag Archives: death

Peace in the Wind #Zaumu #Sampson

Requiem aeternam tibi, my dear brother, my dear friend. 
You sought peace on Earth, may you find peace in heaven. 
RIP Sampson Lemongoe Zaumu till we meet again. 



The golden glitter of floating clouds lift up the wings
On the plane that carves out the way home.
You stand and out your beard
Breaks the smiles of years cheered
By you and me thinking, saying, and doing the little things.

On the plane that carves out the way home,
I watch you go again: you never learnt to stop
Until every task was done,
And joy was everyone,
And hearts spoke songs to each other in peaceful tomes.

I watch you go again: you never learnt to stop!
Nature set you back, the roads with vile treacherous trap
Tried to take the clock
But you never take a knock,
You never say enough, you give and give, but never give up.

Nature set you back, the roads with vile treacherous trap
Changed our smiles for fears, our cheers are tears,
But you wiped them away
Telling us to be okay,
While hoisting these little kids upon your fatherly lap.

Changed are smiles for fears! Our cheers are tears
Swelling inside and up our aching heart to our faces,
Pouring out to be with you
Seeking the tender “mchew”
That says “It’s ok”, “It will be ok”, “Uh lahte”, “Why the fears?”

Swelling inside and up our aching heart to our faces
The dreadful whispers to Job seek our parched lips
Wishing to curse the world
In chaos and pain to all unfurled
But the memory of that bearded smile halts those paces.

The dreadful whispers to Job seek our parched lips,
Like daggers to our hearts, but Mary took more than all,
So calling on our Lord,
As we watch you gently soar,
May the golden glitter of floating clouds lift up the wings
Of the angels taking you to her advocate arms, calling
You to join the choir singing Hosanna to the King of Kings. 

(c) nyonglema

Cuties

Fear of facts, fear of truth, fear of standing out.
Fear of fraternal correction, fear of the hypocritical mob: 

"Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear." - Alan Paton


I'm a teacher where the future flows from 
The ground. I water in the shadow of the clouds, 
As the sun fails at peeping at me, smiling proud. 

These tender blades look like mini green swords
Although the arid air wishes to suck out the breath
That fills their stomata, replacing it with death. 

Cool air rushes round my feet, as I side-step
My precious lawn. Nature and I collaborate 
To heal the future, and watch it elaborate. 

But the clouds suddenly shift and the peeping sun, 
Like a Netflix nightmare, smiling at innocence, 
Paints them brown forever in masked silent violence

(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

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


Candle in the wind

They are quite unpredictable like funeral tears. 
The casket weighs down on a metallic stand in
The middle of the compound. The building
Is empty, the heart is empty, the palm fronds
Over this brownish soil staining my shoes
Have seen tears trickle in silence down faces.

The wind tries to snuff out the wick, but it resists.
You clung to the breath gushing out your throat,
Pulled by the cloaked reaper, but eventually it's
Gone. You've seen tears trickle down wrinkled
And smooth faces. You've consoled and cried,
With arms tight around a wounded shoulder.
Then, the breath soothed in melodic syllables.
You're clinging to the wind, the candle resists.

But the gusts gush too strong, the flame bends to
Mourn. The leaves rustle on the acacia tree,
The leaves rustle on the mango tree, The leaves
Pause to mourn. It wasn't the reaper calling.
A bearded Jew picks you up like a prom date,
His halo catching the pearls of your white dress.
The fiery chariot makes your half smile shine, as you
Look back at the tears to come, and say one last prayer.

But the gusts really gush too strong on the wick,
And the flames disappear to leave darkness.
You're gone.
We're torn.
We reach for the wick, but notice the flame still
Burns. The flame resists, our tears cannot.
Our fears cannot.
A fiery chariot
Took you away to a better place, but we are in
A bad place. We wanted to hear your voice,
We wanted to hold you, not some wax and wick in wind.
We wanted to own you, but life is for God's glory
And glory is unpredictable like a candle in the wind

(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

	

They steal our resources #DonQuixote

What stories were you told as a kid? Bedtime stories? 
The wall whispers to me "You'll be nothing!
It's been rigged, see, the Earth is being pulled off
To show what lies beneath, and "They"
Want a crater beneath that."

"They" sounds like a strange name for anybody.
I hear "They" colonised African countries ,
Then "They" took all the resources,
Then "They" kept Africa under 1 dollar.
"They" have power.

While "We" pilfer the poor's taxes,
Build roads in an Oculus Rift, "We"
Mass-murder those who think different,
Take off those brains so all stop thinking,
Take off the teachers, the doctors,
Lest one takes a needle to stitch one back together.

"They" tell us what to do, and not wanting our welfare
Give "We" loans, and aid, and technology, and more
Well "They" want what's in our soil,
And "We" sell it to them.

Only you can't complain when you sell something can you?
Like Mugabe seizing lands traded for weapons or more
Or Africans asking the return of their wares' descendants,
Or at least some reparation, for the low price got on
Their brothers: some sort of bonus for good performance?
So you get to be paid double, and get back what you sold?

When I hear that wall whispering, I think of the poem
Dad told me to recite: "Mr Nobody" written by nobody.
I guess it's easier to swing your sword at virtual windmills
Than at yourself when you are the source of all the trouble

And "We" still pilfer everything we own,
Thinking what we own are rocks beneath the Earth,
While the children are either buried in those rocks,
Or their education forgotten till all actually become rocks.

(c) nyonglema





The dog ate the baby #Cameroon

Daddy hears the baby cry, but he's on his phone
Flipboard's louder than Crowder, and Facebook,
Oh, faces booked with tags look good to mum
The tears scatter across the molecules of the room,
But the care resonates with nothing.

But the dog, it usually plays with the baby,
Licks its pretty plump face, and jumps around.
Daddy thinks this could work, this could
Be the dam to the distracting noise of need.
Off you go doggy, off your chain, be dad and mum
To the ball of pain confused in its crib.

And off it went, off its chain, past dad and mum,
No Flipboard article or Facebook stream could
Deter it from its goal. For you see, it couldn't hear

the baby's cry from dad's and mum's absence:

The grumbling of its stomach bacteria was louder,
Maybe the smell of a wounded infant had reached
Their empty abode? Maybe this was their chance?
Maybe they could shut this best friend's will,
And make everything silent again?

Daddy hears the baby cry, but he's on his phone
Flipboard's louder than Crowder, and Facebook,
Oh, faces booked with tags look good to mum
The blood scatters across the molecules of the room,
But the care resonates with nothing.

(c) nyonglema

River bed #Cameroon #dialogNow

The rain falls on the soldier's helmet. 
But he can't shoot the clouds. So he shoots at the river.
Water is water. It flows, it pours, it spills, it glides:
Water is just water, even with fish blood in it.
A river's just water,
Even with once living creatures resting on its bed.

(c) nyonglema