Nobody knows that I died a long time ago.
But she would have known,
Even from the slab at Melen.
She just slept.
She never liked hard surfaces,
Preferring the 6 cushion couch
Of red yellow and orange circles of my childhood.
I still remember the watery smells that danced the Burlesque
Of firefly magic from Lake Wum on my childhood days.
The chairs sat under a family of 20 with 1 mother.
Yes, same chairs followed us to Yaoundé, where
She'd start the TV shows with me and then slip away.
Then I like a bad dream would slowly touch her skin awake:
"Mum you should go to bed now".
The show was over.
She would rise then go to sleep.
In a 6-foot hole in Baligham.
(c) nyonglema
Tag Archives: death
It burns not…#cameroon
They said.
Boko Haram just killed 17 Cameroonians in the Far North
Boko Haram's attack just foiled in the North
Two innocent people kidnapped in the Adamawa
Successful repulsion of incursion in the East
Ghost towns dominate in the North West
Blood bath on both sides in the South West
Ransoms requested in the West
And since Littoral, Centre and South are not in the pot
We can conclude that all is ok; the fire is not that hot.
(c) nyonglema
Vivre en semble #pretendUnity
Le moustique chante dans ces oreilles pourtant pas endormies,
Qui guettent les pas des ravisseurs qui tour à tour font
La garde. Le silence est tel qu'on peut entendre les fourmis
"…ma reconnaissance au peuple camerounais de m’avoir renouvelé sa confiance…"
Erigés sont les poils des bras à découvert dans ce froid macabre,
La peur a laissé place aux sanglots qui se sont effacés par l'indifférence
Face à ces murs en terre battue … ah ce mot "battu" "battre", "abattre"
"… en prenant des mesures nécessaires pour préserver l’ordre public…"
Battues et coupées du monde, les larmes salées semblent laver le tartre
Comme un plâtre qui se brise laissant la fracture à découvert. Ils saignent.
« … Porte atteinte à notre Constitution… » « … d’être mieux
Associées à la gestion de leurs affaires … » Les lueurs d’espoirs s’éteignent
Avec l’arrivée du soleil. L’odeur d’Hadès parfume la rosée sur les jeunes fusils
« … nous avons maintenu notre cap vers l’émergence. » Il n’est pas 2035.
On se gratte la peau, on nettoie les cils. On boit de l’eau infestée de typhii.
Avec l’arrivée du soleil, l’odeur d’Hadès parfume la rosée sur leur règne
« … continuer dans la paix l’œuvre de construction » La guerre ajuste son masque
Ils se grattent la peau, et ils boivent du Lestac, dehors sous des corps la terre saigne.
(c) nyonglema
The End #live
The End is at the start of every movie like winter and snow.
Like Autumn the most, the rest will surely surly follow
While you frown. There are things an eraser must allow
And things tattooed next to your eye, just below the brow:
The End is at the start of every movie like winter and snow.
It’s easy to ignore the metal chipping away as the engine churns,
Or the magnets slowly turning away as the Earth turns.
Even Kobe knew his jersey was meant to be hung off the floor
The fire from the line tamed, and yet it’s easy to forget, for
It’s easy to ignore the metal chipping away as the engine churns.
But let not the day be your friends opening the door with hats,
For there’s no cake, no replay, no rewind, just you and the facts.
Facts haunt you in that instant: your beds in disarray, unmade
Are where you must lay, and they bring you acrid lemonade,
But let not the day be your friends opening the door with hats.
So be ready, for every movie like Winter and Snow
Has its moment, and you’re the artist putting on your own show
And when the Producer pulls the curtain, we want rounds of applause
Let the next act with no drawn-out we-‘re not ready pause ’cause
The End is at the start of every movie, like winter and snow.
(c) nyonglema
Country off Law #Cameroon #freeMiMi
Truth, trough, through.
Health, stealth, felled
Truth brought joy the moment you spoke it
Troughs are where they went to stoke it
Through it they drove fire after spokes hit.
Health was what she had before she spoke it
Stealth was how New Bell made the stroke hit
Felled is the word to describe where hope is
Hope, a strange word,
It carries an upswing like a plane taking off,
Or like an uppercut swinging into your voice box
Either way, nobody raises a finger when truth
Is felled into a trough with thorough stealth
And the health of a nation cannot pull through
Every one stands and watches the vampire eat up
Their neighbour. Turns don’t go round, they stop
Just before the protagonist gets saved by his pop.
The lawyers got it, the teachers got it, the students
Got hit. The gutters are a comfy place to be lonely,
With sewage or not, all were potent (but sordid) portents
The chalkboard got covered with the same lesson like Bart,
“I will not speak against the old man with the darts”
“I will not speak truth, lies about him or his art.”
Silence is a crime. Violence is a crime. Living is like grime
Where slime fills your thoughts, and you can’t expectorate,
Because they expect you to with cocked rifle and unjammed nine
Just before the protagonist gets saved by his pop,
The vampire eats up the pop, and we realise this won’t stop;
Freedom’s Caesar at Pompei’s feet, gasping, gaped, you move to act but,
Breathe, heave, leave
Sigh, cry, die.
(c) nyonglema
Talking with bullets? Lose-Lose #Cameroon
It was easier before:
The cock crowed, Jesus turned, the tears flowed
The cock crowed, I turned, and the shower flowed
The cock crowed, luck turned, and tears flowed.
Easy solutions were easy to get while things were easy
But nine stitches rhyme with nine lives in their sick essay,
So time stitched hell and instead of being stitched in time
The fabric gaped open to swallow into its darkened slime
The baby, the bath water, the room, the parents, the villagers,
The fires, the char, the innocent, the pillaged, the pillagers.
It was easier before:
But we always want more, and the tears flow
But we always want war, and gun showers flow
But we always taunt luck, and the tears flow.
Easy solutions were easy to get but Greed’s chains are titanium
Laced in a diamond lattice tying down the maestro of pandemonium.
The constitution had saved once, but those promises fell into the slime
Stitched by hell to cut workers’ pockets to benefit organised crime
Where everybody wants favour, everybody seeks the power to sign
At the expense of kids’ futures, mothers and fathers crying.
It was easier before:
But now I need a visa, and I may not go
But now I need a visa, to live in my own home
But now I need a visa, to live.
Easy solutions will be easy to get where competence is worth any
But everybody wants favour, so logic took a stray bullet in the alley
And Cameronians closed their eyes on children crying
Everybody closed their eyes to the economy slowly dying
As if we were not one! I say we are one, and this war cannot be won
Until we become truly one: citizens, leaders (citizens), doing all to brighten the sun
It was easier before:
But now everybody is strapped, like that fixes anything
But now everybody is trapped like they can’t fix anything
But you wear your ego like that fixes anything!
It is still easy now:
Let’s get back to being humans, talking with humans.
That
fixes everything
(c) nyonglema
The End….#Cameroon #CivilWar
May never come.
The orcs hold up the putrid decay once a man’s foot
Sniff it and toss it into the cauldron, and scratch
The bumps on their backs dancing to the rays of the
Flames. There are not enough. They must hunt.
They need more, more, more.
A snort and off into the wild to get more blood
Take more lives.
The prophecy foretold of Dylogus, who would slay
The orcs, but when he was born, a sword
Visited his jugular vein, and his body the
Intestines of these vile creatures.
The sticks scream under the orc’s steps, the leaves
Rush out of harm’s way, and human laughs
Turn to blood-gurgling screams, and
All mourn Dylogus, and there’s growing sense
That the end of suffering was killed with him too.
(c) nyonglema
To all losing their lives in this senseless civil war, RIP: God’s got you.
Pray, pray that there’s an end to the madness. I have hope about the future, but bear great fear as well.
Tomatoes in the Wagons #stopWar
When I think of the wars in Cameroon, my mind goes to Asa’s Fire on the Mountain: “Could it be love for your country, or for the gun you use in killing?” she sings.
I think she missed the “greed” question, that could desire to sacrifice human life to sustain the funding of the war, and generate income for some uncanny souls. Well finite are the resources, finite are the humans
Tossed around in the wagons, the tomatoes bounce on each other
Squashed one at a time on a path they didn’t decide
On a path they must follow like human life.
Then the owner calls to the controller
And the engineer, yet noone hears
And squash, splat, squash
Till all left
Is just
One…
(c) nyonglema
Shooting your foot #Cameroon
I told him exactly the same as I’m telling you now:
The gun you point at your people is a gun you point
At your pupil, or at your pupils, or through a peephole
Into a future with LED lights lining trees capturing
Sunlight, and lightning, a future enlightened
By the lightness of the smiles of generations to come
A peephole looking back at the nozzle of a barrel.
I knew he wouldn’t listen, for without the ash splattered
Against my mane wisdom cannot be part of my game.
All their epithelia are the same, waiting for epitaphs
Epilogue to tales where epic lies dominate photographs
Of instants of truth, painful truth….like the peephole
And the barrel, and they’ve seen it all, the seed to the tree
The stream to the river, the whole range of our history
I knew he wouldn’t listen, nor read, nor taste of my sweat,
But maybe my blood, so I painted myself like the others
Vehement in thoughts dancing entrapped in cages of fear
Where the lines on the 60 leaves plane-leaved exercise book
Jump off the page where you jotted your deepest hopes for
Change, change into pain, twist your arms and pull your fingers
Around them. They turn into metal, and you’re looking out,
Wishing for a desk, a pen, but not even a toilet for your rear’s near.
But I know He will listen. He doesn’t read these words
He feels them. He sees my prayer that we’d stop crowding Peter’s
Waiting room: the logistics department had to order new magazines,
About cars, about medicine about emptying magazines on citizens,
To accommodate the throng waiting for their lift to the final
Destination: Heaven or Hell. The water dispenser needs refilling,
This place wasn’t designed for such affluence…well there was Noah,
Or better still his time, but there was enough notice for facilities
To be put in place. Not this time…but I know He listens.
So, they told him exactly as I tell you now:
When words can save the souls of many,
Lay Guns to rest by Pride’s old body
And dare to save another’s soul today
For face to face mountains all decay.
(c) nyonglema
399.99 #Libya #neoSlavery
In November more than 230 years ago a letter changed the course of history.
Lady Middleton inked hope in the heart of a British speck,
And no matter how small it saw itself, and made protest
The cause was so big that the Hope she sowed seemed 300 against Persian military.
Lil’ Bill set out to change the world before his eyes
That man wished to make men see in other men their brothers,
Like hounds view spaniels, or poodles, or chihuahuas,
And to think we’re supposed to be the smarter of the creatures.
Well, William Wilberforce, along with many intelligent beings
Set out to explain to humanity what animals already knew.
Today I feel sorry for him
That the lessons he fought for flew to forgetfulness.
I feel sorry, that it actually got worse.
I feel sorry that…I used to think I was worth “Priceless”.
That’s what dad and mum told me, we can’t buy you:
Protect your eyes, they have no price.
Protect your hands, protect yourself, you have no price.
USD 400, EUR 400, GBP 350, YUAN 3 125, XAF 260 k.
Print me a tag, stick me in a Home Depot store as an accessory
I’m more economical than a Roomba.
Pass it through my earlobe,who needs a jackhammer to build
When you can get me, and for cheap?
Stick it on my forehead, and put me in a sex shop,
I’m cheaper than all you can buy.
Thank you Wilberforce, you tried to make puppies in a pound less important than humankind in the hearts of humans unkind.
But those wear Prada, while HUUUUUUUMMMMAAANs starve to death, while humans are traded when they hit rock bottom, while water takes human life.
Well I just wanted to say that I’m for sale too, like my brothers and sisters who lost hope and sought hope in a lion’s den.
Well they say if you see an antelope running towards a lion pride, then wherever it was before must have had a Terminator – Alien – Predator hybrid…or worse.
So before I’m sold, this speck says to African “leaders”…:
Thank you <insert insult here>, You’re just doing what your predecessors did. Reducing our citizens to slavery through your silly greed. You’re the AIDS of our continent from which all kinds of ills take away our future…
You’re …mostly pathetic.
Ok, please buy me now, Paypal, Visa or just cash…399.99, please.
(c) nyonglema
Tears, tears, all I have to pour on where we have come due to the greed of the world powers, and the active participation by African leaders in making a bad situation even worse…God help us
waghni 