Tag Archives: death

Save Yourself (Part4/4) #EarthHour #SaveYou #28thMarch

Nature doesn’t need humans; it was there before and will be there after humanity is gone.

  

The screen kept painting the history for the team
In horrific scenery as the chickens came home to roost:
The wars supported in media by ideologies it would seem,
Whereas deeper was the fight for resources needed for economic boost;

 

The environmental disaster with each new technological advance
Advertised as “CO2-saving”, disregarding the manufacturing fall out
As resources were dug out of Earth’s internals, not giving life a chance,
Leaving disasters in the wake of “Eco-friendly” mining in the South;

 

The over-fishing, over-eating, over-mining, over-everything
Requiring the support of a Nature, willing, but drawn
To the limit of breaking without empathy, care, understanding,
Foresight; just over-reaching to pull all put there from Life’s dawn,

 

To the point there was none left, no-one left.
“Remember the Galapagos heads documentary on TV?”
Tsal asked Pezal. “That was History warning of being Nature-deaf,
But nobody listened.” And they turned to get back onto their spaceship,

 

While the screen continued by looping every truly Eco-friendly initiative conceived
To amplify Nature’s warnings, to pause the frantic rush
Of capitalistic gain-hunt. But all this as naught was perceived
And even Earth Hour’s darkness, though laudable, in the din of Nasdaq was but a hush.

 

(c) Nyonglema

Let’s all go out and support Earth Hour on 28th March 2015…let’s make this silence of whirrs and buzzes a little LOUDER.

Save Yourself (Part3/4) #EarthHour #SaveYou

Nature doesn’t need humans; it was there before and will be there after humanity is gone.

A few hours of tittering on past glories of a planet,
Tsal, Pezal and the team see a screen still alive from sun’s power,
Broadcasting (most likely in a loop) with partly dark LEDs
The news of a time when Nature hadn’t turned entirely sour.

  

Tsal asks himself like a sharp stab to his chest:
“Didn’t they read the signs?” Tropical rains coming early
Then late year on year, messing up planting and harvesting,
While thermometers lost touch with reality, doing exactly what wasn’t said on the telly.

 

Floods washed away months of tilling and planting on estates,
While droughts washed away whole villages, leaving them empty,
And more nuclear disasters decimated whole cities and states,
But life went on disregarding the warning in Humpty Dumpty

 

Fiddling with the core’s magnetic fields led to imbalance,
And the Earth struggled to shake off the destroyers,
Spewing molten venom and nerve gas to dance
Upon the lives of sons, daughters and fathers and mothers.

 

Yeah, Nature had long lost what was left of patience,
As the Ozone let in the rays so long waiting at Earth’s doors,
To steal the seas and rivers out into space’s expanse,
As if to say: “You have all, yet you don’t recognize, and keep seeking more.”

 
 
To be continued…

(c) Nyonglema

Save Yourself (Part2/4) #EarthHour #SaveYou

Nature doesn’t need humans; it was there before and will be there after humanity is gone.

The skull had been opened as you would a coconut
To sip the sweet sap. Tsal’s blood skips with his fear
At the thoughts hitting his head, but his fears are proven fact
When he sees a silver spoon in the head, spoon branded “Pierre”.

  

Further down the seabed, lies another identical but intact specimen
With a matching fork he’d attempted to stick into another bone,
Before his last mitochondrion, like its peers, gave up on the machine,
Surrendering to fatigue, thirst, and probably a grave wound as shown by marks on the foot bones.

 

Tsal turns to Pezal to share the shock on both their faces
It was university all over again, trying to understand this:
There was water, there were plants, fertile land in most places,
And yet cannibalism was the last act of this great species.

 

Despair from hunger, intoxication, thirst which dominated
A race which once ordered water about with pumps and dams,
Told the wind where to blow, had command over all ever created,
But chose to destroy and not rebuild in their crazy advance.

 

There are many more heads half buried by the mocking wind,
Complete with scarred arms and legs, with once plastic clothes
Ripped and singed in the hot abrasive vengeful wind,
The wind which once was a gentle breeze in which bathed the olives of Rhodes.
 
 
To be continued…

(c) Nyonglema

Save Yourself (Part1/4) #EarthHour #SaveYou

Nature doesn’t need humans; it was there before and will be there after humanity is gone.

The last plasma puff of the engine invites them out

Of the vessel, wearing refrigerated high-tech suits

Equipped complete with claw-like studs gripping cracked grout,

Fighting for balance against the gusts in their pursuit.

  

Tsal pulls out the holo-tablet to map their position

And consult the travel plan. The air crackles to life

At the rod in his hand’s and the one on his chest’s intersection

Showing in script and diagrams what once was humanity’s hive.

 

A step on a fish bone draws a snap which pulls

His eyes downwards then around the oily dirty landscape

Where lay more bones from different creatures whose lives were culled

By a slow death they’d tried in vain to escape,

 

Probably the last of each of their species to have braved heat,

Thinning air, toxins in solid, liquid and gas form everywhere.

Tsal thought of who’d ate whom last at the eve of total defeat

As lives became meatless skeletons after plants had left here.

 

Ok! Back to finding the once supreme masters of this rock

Who built the cranes surrounding this now barren and dry seabed,

As if adorning the grave of many a beast. With some luck,

The image in his hand lights red as it hovers over a broken bone head.
 
 
To be continued…

(c) Nyonglema

Death from a bike #bendskin #okada #opep #accident

I just saw a man die on the streets
With blood and broken glass and metal
Twisted from a sleek Senke bike
To an unrecognizable heap of twisted petals,
Black petals of Death, as it is used to strike.

Yes, I saw that man die on the streets,
While this morning he forehead-kissed his kids
And wife, promising to bring home a meal that night
And they watched him leave with hopeful eyelids,
Not knowing there’ll be dirges and tears over hunger that night.

I saw that man die on the streets,
After a mad driver rushing over pothole puddles
Couldn’t stop his truck in time, and rushed over his body
And though he’d rejected all passengers, my blood curdles,
For this single death already is such a tragedy.

I just saw a man die on the streets,
With blood, glass, metal, and mud
Littered in a gruesome Picasso on the ground,
And the tears flow down my cheeks thinking “Oh God!”
Orphans, widow, pain, more poverty born in one death on the ground.

(c) Nyonglema

Bloody Mosquitoes #mosquito #malariaKills #malaria #anopheles

Feeeeeeeen! Feeeeeeeeen! The nifty nuisance
Floats about my ears whispering loudly
As if to ask for permission to sink  and steal
My silently speeding oxygen carriers from my veins.
It’s 32°C by my Jolla while the crickets chirp their love away
And some toads splash about their puddle trying to sing Vandross songs
(More like murdering them, but their ladies love it that way).
The still air hangs about my nose with scents from the nearby bush
While the bats are setting their gear for their nightly hunts.
I’m sitting here trying to write, but feeeeeeeeen
Those haughtily naughty fellows play their tune
And I roughly slap away to avert doom:
Who can imagine that these seemingly innocent notes
Have had malaria kill so many innocent souls?

(c) Nyonglema

Your Neighbour #EbolaAtAirports #Ebola

Humanity is threatened microscopically with extinction
And instinct has each government microcosm’s decision
For protection to be: checking
Temperatures of passengers passing
To ensure that their citizens don’t face infection.

But the irony when you selfishly stop the immigrants,
Not considering that on the plane the virus already had its chance
To spread stealthily from one to next;
Is that although protection was your pretext,
Your choice of solution surely needs a second glance.

To think as one, as we humans fear to consider,
Is what would wield weapon against our poacher.
‘cos to check instead as they leave
You to go to the neighbour’s is a perfect sieve,
So the sick are kept, and infection opportunities are countered.

(c) Nyonglema

Once I held a gun #childSoldiers #stopWar

Once I held a gun in the bush.
That Ak47 was nearly my size but I lifted it.
I was fierce and fearless to my foes,
Taking their lives before they could reach for mine.

Yes, once I killed in the bush;
The men who protected their villages,
The women who protected their children,
The children who would avenge their orphan state.

At that time I was a hero in the army
So decorated by war wounds and scars
That pain became the objective of my existence
And transmitting it my only medicine.

Now I’m 16 years old and peace has killed the need for guns.
My grades and skill set mean nothing.
All left is the emptiness in the memories of maimed men,
Mothers, and children.What to do now?

AH…Once I was told taking lives was the life I needed,
But now I know there was much more to hope for.

Much more to aim AT than innocent targets in the bush

(c) Nyonglema

The Soldier’s Wife #stopWar

It’s 9pm and the cell phone sings a tune.
She swipes to green to accept the call:
“Who calls so late?” The answer tells of misfortune.

There’s silence as she relives the bullets he received,
Calling for help in gargles on the battlefield
And dropping in the smoky marshes to join the deceased.

Silence as she shakes the thought and thinks of a plan.
Resurrection? Cloning? Parallel universes?
Silence as she seeks retaliation for the death of her man.

The buzz on the line doesn’t take her mind of it,
As she sees her life and his as a silent flick
Rushing in her brain, rambling and troubling in quiet.

Silence as she feels her pulse rise uncontrolled,
And darkness falls as her thud slams the ground,
And the receiver crashes out of her lifeless hold.

(c) Nyonglema

Mum #mother #RIP

As a little boy, I wondered why I have a mum.
All she did was shout when I was gaming;
Whip me when the VHS entertained me;
Slap me when with friends we played crazy;
Force me to make up our room;
Keep me away from my darling TV.

But as I got older, I now know why I miss my mum.
What she really did was teach me discipline;
Tell me to focus on priorities;
To choose friends wisely, cherish friendship,
To keep my life in order no matter what
And to love what I have, while dreaming of what I could be.

She brought peace when we threw punches,;
She brought delicious meals at dinners and lunches;
She cheered loudest at success, and consoled my failures.
The cohesion felt when the mum gathers her chicks
Fades away when her time is done on earth.
So now I know why I had a mum,
But how will she know I wish she wasn’t gone?

(c) Nyonglema