Tag Archives: death

joy

Ebola #newDay #hope #faith #toTheFallen

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Spring’s back with no sun,
Baobabs stare at their dead leaves,
Watching for fresh shoots

(c) Nyonglema

love

To the Unborn #9DaysforLife #abortion #proLife #USCCB

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Dear You,

Love or lust cast you in the heavenly mould,
Where the Breath that heaves this chest mine
And those two breasts locked in their romantic hold
The night you first became human,
Filled your unicellular can
With life. And your mother could sure feel the sign.

But hate or mistrust casts you in the deadly cold
Without cloth or hope nor breathing equipment thine
As the doctor – ironic at 9 months birth you he would –
Pulls you from your Earth to space,
The vacuum you aren’t equipped to face
To take that life away as mother and/or father your fate decline.

Cry not as your electric pulses die with your parting soul,
But cry for the comfort of myopic mum murdering with confused mind,
For purity fills your innocent soul leaving the fleshy fold
To rise to Heaven
Loved, hated, unleavened.
Cry but that your early death may be last of its kind.

Go well brave You, until we meet on the other side.

With love,
May-Have-Been-Your-Friend

(c) Nyonglema

surprise

One Certainty #cradle2theGrave #Death #mementoMori

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I watch them wriggling their brand new toes,

Swinging soft arms at some unknown foes;

I watch their little chests  heave with life

And ponder on mine: its gains its strife.

 

The trees have gone from seed to giants

In front of the home where I bugged my parents

For care: baby, infant, toddler on a mission

To understand this world and beyond the horizon.

 

My head from curled wrapped nappy hair

Has gone through jungle thick to little hair

And the black in the surviving tuft

Starts to thin, leaving a grey so roughed.

 

This much I realise from the innocent foetus

To the wriggling fellows, to adults roaming cities,

Not prosperity, nor love, nor pain, nor parents can be sure,

But one things is: that one day you’ll be no more.

 

(c) Nyonglema

love

I MISS YOU #mum #RIP #deceased #mama #mother #death

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Where’s the sweet smile on the sunlit porch,
Sitting calmly and watching the world bustle by?
Where are the hugs from that sweet voice, pitch high,
But sweet soft? The flame on my darkness’ torch?

Where lie those sweet smells through the threshold,
Playing notes upon my nose, stirring thoughts in my tummy?
Where’s that sweet face like that on me,
Looking at me up and down like when I left the fresh mold?

Where’s that intangible love exchanged non-verbally,
As we shared recent events for hours,
You encouraging me to build my own life towers,
And those sweet thoughts shaping me morally and mentally?

Where’s the history of how you bore me 9 months,
And brought me through pain to this place of stress
Where I now have to live without your face,
Words, or touch till I’m done counting months?

Where are the trips to church, outings trips in the sun?
Where’s that beautiful chocolate skin you’ve given us?
Where’s the joy now that you’ve left us?
Where are you mum?

(c) Nyonglema

love

Last sight #supportWidows #supportWidowers

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I shut my eyes on Her twisted face,
All writhed in sorrow, my pain in Her innermost.
All hopes dead, an end closing in.
Slowly, I closed my heavy eyelids,
Rest I must; rest this divine pottery
Bathed in years of loving teardrops, Her sorrow cutting my innermost.
I glanced back at Joy,
Saw Him retreating stealthily, suavely fleeing;
I called to Him, but fixed His bearing was:
Home with me He would; He went ahead,
Leaving those eyes I had wiped flooded, but drying up.
Then She broke my thoughts, uttered Her thought.
And how I wished I could hear that conjecture by
Her now mellifluous voice; before I would have used cotton
To spare my ear Her nagging torture.
Then I looked back at Memory.
He sat on an old rock, most eruditely clad,
Told me of my siblings, peeps, my parents,
Slowly unfolded the reel of tears and smiles,
Stones I had kicked, stumbles dotting the pages;
My first beard, first girl, first beer;
This whole learning process as it was,
As it slowly neared its end.
Told of 14 years of school (bookworming)
The pain of seeing no further than my arm:
A marking handicap branded on me.
He told me of Her, how She groomed me,
Before and after I was Her groom.
His eloquence so captivated me,
I suddenly came back, my eyes shutting.
I felt some dying shocks on my thorax.
They must have been trying to re-establish the life distributor.
Again, I saw Her face, cupped in her hands
Like no pain, horror, sorrow
Could violate the barrier created.
The look in Her eye told me She knew;
She knew what I knew: solace would not come.
She read my goodbye and I dove;
Uwu and Mafou and granddad stood waiting,
Arms open, received the escapee,
As medics shocked the inanimate flesh on the bed
And my shut eyelids took me far off; home,
With Memory, Joy, Uwu and Mafou
Telling me of it all.

(c) Nyonglema

fear

Fading Smoke #collateralDamage #stopWar #peace #bombs

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I wave my blistered hand before my bleeding face,
Waving gunpowder smoke and blood fumes in the mist
To see the survivors, to see hope.
But all I see is crushed bones and leaking skulls;
All around the steaming tarmac lie lifeless lads,
Lost lives fill the air with more choking tears.
But we can’t cry now!
“Run! Run! Before they cast another bomb on us!”
I’m on my feet, staggering forward like an alcohol keg,
Surprised to be running alone to the porous camp shelter;
Oblivious to pain, oblivious to care, I stagger on.
Hoping to get my weapon and answer their fire.

It is then it dawns like a wooden blow on me:
I’m no soldier; they aren’t either!
Infant body parts entangled with women and men’s blood
Litter the town square, and I’m staring at the military shelter:
A wooden icecream stand with holes on the whole frame,
And blood , and burnt flesh reeking in the foetid smoke;
And… I break into tears.

(c) Nyonglema

love

Whispers in the Night #supportWidows #supportWidowers

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This is a poem I submitted as a submission to a competition on Poetry Soup. The idea was to write lyrics to the instrumental Life story by Peter White. Maybe you’ll hear me sing to this soon :-). But you go ahead, have some fun with the words, and share to your friends. Who knows, this could be your The Voice moment.


Whispers in the night, longing for your ears
To drown every fear
But the sorrow sleeps with me tonight.


Whispers in the night, saying a bitter prayer,
Gone the summer cheer,
Only cold snow fills me deep inside.


Remembering the fun-filled laughter, the dreams we shared;
Together we made it: built that home of kids and bricks.


Remembering the hurtful wards, the chemo and meds,
That instant you were mine, then reality killed me: us was history.


Whispers in the night, saying our favorite prayers
Seeing you everywhere
Your smell still lives painfully in this house


Whispers in the night: “Oh why not a few more years?”
Still so much to share!
Nobody to hug and care for life!


Remembering the fun-filled laughter, the dreams we shared
Together we made it: built that home of kids and bricks.


Remembering the hurtful wards, the chemo and meds,
That instant you were mine, then reality killed me: us was history.


(c) Nyonglema

love

THE UNION #supportWidows #supportWidowers

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From far away past where silent orbs

Danced to rhythms of unknown forces forging

Newer niches in cloud then soil then rock,

Smouldering, sizzling silently as time tic toc

Ebbed away, watching life on some lifeless rock surging,

To this day when we dance to the rhythm of Forbes,

The moon and sun in divine love urging

Have danced about the earth: light source upon a rock,

Bringing life to earth when the sullen clock

Calls out the grim owl, vile wolf, and sturdy sturgeon

Through the silent night nobody else disturbs,

Locked in eternal enthralment, watching the dark dungeon

Earth would be but for the sun- or moonlight it absorbs.

Moonlight from sunlight like new groom and virgin

Locked in an embrace older than Eden’s first baulk,

But sealed forever to work on this blue rock;

Bringing light to life on earth at dawn then dusk, merging

Efforts: sun casts its beams on daytime suburbs

But when the earth turns as if to shun its scourging,

That age old mission bound to fail as dusk struck

Finds new life in the passive glitter on that battered rock,

The partner playing its part, for so it was from the first forging.

From far away past, as far back as the silent space orbs,

The sun and moon in sublime love urging.

Have danced about and cast shadows out of this rock

And so it should be, for when one’s gone and you lose the rock

Foundation of the union, then is there but darkness and dirge in

The picture, and the survivor is just a lifeless rock listening for hope in the orbs.

(c)Nyonglema