Tag Archives: Douala

anger

Hiking home #traffic #sogea

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Right now in my city, there are so many traffic jams, I’m cursing Sogea Satom for the way they are handling the whole construction project they are on. It will soon be over, but daily the anger born from stillness eats my insides like Edgar Poe’s Raven.

I still think they could do more, and that we the citizens could help them by being more civil and cooperating with the cops to reduce this frustration. Well, till we figure that out…it’s me, the car, and the clock.


The engine grumbles,
Rain washes away my joy
No birds are singing

Just unwanted ticks
Infecting the dashboard clock
Staring time away

The engine grumbles,
Rain plays with my heart, its toy
Seeding anger, more

And it grows to trees,
So tall the raven would nest
And infest with eggs

And laugh at my casket.
And electronics don’t tick
And my wheels don’t spin

So it’s just flashes
Of my life quickly passing
On the dashboard clock.

(c) Nyonglema

anger

Are they civil ? #sogea #satom #douala

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No !


You’d think “Maybe” if you listened to the complaints about Sogea-Satom’s slow operation lasting beyond schedule and creating craters cradling cars to sleep in watery coffins.
It’s 5:30pm, I’m on my way home.
Slowly in first gear through one I go.
Slowly through the second I go.
No. I tell you they aren’t civil.


  I brake.


To my right are two lanes of cars blocking pedestrians trying to stomp the pavement, and the cars honk as if right, and fight for right of way, while the police stare dismayed, and the rest on the normal way display anger, frustrated for they know all those will go first, not they, unless they go for the throat of the pedestrians and throw care away.


  Clutch out, first gear, it moves. I brake.


There’s been days 10km turned to 100
And days 10km became as long as a trip to Kenya
When from the airport the person boarding calls you in traffic, “I have arrived”, and you bash your brains on the steering in a Kobain tantrum, and look right at those civilians as a bunch of Brady Ians when you consider they aren’t civil.


  Clutch out, accelerate a little, and then brake.


One’s trying to skip the line in front of you as the police arrive and raise an index finger to remind them that the pavements are for feet, and it’s a car a lane, and she struggles with you not caring if her rush to arrive is marred by her marring your patient eagerness to see your home by scratches and dents on metal…hopefully she doesn’t.


  Accelerate, brake, my soul breaks.


What’s wrong with these people? The same sad song daily, and the same solutions are brought daily, but learning is water on a ducks back so…


Clutch out, accelerate, brake.


(c) Nyonglema

sadness

Jammed #douala #lagos

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No strawberry, no mango, no raspberry or sour fruit,
Just me, angry honks buzzing overhead, while smoke stabs the planet.
A seed is sown, a green one that whispers jealousy, painted
With the blood of all those cars on another way, going ahead, going away
While angry honks buzz overhead, and I’m still, stabbing the planet.

It’s jam, there’s a little too much of it in the glass jar,
Staring at me wicked-eyed, like : stay there, let the ants
Eat your sticks on the clutch, while you wish to shift the stick.

The sun gets bored, the wheels move an inch, no just a pinch
Of the jam. It dips it in vinegar and pours on my tongue, water
Water, cars all around, but no water in site, and no shops in sight
And no bottle inside my hell, where the air conditioning drones
And the air mocks my impatient fingers drumming on the wheel, to the

Rhythm: heartbeat, temple vein, anger, heartbeat, temple vein, bigger
Stick shift, clutch, move, heartbeat temple vein, honk, frown, bigger
Thinking about jams, how delicious they are with bread, strawberry, other
But how this jam is going to call the raven on me stabbing the planet,
Stuck in the evil stare of the glass jar, wishing to shift,
That’s a real bother.

(c) Nyonglema

love

The Wall #heartbreak #lovelost #death #abuseKills

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                      Alive                                                      we wove our wands
of magic, Living love                                   to bits with intensity only
A few have come close to. We loved      the unicorns in fairy tales created by
our fantasy in its full intensity:    love in   the imagination of two loving souls seeking
each other, lost in each other. The fairies lived their lives, fluttering around our teen
bellies promising nirvana, like butterflies in my stomach and head, alcohol in each
part of my soul, keeping me in permanent euphoria at the sight, touch smell, hurt
of you, in the morning, evening, night. But Newton’s promise is such a
crime as the floating fays all fell sullenly one by one, and
blaming age to the decay that befell each suddenly.
The end of our Utopia lingered in the air to
push each winged dream out of that our
space, onto the mud whirling around
as earth throttled full ahead
without care. Till my mind
was made up: “Go! Go!”
To flee to flee to
leave and never
come back.And
My heart
bled
As you
Didn’t

Care

 Didn’t bother
To save me

                  Your fairy.

          Dying alone

                 dying.

       Dead

                   by

                       your

                  hand.

(c) Nyonglema

sadness

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

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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

anger

The gods are passing

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Picture this: the sun engraving sweat streaks

On your sizzling skin, stinging your eyes

As the humid heat hits your cheeks

Painting pain all over your 37°C-and-rising

Body stuck in the thick traffic like on all weeks

Barely breathing, headed home from the day’s trials.

 

And a-blaring come crowding the air those sirens:

The horns from cars speeding as if to mock

Our stillness. The cops with walkie-talkies pulling reins

On all who wish the way home were shorter:

“Order!” “wait!” The horns go from shrill – and since

There’s “order” – to barytone peace while we still sweat.

 

The sun’s still engraving its streaks on me

The heat still heating my sorry cheeks

This metallic cage stuck amongst so many

Others like it, ordered to stop for the glorious horns,

Is starting to feel like a microwave oven to me.

But what can I do? The gods were passing.

 

(c) Nyonglema

fear

HOME (2007)

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Home’s laughter and joy, where good thoughts mature;
Home’s water for life, and without colour or odour;
Home makes eyes water, but beneath blesses each smile.
Not home the seat of vile yoke-wielders Satan couldn’t beguile.
Not home despair growing from the tree you didn’t help spawn.
What’s home when your peers relish as sadness does you a turn?
No! Not home if I can’t rest at night and wish the morrow.

Home’s children in the present hopeful and eyes turned to the future;
Home’s elders drawing the past to give the present’s pleasant contour;
Home’s youths building the future with the puerile and senile,
All hand in hand lifting Home higher in each while.
Not home hearts buckling under unfulfilled dreams, hearts that yearn!
What’s home if children’s present shames elders’ past, and in turn
Home’s youths’ future condemns their very life so hollow?

Home’s working for your bread and to your produce more manure;
Home’s doing what you crave and in your grave be happy manure.
Home’s scorn for the hedonists, respect for the agile.
Not home the heart-tearing feeling of drying the Nile!
Not home where your greatest achievements meet the urn!
What’s home when greater achievements are mere kindergarten turns?
No! Not home my teary eye sharing in my fellowmen’s sorrow!

Home’s being satisfied that all one needs is secure;
Home’s not wants achieved, but necessities from the store;
Home’s absence of frustration at getting blamed your job’s an empty vial
Because home didn’t offer the tools you needed, though they’re there all the while!
Not home when the doctor gets blamed that the propellers don’t turn;
What’s home when the shoe mender mends body burns?
No! Not home a place where squares fit circles in a mentality so shallow.

There was home in my heart as TV waves my growing heart would lure.
Homewards, I’d think, into prospects of rejoicing in a reality so pure;
Reality, home to opportunities, possibilities: me and my dreams down the aisle,
With home’s resources building a mighty Rome in the eyes of a little child.
That was home as my blood pumped and I awaited my turn
To give home all my feeble self could afford. All I could learn
As age called was broken dreams, and the pain of a morose morrow.

(c) Nyonglema Pisoh