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
Tag Archives: federation
My country
Is made of strangers, living next to strangers.
Not with them.
Indifference is king, and the king is indifferent.
Tears have taken Oxygen's place in our atmosphere,
And we breathe them in, and exhale stale
Bravura to match King Arthur.
Only, in my country, hearing aids are radios,
And the television is Braille.
The tales fail miserably to push us to excel
As we look round, and our senses are tricked that
That tears are oxygen, and pain is a toy,
Blood is water, and water is abundant.
So our indifference remains king,
And the king isn't different.
(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
Truth or dare? #RIP #hope
No neither.
I see… I see bird droppings zoom out the sky and
And…
Humans drop looking for luck in different spheres.
The crowd panics. Not felled yet, trees stand
And run for the woods where leaves shield.
And…
I see droppings hit the leaves, souls leave the trees.
Truth or dare?
No, neither.
Silence is the ether that burns the soul of the soldier.
Nobody believes the wood was felled,
As no noise was made when it fell in the woods.
Everybody says deforestation is a lie.
There were no birds, there were no trees,
There is no Earth, there is no you, nor me.
Just truth caught in a dare:
Dare to exist,
Dare to pervade,
Dare to be exchanged or dare to grow.
It lurks in the backdrop of wood becoming coffins.
It seeks to become a speaker box,
It seeks the Carpenter to heal the wounds,
But as is the case often, nobody wants to be true or dare.
Pride rides the pain of the thuds on Atlas’ load,
Rippling through his bones, and he bumps on the trees.
Then he screams: “Speak ye truth! speak to each other, in truth!”
And the leaves rustle,
And they listen.
And the felling stops,
And the yelling stops,
And truth dares to bare itself on the forest floor as
A shoot luscious green, midribs transfigured
In the shimmer of the star of the amber dawn.
(c) nyonglema
Communication can hurt or heal, it all depends on the wielder. But I’ve seen the simple exchange of perspectives lead to new solutions yet unheard of, which lead to bright futures for people whose positions hitherto seemed so radical that no consensus was possible.
Let’s dare to challenge our status quo. The future is ahead of, not behind us
waghni 