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
Tag Archives: hope
Believe
My people have beliefs as full as the Grand Canyon,
They’ve been taught to dream as high as it is high,
And to fear as deep as it is deep.
Their dreams are as colourful as the sand of the Sahara,
While they’d been thought to dream as high as the dunes sigh
And to bear as little fear as slipping down the slip-face.
There was a time they trusted in the might of their minds,
And wrought marvels in Odyssey’s of thought and craft.
The clay bent to the swiftness of the hands, and the iron
Broke to form new ornaments, and the copper caved in to
Adorn their bracelets, amulets, rings, and gold, the gold that
Beckoned loud to danger from the shores, laced royal
Vestments, worshiped the throne and cast the light
Rushing through the windows onto the king’s roof from
The crown. The scholars sang pyramids, monoliths, wrote
Them down on wood, on stones, on plants, in minds, in hearts,
The griots drummed away and the engineer turned down the volume
And it all faded from memory, till all left was silence.
A silence as loud as a pride chasing a million buffaloes
In a 1920s movie. As bland as a rainbow painted as seen
By Andrea Bocelli. My people have lost it all in injustice,
In what lies in the government’s hair: all lice.
And as the air thickens about the future, and nobody cares,
My people wish for the status quo, knowing tomorrow
Will just be another today, just deeper in the burrow.
But everything must end someday, even sorrow.
(c) nyonglema
Fly butterfly, fly
Fly butterfly, fly. In the past you slugged
Across the wood to catch some leaves.
You painted yourself colours that would shrug
Off the creatures who see only food
When they look at you.
The acid rain beat your coat, like the
Tears you shed for your digested siblings.
But on you went, midrib to midrib,
Waiting for the day you earn your reward.
Gripping the branches, you’d slip and restart
The journey to the green, from the ant-laden ground
Where a bird took one brother then another;
But you never stopped crawling
You’d always hear destiny calling:
“Die, butterfly, die!” And you accepted the cross
So, fly, butterfly,fly!
(c) nyonglema
To the Modern Parent’s kids
Dear all of you living in the 21st debauchery
Of feel good madness, zombies gawking at shiny blocks
Of plastic, which spew tonnes of nothing to capture
Your minds.
I’m sorry that your freedom is freedom to do the same
As everybody else. The advertisement industry
Finally got your flag, and you’re raising your arms
To hail symbols you don’t understand.
You’re Chinese mercenaries in a Trojan war,
African slaves running the slave market.
I’m sorry that your parents gave up.
Literally gave you up to the television, internet
And everything else that added sand to their hour glasses.
There’s hope for you, but till then, I’ll pray for your freedom,
And that parents will actually look after the root of every kingdom
(c)nyonglema
Which one #freedomToChoose
“Or” is quite a peculiar word:
It includes everything, yet excludes some of them.
It rows the boat forward
And helps it stall sometimes. It contains wealth
And millennia of dirt
In one lump of discovery in poorly lit alleys.
But take away the “or”, and your core is but sea,
Silent, unperturbed, bound to move within the crevices
Of the Earth, where blood is used to extract ores
To take away your “or”. Without that oar, you’re pieces
Of hope floating the torrent, you go where it goes
You flow where it flows, and crash where it crashes.
(c) nyonglema
We take our capacity to choose for granted, but it is not so…choosing is a luxury. You could choose to read this or not because you have a device connected to the internet; some only have the choice not to read. You can choose to like a government or not, in dictatorial regimes, you have but one choice.
You hold a weapon, keep it sharp, and use your choices wisely.
Autism #hope
Misunderstood
Like “Et tu Brute”
Like hating brothers,
Pain and love locked
Like “Et tu Brute”
Like hating brothers
Your cross is heavy.
Each day’s prayer begs to be
Answered, as despair is Romeo
Throwing pebbles at your roof.
But you don’t hear it,
You don’t fear it.
The world is a crystal from foreign shores.
You’re so far off it
Yet so near it.
They don’t get it.
(c) nyonglema
Let Geal Broblems Trevail #inAfrica
The flies dart around his arid mouth, whose sides point to the outline of his ribs attacking his parchment skin. The ground looks exactly like him, though older
A lot older. His mum looks no different; well a little more distraught.
She seeks solace in an empty box, where cobwebs acquaint dusty air and despair.
Then there was the one who had everything he needed, but couldn’t get to any meeting in time. His car fought time in impossible battles where potholes had cheat-codes to rupture tyres, kill the shocks, and shock the monthly balance sheet
Sheets of mud made 10km look like 100km, and the traffic madness made everyday on Earth like an eternal repayment of evil.
Then there was the one who wanted more. He took the fruits of corporate toil to build an empire for him and his child, but Everest seems an easier prospect for each step of the investment process, for each step of the electoral process, for each step of the hoping process.
Processing files gets trickier each person you meet, and civil un-clarity is the clearest form of corruption to be your defeat.
But the international community knows that the most urgent way to solve years of poverty, pain, nepotism, despotism, murders, mass graves, mass rapes, massacres, genocide, homicide, fratricide, betrayal, civil disorder, civil unrest, political abuse, constitutional abuse, religious abuse, educational decline, moral decay, brain drain, societal decay in Africa is with one solution: the LGBT liberation.
The solution to the proliferation of AIDS is to urgently encourage the more dangerous copulation?
The solution to poor healthcare is to urgently create new health care issues?
The solution to hunger is to feed a pack of NGO-related lawyers?
The solution to political injustice is to replace the meaning of the rainbow in your constitution?
The solution to inefficient functionary service is to add new clauses barely understood?
The solution to failing education is to reform only to include the LGBTQ-etc?
The solution to repopulating after genocides or disasters or diseases is barren relationships?
Well…
The fall of every empire starts with political correctness and warped priorities; only…Africa is not even out of the ER yet.
Where should we focus more the aid we get, and our resources: on something that divides the civil society and is the least of our civil issues; or on educating our children out of the inferiority complex and dependency mentality?
I pick the latter.
(c) nyonglema
Hope #wins
Hope for tomorrow,
Hope that yesterday’s pains were but steps to today
And that its joys were but steps to today.
Hope that it gets better.
It really could be worse, but it does get better.
Hope for tomorrow.
(c) nyonglema
Hope #neverGiveUp
When the floor has come fast against your face
The temptation is to stare there, and stay
Waiting for it to come off you and race
That you may keep running, it should the other way
But if the Earth has come to meet you
Feel honoured, and peacock your mind and chest
Then say “Bye”, and take the dust of too,
And just set off again to give your best.
(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
waghni 