Why would you smile at a stranger at the store?
This morning the cat wrecked her pristine couch and
Gouged with lion claws the eyes of her nascent smiles.
Her son got the cue and stood in the path of a passing flu
That knocked him out of his bed onto a sick one
Where temperatures rose and fell to the sound of
The neighbour complaining about the ball that wrecked a
Window. Yesterday, her boys launched a satellite
Off course that took the pieces of glass to the trash.
Why would you smile at the stranger at the store?
Because sometimes,
That all she's got,
It's all she's got.
(c) nyonglema
Tag Archives: hope
God’s punishment #findLight
The furniture gallops towards my legs
And I reach out to grab anything to hold.
The pride is on me once I thud the ground.
I manage to rise again, reaching out
My hands as desperate eyes, feeling.
The stairs like hyenas are next,
Ready to finish me off, they jujitsu-
MMA-grip toss me to the ground, even harder.
I rise again, more in pain, seething with anger.
God's punishing me for not switching on the lights!?
I guess, I'll just switch on on my traverse back:
The stairs and the furniture like puppy
And lazy kitten, just sit still. My punishment's past.
(c) nyonglema
Happy Birthday mum by Meuna (7 yr old)
Happy birthday Mums, I wish you more years.
Mums, grow.
But I am scared of when you die.
I know it is part of life
(c) meuna
Learning to walk #mum
The sun danced into the room through colourful louvres,
While you smiled at me and held my trembling hand.
Fear showed me my face against the ground, not feet
Yet you pulled my hand to rise off the bed,
Towards the novelty of hope.
And you succeeded right there
To start a new colony of dreams:
Going new places with the newfound strength
Seemed the only reason the muscles moved in tandem.
My leg lunged forward, and you slowly matched that step
And I watched keenly to learn how this would feel later.
Then you took another step, and I nearly took you down
With my weight and St Peter's weight on my shoulders,
We stumbled.
Didn't fall.
Tried again.
My leg lunged forward, and you again matched that step.
The hum of the air conditioner bounced off the white walls,
And the news sad as usual on TV couldn't outdo your smile
To me as you watched me overcome doubt along the way.
Who needs to be ready in such circumstances? Just go.
So my leg lunged forward, and you slowly matched that step,
Smiling, clinging onto my hand trembling no more.
I wasn't going to let you go.
I would succeed.
I had done this before:
Back in Bamenda on baby Bata shoes,
You led the way, I followed.
This time I led the way, you followed.
We didn't fall.
We didn't miss your hospital bed.
We didn't cry.
We lunged our legs forward on an adventure to bring you back,
I led the way, you followed
To give your sinews renewed vigour, renewed life.
(c) nyonglema
Starting over #hope
As I stared out the wooden window wishing
I wasn't sitting here, but thinking the words
To paint on this page, I create brand new worlds
That the teachers will totally dig relishing.
But you know sometimes you notice that one line
Is out of place, then the paragraph, then the whole
As the sweat beads decorate my forehead folds
I know I'll draw a line, and toss one into the bowl.
Despair decorates mistakes beautifully, but
I know muses loiter in strange places, like deep
Sea fish hanging their lanterns in a weird jut.
I reach in, and grab one before off it leaps.
(c) nyonglema
Choices
Where do they find their solace when time takes toll?
Choices that is. You know, when a fur coat seems better than a wind-breaking
piece of plastic in a shop where the browned decay of the sales lady’s teeth
hint at the bad breadth of its shoulders, and the colours seem off, but you’re
worried about the environment, so you lean towards it and away from dead animals.
Where do they find their stretch when time takes toll?
At one point you’ve got many, and at another the page is blank. Even the word
to start a poem hides behind the distractions of the day, and your choice to watch
Infinity Wars till 2am, and be up to your employer’s hobby, your livelihood, by
4am, which meant that your brain factory remained littered with yesterday.
I’ve noticed how choices impact choices, no troll!
It’s like the Mahjong possibility counter, and the kanji sign you just clicked
to reduce it, or when you go for a piece further off to the left, and the counter
goes up the sides of your cheeks, like to say you did the right thing by chance
or by calculated meticulousness.
My daughter stares me in the eyes as I get daily old:
I answer her that every action from that first cry she made hanging upside
down with amniotic coat has determined where she stands now, and every
action she freely wills will determine the amount of freedom she can exercise
as time takes its course and my hairline reduces my freedom of hair styling.
My son stares at my lies, head cocked like “It’s getting old!”:
I tell him freedom comes from sacrificing freedom, like Isaac on an altar, or
Joseph in a well, or me writing this here, or Jesus on a cross, or hitting a campaign
or running trail, or studying for a test, or digging up fossils, or just helping a
neighbour: the more of your freedom you forfeit for the right reasons, the more
you’re ready for the fullness of more freedom to forfeit.
(c) nyonglema
Kanye was right…a little #Cameroon
"Who wants change?"
I stare at the last instants of my son
I bare my soul to the sun: scathe me! bathe me
In scars that will heal! The Saian
Promised that pain brings new shoots from the ground
But who shoots flowers from a gun?
But I see flowers rising from bullet-made mounds.
I stare at the last instants of my son
And bear my soul scathing under the sun. Sounds
Are muffled. Hope sang birds' songs
Before on the trees above my lawn. I don't know
That bird, but I sure know the song.
It was Schroedinger's cat predicting my future.
But who shoots flowers from a gun?
Nobody! Nobody believes anything else will come
Nobody bares their soul to the sun
That song is either dead or alive, but nobody's looking.
We all want to see that cat run,
We all want to hear that song, the bird's, you know
I stare at the last instants of my son,
For no finger will be lifted higher than abandon
No hand shall be lent, only backs bent in allegiance.
(c) nyonglema
Vivre en semble #pretendUnity
Le moustique chante dans ces oreilles pourtant pas endormies,
Qui guettent les pas des ravisseurs qui tour à tour font
La garde. Le silence est tel qu'on peut entendre les fourmis
"…ma reconnaissance au peuple camerounais de m’avoir renouvelé sa confiance…"
Erigés sont les poils des bras à découvert dans ce froid macabre,
La peur a laissé place aux sanglots qui se sont effacés par l'indifférence
Face à ces murs en terre battue … ah ce mot "battu" "battre", "abattre"
"… en prenant des mesures nécessaires pour préserver l’ordre public…"
Battues et coupées du monde, les larmes salées semblent laver le tartre
Comme un plâtre qui se brise laissant la fracture à découvert. Ils saignent.
« … Porte atteinte à notre Constitution… » « … d’être mieux
Associées à la gestion de leurs affaires … » Les lueurs d’espoirs s’éteignent
Avec l’arrivée du soleil. L’odeur d’Hadès parfume la rosée sur les jeunes fusils
« … nous avons maintenu notre cap vers l’émergence. » Il n’est pas 2035.
On se gratte la peau, on nettoie les cils. On boit de l’eau infestée de typhii.
Avec l’arrivée du soleil, l’odeur d’Hadès parfume la rosée sur leur règne
« … continuer dans la paix l’œuvre de construction » La guerre ajuste son masque
Ils se grattent la peau, et ils boivent du Lestac, dehors sous des corps la terre saigne.
(c) nyonglema
Watering cans #cameroon #bir #kamikaze
It’s a big question in my mind how much liquid earth can take?
Like if I were to empty litres upon the barren ground of caked
Desert, when does it overflow to stop my ambition of a lake?
Lakes are fun to be on: the waterjet splashes speed soaring,
The arms windmill to move you splashing, speeding, boring
Through the water, laughing, while fishes stare at nothing
Nothing is what the media said was poured on the ground
But I saw the litres ambition to be more than gunpowder sound,
And watering cans spilled their contents on watering can mounds
And in the mound it’s about 5 litres a-piece, slowly ebbing gross.
Blood has a thing for making my stomach curl, and loss
Has a thing for making my eyes unfurl. Both are plain gross.
Gross lies in the media proliferating gross lies to the public,
While watering cans….Did I just call humans farming objects?
Like we’re growing food for some starving child in our republic?
My republic? No a human with holes watering the ground won’t
Grow any food. Won’t heal any wounds. Won’t go out hunt,
Or caress a little kid’s cheek. But guns, guns, they’re totally blunt,
About causing blunt trauma to a nation seeking growth overall.
You can’t silence these cats once you set the nips on your garden wall
And they hang around, they multiply and make humans lamentation walls.
The wall of ego brings watering cans. The porous soil is tired.
Is the ambition to make a lake? Is the ambition for war to retire?
We’ll maybe never know, and till then deserts, blood, heaps, fire.
(c) nyonglema
The End #live
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
waghni 