Come, Eve, come
Tell us what the bite taught you,
What Muse did it point to
As a source of hope in the garden?
Shall this Muse guide us right
As answers evade us while questions assail
Us like trying to tease truth out with a flail?
Shall we live lives not requiring pardon?
Hey, Adam, hello
What wisdom did you gain in that instant
When you tasted freedom from commandment,
Wisdom to take away this yoke?
My peers all wear the uniform:
You only live once so make the “most” of it
By spending it all to appease pleasure’s heat
Submitting to what the body needs
My peers all seek a breed of freedom
Where you do whatever can and calls to be done
Unstopped by anyone, untethered from bonds
Till pleasure’s heat’s quelled
For carpe diem before it’s dark
Nothing comes after, so heal your temporal urges
And let the foolish waste what could be splurged
On fever dreams from Tiberius’s era
We from you have learnt
To fall upon our will to chart our way
Yet the murders, the exile make me sway
Away from such false faith
Oh, Adam, Eve, while you mended,
Eternal unions now end on the slab of heartless courts
And spiral into lost children and broken hearts
That fight each ex-spouse to the death
Tell us how you turned back
Once banished from the garden, how you bore Seth
And how reformed you taught him with every breath
To trust the Master’s manual, and not lying snakes.
Show us again how to love,
How to live fully alive with a renewed purpose
How to be as happy as Dave Ramsey would propose,
But even more, as faith should impose
(c) nyonglema
Tag Archives: Jesus
Renewed
Dark clouds and shadows in the evening sky
Where you expected golden sun
It’s dark again with tonnes of tears to cry
Panic beats your heart, but you’re numb inside
Where warmth had lived before:
Curled arms, elbows pressed to your side
What bent head tear-filled pain hits your eyes?
What can closed eyes see?
Misery piling upon failed tries and woe’s sighs.
What can closed eyes see, if they turn upward
To where many have seen lots
And thereafter moved steadily forward?
Look to the wind blowing a crack through the gloom
And a single ray wriggle through
Letting a smile drawn in light appear in your room
The cold window warms up and takes up new hues
Your arms loose, eyes healing,
The warmth fills you inside as you take up a new you
For darkness was vanquished, and this you knew
But didn’t know-know so
End of day brings in light to you, and with faith renewed
You ponder what you had been told: “He’s with you!”
Not just for part of the pain
But through it all, till tears are dried and the smile is new
Like words floating through space to deeply embrace you
The clouds float away from darkness
And the pounding stops, the flowing tears are growing few
For nothing is so great as to prevail over His tender hug
And His promises are true
Nothing so heavy that following His lead you cannot lug
(c) nyonglema
Class is in session
You thought the learning was over
Chalkboard blowing chalk into the air
Teacher scratching discomfort into your ear
Chalkboard saying things you won’t hear
Class is in session, but the lesson’s eerie
Who brought horror into a classroom story?
Forgive how many times?
Tolerate how many crimes?
The toilet seat meets the dumped socks
In the quagmire of unadulterated ire
Where soccer games and that sucker’s booze
Meet to sink like rugged rocks,
Sink to spark disgust, a horrid fire
Where nobody wins, everything gets loose.
Class is in session, but the lesson’s creepy
Who brought gore into a “love”-filled story?
Keep listening for how long?
Say sorry when I’m not wrong?
The know-it-all yet mostly right attitude
Boils with the demands for attention
And contradicts those moments of little ruse
When the obvious vanishes in in-exactitude:
Hyperboles, irrational outbursts of emotion
Where nobody wins: everybody will lose
The School of Love is in session
“I do” is the entrance exam in grand pomp
Who brought horror into a classroom story?
Or gore into a “love”-filled fairy tale glory?
A cross! A cross! Who drew a cross on the chalkboard
Complete with dying man, scarred with hearts
Crowned in despicable desiccated dead plants?
It’s gross! Yeah, gross! This isn’t the promised reward
That movie with hearts had at the best parts,
When we watched and built all our horizon’s plans!
The chalkboard says He designed it
And tells us how to take it to make it
But why? why is the manual nailed with blood
To Roman torture perfected? Shall we bleed
To get the certificate at the end of this road?
“I do”, the ring, a dress, the suit… a casket?
Buffet, the ball, bouquet, …. a wreath?
Die in order to love?
Die in order to live?
You thought the learning was over
But you just entered the school at Golgotha,
Chalkboard blowing chalk into the air
Laden with a mother’s tears of joy
Teacher scratching discomfort into your ear
As creation is renewed in flesh joined at the altar
Chalkboard saying things you won’t hear
Unless you listen: class is in session. “This is how
You love one another”
(c) nyonglema
The Battle for Witnesses
The war cries deafen in thunderous dust:
Churning Earth with mortar,
Bullets pelleting dead soldiers,
Muzzle flashes barely visible through the crust
On their viziers. War scars
Will form years after marching orders
For those who must live with memories of the lost.
Now, expletives at pain inflicted in the battle.
They tumble, we crumble,
Bone fractures, cursed mumbles.
Blood’s a minor distraction in this macabre hustle.
Eyes half open, mouth blown off,
The bodies in cursive in troughs:
Friends will mourn friends in memory of this tussle.
OR
thank God for the life of the fallen —
Who, rosary in hand, went forward
With the proficiency of the Bard,
Wrote, even with axe threatening, for our calling
Into the New deadly Way,
That brings life for aye,
That speaks truth to spear, arrow, or cauldron.
The great news of Life abundantly given.
Nero, Napoleon… all failed!
The martyrs live even impaled
For victory in human view isn’t so in Heaven.
(c) nyonglema
Immaculate Conception
For spirits rare, a vessel rare
Chosen one, chosen for the Heir!
He shielded you from Adam’s stain
Eve’s gain he made you to disdain
Loving mother, hear this misery
Oh Immaculate heart carry
Our sincere confession of faith
To Jesus, even just a wraith
(c) nyonglema
PS: This is part of a longer prayer to be released in time for the Assumption 😉
Mustard Seed
Light a fire upon the raging fire?
The wood shudders and writhes in pain
As fumes scoff at the deadly ire
Dancing about the dying twig, and it's plain:
Why add more fire to fire?
Seventy seven times seven is huge,
But sometimes barely sufficient to quell,
For forgiveness of the Scrooge
Is the silence of a storm-tossed city bell;
But this would cull the deluge:
(For the twig is now bent over,
Both sides seeking trust in combustibles,
The dance of shadows now groovier
Human life precious, now just expendable,
From a spark to a supernova)
That we had that mustard seed!
Barely perceptible, yet full of potential
Calling us eagerly to heed
The Master laying bare the essentials:
Grow faith, reach the mustard seed,
Hold the cycle of hate at bay!
With one act of kindness, a precious flower
Growing in the concrete today
Is the start of the end of destruction's power
Mustard seed. Mustard tree. Today.
(c) nyonglema
Going up
Higher he soars, the one who calls us to more Eyes stare, the clouds do pirouettes A silhouette against the advancing sky Some cry distraught at it happening again: What's to gain if the Master disappears? Memories of the first mass Bread broken, wine shared Hope poured out, on sandy stone On a hill gasping with bare bones Break oh break, hard heart of mine As our Lord leaves to another sublime clime. Oh wake, oh wake hard heart of mine The promises form out of the clay Of the fabric of time before me Hope covers my shivering body In quotes of all that He uncovered From our knowledge new discovered What wisdom we missed, Isaiah! For now, a silhouette against the advancing sky He goes before us as advocate: He lives. (c) nyonglema
Walk on Water
The lessons of the gears that power the universe Pour forth in ambitious drips into a bowl To build an ocean from simple watery smears. From Egypt slavery one was chosen to show the signs, And staff and cloak he led the scowling whole, Across the river; he parted it to stay dry from brine. Before reward for courage to preach against the abhorrent, The prophet chanced upon the Jordan's deadly bowl, And with his student, parted it for dread of its current. But when the promise long foretold at last came to pass God Himself, didn't take a staff, or cloak, But let the water be, and showed His friends His glory. (c) nyonglema
In the desert
I hear voices telling me I'm not enough. My inadequacies gang up for an intervention, And I'm the center of their morbid attention: "You are and will be found wanting." Camel skin marked the way way back. The desert stirred as "Repent" echoed along The lonely shores of the River Jordan, and throng Upon throng came to listen. I'm not there. A straight, flattened way for the Lord Was the requirement for any form of joy. Yet all I bring are curves, hills and voids, And inability to do better or more. "Before birth, before you were formed..." I've read that, but should I believe it? Definitely it was meant for some great prophet, Not me, seed on rocky soil wilting away How shall the Lord travel these traps That my hungry angry soul sets in despair? How shall he navigate a heart so in disrepair Even spiders won't build webs there? "Don't be afraid, for I am with you...." Whispers floating to my cowering ears To persuade me to cast away the fears That gang up to jail-bar my attention. With four candles burning on the wreath, And my healing heart still thinking about my fate While making the straight to welcome the babe I move to not be afraid for He is with me It's a child's craft on the potter's wheel, The trembling fingers on the archer's bow, A wrench eating at a loose nut, but I sure know That I'm not alone in fixing that manger Which for the Architect is Heaven's harbinger (c) nyonglema
Shiny shiny
A voice calls out in the wilderness, preparing
The way for Salvation.
The plan is laid out: the plasma'll start circling
Around His feet, as the notes melodramatically
Change, raising a cloud of multicouloured dust.
The rock LED-struck would lift up in those clouds
And the clouds of fairy dust would produce bread.
The crowds will watch in awe, hearts will turn.
Then standing haloed on the edge of a cliff
He would increase peril by facing the crowd
To meet the Pisa, but only falling to the rocks
Below.
But the drum of the beat will change 'fore his feet
Hit ground, as a flash of the S-chested angels
Whisk him up, leaving levitation to draw out
Cheers, kowtows, conversions, repentance.
Then foreseeing the weakness of the cross,
Bleeding, helpless, He would kneel.
Three years of wasted ministry prevented
By the brave act of trading this simple act
For the salvation of all the kingdoms of the Earth,
('Cause, you know, he who never lies said so.)
Having been assigned leadership to the King of
Heaven and now Earth, all souls would cheer
"Hail to the King, Hail to the King"
And Mission Accomplished, the Son would return.
A voice plans this all in the wilderness,
But it isn't the Baptist.
It's the bearer of all that's shiny,
Bearing light as a beacon to trap fickle hearts.
See how our Saviour chose the scenic route:
Not the glamour of human expression of worship,
He obscured the message with long boring
Parables, that contradicted the common-
Sense of the day, and mocked academia,
Nor the Hollywood-like production of miraculous
Miracles, spiced with convenient back stories;
He healed, resurrected but asked to
Keep such under lock and key until
The Cross had been revealed that
The focus be kept always on Love
Nor comfortable choices to make the journey
Of pain less painful than it needs to be.
He taught climbing out of one's skin
To remind us that human strength doesn't
Get good mileage, but a shared yoke
Kills usurper guilt forever,
He chose a cross, a quiet wooden cross,
That we never forget the Sacrifice:
For us,
But about the Father, and to the Father.
(c) nyonglema
waghni 