Tag Archives: love

Crowd-sourced morality

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


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



Guts over fear

Reality sometimes looks too real to be desirable
As clouds dance with darkness before the sun
A macabre dance that stirs rock and rubble
On every path before eyes that once had fun

The hairs of your neck crane to whisper to you
About chills felt before great battles, great losses;
Shoulders dropped, longing to be hugged anew
As when you scraped your knees while having fun

The whisper like wind dying on distant beaches
Lifts no spirit, but instead freezes passions
Till all is bland amidst the dreary dying fishes
On closed shores where once the tourists had fun

Every path is macabre, so only darkness is desirable
And new life which normally paints in smiles
Must be called anything: clump, parasite, not viable,
Unconscious, killer of wallets, pathway to lost fun

Anything to soften the blow of making it all end
For in an instant fun became burden, and leisure
Became a burden of 2 lines on a stick upending
Your life. Yes anything to take you back to fun

But does calling a lion a goat rob off its mane?
Or does calling a leaf a book rub off its green?
Or does seeking a way back out of the rain
Mean scarring your mind in a quest for fun?

Fear is a horrible counselor when emotions flare
Like alcohol flames upon an aching heart.
Fear will choose death when money gets rare
Fear will choose pain just because the path’s not fun

Fear will have you sell your all, over a mere tear
But hope is nothing like that impostor
Fear will take your heart to dash upon the stairs
But hope it heals your mind bereft of fun

Fear will say you’re too young to be great
Hope says pick up that cross, yes you can
Fear will brim your heart with fermented hate
Hope warms up the pain on a path to fun

Fear says shame will mark you all your life
Hope says “mum”, and loves you in tears and smiles
Hope lays flowers on the right path, plays the fife
As you walk forward smiling, fear nearly gone

Fear says maybe not, do what the politician says
Hope says life will love you in thick and everything
Hope calls you to take that little step that sways
Your life right again, and that of that little human being

Fear leaves. Hope takes over, the clouds can’t cover
The rays sipping through leaves to light up your path
Shoulder raised, not a smile yet for it’s not yet over
But you’re building steps up to a heart in a hearth

Warmed by picking hope over lies and fear intended
To lose you. Reality looks different when you turn
Your eyes beyond expedience to love as it burns
Bright. Light. Fun. Love. New life. New hope. New deeds
With a little life you watch grow. You love into glow.
And it watches in wonder as you grow into all it knows.

(c) nyonglema





DINTS

Divorce, severing hope and mercy from promise
Is a desert of dust-laden rushes of sand:
Not loud, yet sapping health and all peace.
The quiet hides despair's gold-veiled bland
Solution to the problem of evil: Suffer!

(c) Nyonglema

Interesting take: A Homily on Marriage

Never Stop

Lord, You never stop. 
You pour out blessings without measure
To soothe my heart and heal hope's rasure

The blessings just flow
From icy Everest to shimmering sea,
With fireflies lighting the shore with glee

My ways You straighten 
Undeserved, even when all seems lost
You're flicker to sun to defeat the frost

Lord You never stop, 
For great are Your ways to those who love
To those who trust, and put none above.

Lord You never stop, 
You seek the single, you search the void
Ninety nine wait till one hears Your voice

Lord You never stop, 
You call sinners to the feast beyond
Where mercy offered makes guilt abscond

Lord please never stop, 
My only hope, my only treasure
My life and love, Your Word my pleasure.

(c) nyonglema

Special moments

We miss them when bliss seems too elusive, 
When ailments of a foot, or of an eye
Clamor and demand your attention exclusive.
What did you overlook? 

One foot aching means the other foot, 
And the rest of the body are well. 
Isn't pain a signal that something is afoot
Only in part of the whole?

So as the lion gores the deer, and the snake
Cracks the bones of that tender cub, 
Or you notice the quivers and deadly shake
As the earth opens to engulf,

What are you likely to overlook? 
Oxygen flowing, the sun shining, humans surviving 
Horrible catastrophe? 
The rescue crew, first responders, lion cubs tenderly
Fed by their loving mother, 
A snake living another day, 
Dead matter feeding the humble beetle? 

For no evil can exist without prior good. 
As there's no darkness without prior light
There's no pain without prior serenity
There's no war without prior peace
There's no hate without prior love
There's no death without prior life
There's no end without a prior start. 
What did you overlook 
As you inertly focus on the call to take action,
While cursing the rest of you still active? 

(c) nyonglema

Be #JenEus

Roses catch rays of sunlight in their red gaze, 
While a butterfly flutters by. Forget the butterfly. 
A blue jay descends on a ray, its wings ablaze,
Throwing shimmering rays the way of the rose, 
And they play sun ray tennis, 

Bluebells, and sunflowers too are in that place, 
As the blue jay sings its song you'd hate to hear
On a cold morning as dawn gently tickles your face,
Half dreaming, half feeling your lover's arm
Not too heavy, just cozy right,

Singing lyrics that lull you out of sleep to haste
The day away with chores, leaving the heartbeat
Behind, and longing to return as the sun kisses the waves. 
I'm watching sun ray tennis between the blue jay
And the rose, thinking about Love. 

You know, the Love that made the world and the days, 
Chose a people, and a cross, and who just Is. 
Yes. He said it Himself as Moses captured the phrase: 
"I am who is". He doesn't last, He just is, 
Like eyes locked in romantic embrace. 

Watching the blue jay, butterfly, rose and sun rays, 
Dancing their love around the halo they create, 
Bathed in the majesty of nature's ultimate masterpiece, 
I wish that all our love, all your love doesn't last, 
But rather, may this love always be. 

(C) nyonglema

Do it for Love

"One day you'll fall in love"

I heard the knife stab my ear drums
For that word had wheels with sturdy spokes
And rolled away from the bleeding guillotine
With the hearts it had stolen, then broken. 

Romeo fell up the balcony while the bats
Roamed the sky, catching the bugs in his 
Poetry. The melody cast a shadow at Juliet's
Door and with his head over her heels, 
Her heart was gripped by the lyrics 
Pouring into the secrecy of that instant. 
The crickets sang the background, and 
Everything heaven seemed to hang in the air, 
The breeze waltzed her hair, her dress 
Throwing shimmers to enthralled Romeo:
Never to part, they'll live the ever after ...
Romeo's dead, then fall Juliet. 

Over and over the Poison and the Dagger 
Start as toddler Egos, wanting what they want
And nothing else. Led by the fear of 
Being on an island, we seek to put the 
Other in a cage, and have them lark 
Out our favorite songs to the rising 
Sun, with pretty feathers, as pretty 
As the bars that we have offered them 
To look out through. Who wants to be alone? 
So Romeo dared choose the suicide of women, 
And Juliet that of men, each conquering fear of 
Their worst death to defeat their worst fear, 
For who wants to be alone? 

Maybe it wasn't love after all? 
Maybe the judges gavelling unknowing children 
To a future of multiple homes, fathers and mothers
Or single homes, with guns drawn across the parapet
Aren't breaking love, but something else? 
Maybe I shouldn't fear the word as I've been taught
By decades of soap operas, movies, stories 
And by this dog-eared blue and read Oxford dictionary. 
Maybe we're all wrong to think when we own 
A person, we are doing it for Love?
Maybe love is giving it all, and even more
Till we have no more blood to pour?
Maybe Love has given it all, and even more, 
So we know how to love our neighbour? 

(c) nyonglema








My son is 10

Only yesterday you put your fingers in my eyes
As if to dot them, to make them more perfect for you. 
Today, you cross my Ts and with ink, dot my i's
For our conversations have got richer with each day

And as I recall cradling you to sleep with many tries
For you would stare, looking for everything new
In the living room, where you and I crawled like spies, 
Discovering every nook, every cranny, every day, 

I relish  you now, on your way to start your own fires, 
On your way to be the spirit that brings out something new, 
On your way to reach mine, then peak at a higher spire
On your way to change the world, your way. 

(c) nyonglema