I chose you over surfing waves in the middle of there. Here I stare into your eyes, like the paint smiling At this magical moment. Lavender hovers between us Like a connection heart to heart. I'm hung on your Words. Now I hold you, as the bars stay shut, the bars Shudder at RNA code, and the restaurants cower. All the doors are shut, so I shut our door and hold you. I chose you. You chose me. (c) nyonglema
Tag Archives: love
Candle in the wind
They are quite unpredictable like funeral tears.
The casket weighs down on a metallic stand in
The middle of the compound. The building
Is empty, the heart is empty, the palm fronds
Over this brownish soil staining my shoes
Have seen tears trickle in silence down faces.
The wind tries to snuff out the wick, but it resists.
You clung to the breath gushing out your throat,
Pulled by the cloaked reaper, but eventually it's
Gone. You've seen tears trickle down wrinkled
And smooth faces. You've consoled and cried,
With arms tight around a wounded shoulder.
Then, the breath soothed in melodic syllables.
You're clinging to the wind, the candle resists.
But the gusts gush too strong, the flame bends to
Mourn. The leaves rustle on the acacia tree,
The leaves rustle on the mango tree, The leaves
Pause to mourn. It wasn't the reaper calling.
A bearded Jew picks you up like a prom date,
His halo catching the pearls of your white dress.
The fiery chariot makes your half smile shine, as you
Look back at the tears to come, and say one last prayer.
But the gusts really gush too strong on the wick,
And the flames disappear to leave darkness.
You're gone.
We're torn.
We reach for the wick, but notice the flame still
Burns. The flame resists, our tears cannot.
Our fears cannot.
A fiery chariot
Took you away to a better place, but we are in
A bad place. We wanted to hear your voice,
We wanted to hold you, not some wax and wick in wind.
We wanted to own you, but life is for God's glory
And glory is unpredictable like a candle in the wind
(c) nyonglema
Heal
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
To Live
The drops of rain piano on the bars of my window
Where I can see the hide and seek game sun and rain
Play; the clouds laugh in silver rays like joyous waterfalls:
Birds love waterfalls. They polka the sky and tweet
Their cares away to the gentle wind under their wings.
Nature just opened its eyes to smile on the eternity
Of me, the sun, the rain, the clouds, the wind, the birds,
And the rest of restless creation soaking in the beautiful
Predicament of being alive for just this brief while
And yet relishing the divinity and love in every moment of it.
(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
My secret is that:
Nobody knows that I died a long time ago.
But she would have known,
Even from the slab at Melen.
She just slept.
She never liked hard surfaces,
Preferring the 6 cushion couch
Of red yellow and orange circles of my childhood.
I still remember the watery smells that danced the Burlesque
Of firefly magic from Lake Wum on my childhood days.
The chairs sat under a family of 20 with 1 mother.
Yes, same chairs followed us to Yaoundé, where
She'd start the TV shows with me and then slip away.
Then I like a bad dream would slowly touch her skin awake:
"Mum you should go to bed now".
The show was over.
She would rise then go to sleep.
In a 6-foot hole in Baligham.
(c) nyonglema
My little flower #love
Down by the shore of city life, I found my little flower:
White lily shining fragrance the size of the Eiffel tower.
Unexpected the feeling of finding beauty right here,
Down by the shore of the rush of life, on the pier.
Down I stooped and scooped the softly petals,
And a whiff of joy made my feeble heart unsettle
The petals so brave were not the frail of despair
But showed the strength of surviving hostile care.
The sepals seemed to have done their fair share,
Cradling the white and shunning life's scares.
Their green sang odes to my heart's singing strings,
Like the rebirth as deep winter announces spring
By the shore of city life, I held the peduncle
And tucked it into my tangled hair's crunkles.
"Journey with me through all of life's worst despair,
My little flower, through life, surviving hostile care"
(c) nyonglema
9
9 is like something uncompleted, but with a tinge of very special.
If God multiplied Himself, there would be 9 of Him.
It could have taken 9 wise men to avoid Herod's whim
And those 3 little pigs if nine were quite the team.
9 is like something still being perfected, but already very Godlike
Like the 9 lives of a cat, which signifies eternity
Or my will for the whole nine yards with you with me
Or me on cloud nine at your breath forming "sweety"
9 melts the soul, mends the heart, and lifts the mind to new
Planes like you, always dressed to the nines,
Or me caught for nine years like wheel and spline
In the magic of your curves, thoughts and mind.
My golden adorned finger still sings the joys of December,
And memories flutter around my mind like butterflies amber
Probing the nectar from a pollen filled field, smiling as they taste
The joys of being you, and near you. 13 years seems like the haste
Of a boy to the Christmas tree, but it's not toy-time yet,
It's just a celebration of you and me, when hearts met
Lips formed forever, and hands sealed like cymbals
And the Seraphins played along as 9 years are just a symbol
To hold firm the objective in a beautiful God-wrought gimbal.
(c) nyonglema
Ego #divorce
What are we teaching our kids? Life is becoming so demanding, that we don’t tolerate each other. Life has become so artificial, that we have forgotten that we are just apes trying to figure out how to make each day better.
As more and more couples break, I cry for humanity whose young are learning that this is normal, and our society which teaches to give up once they going gets tough, as if relationships were a bottle of vodka at the corner store: if you don’t like this one, you can have that one. Let’s walk the pain of life and relish it…that’s the only solution to abuse.
“Be strong, my child, never give up!”
The surgeon is pulling my soul out with kind words,
No anaesthasia, just kind swords hacking at me,
Taking away myself in lumps of tumour.
It had metastasised and eaten the bond away.
The bond that made me. The bond that made me me.
“You must be strong in the face of adversity”
Said he as instead of treating his humour
He became weak in the adversity of his university love.
I remember the smiles and kisses they told;
Stories of times that now seem wrinkled and old
Where they held hands, and wore bands
And raised lands, and made me.
“Never give up, never ever!”
Said he who was giving up on us
Giving up on me, because he couldn’t stand
To sacrifice anymore.
Because she couldn’t stand to grace his side no more,
No submission from either.
My tumour had birth a pride so big
It ate the bond, the bond, the bond that made me me.
“Learn to tolerate tough situations, they make you strong”
And two wrongs, only make me write
Pain in the blood of my cornea, calling to the corners
Of their hearts where love is boxed in, caged in,
Fighting larger-than-life versions of themselves
And losing, like my soul’s pain loosened to wander,
Yet I should bend only to my will, and tolerate
To be as successful as they’ve been along the way.
Ego.
Tolerate?
Ego.
Never give up?
Ego.
Fix me up, fix you up, fix us up?
Ego?
Like “No” from the depth of a grave,
I killed my family in Latin.
(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 