Tag Archives: Murder

Here Lie Lies

Here lies Lie, who killed no woman nor baby:
No fire was started, no life was lost lately
The char was made up 
Not even one stray cop
Was near Ngarbuh on Valentine's day 2020. 

(c) nyonglema 

Can’t stop, won’t stop #ngarbuh #fongum #more

Who cares? The tears dry up into bitter red salt crystals
On the petals fallen to this ball of water and rocks, muddied
In lush vegetation trampled by boots, slippers, silent cymbals. 

They clang, but the ears float far away, like the soul halo
In the backlit fumes of fresh foray against foe and friend,
For revenge is mellow so that metal and more can billow. 

But who hears? The blue bird chirps its pain in arrows
And hearts, and graphic designers design gore for that
Yet the glass stays cold despite blood, char, and ash it shows. 

It stank to them who stole the pictures to horrid memory, 
But not to me. No phone can relay those chemicals to me
Or the emotions that come with walking on war territory

So I smile, and swipe left. Denial is the media's vial, 
Filled with self-loathing poison, the ministers love it too. 
More bullets, more fire, and less genocidal survival. 

(c) nyonglema


Truth or dare? #RIP #hope

No neither.
I see… I see bird droppings zoom out the sky and
And…
Humans drop looking for luck in different spheres.
The crowd panics. Not felled yet, trees stand
And run for the woods where leaves shield.
And…
I see droppings hit the leaves, souls leave the trees.

Truth or dare?
No, neither.
Silence is the ether that burns the soul of the soldier.
Nobody believes the wood was felled,
As no noise was made when it fell in the woods.
Everybody says deforestation is a lie.
There were no birds, there were no trees,
There is no Earth, there is no you, nor me.

Just truth caught in a dare:
Dare to exist,
Dare to pervade,
Dare to be exchanged or dare to grow.
It lurks in the backdrop of wood becoming coffins.
It seeks to become a speaker box,
It seeks the Carpenter to heal the wounds,
But as is the case often, nobody wants to be true or dare.

Pride rides the pain of the thuds on Atlas’ load,
Rippling through his bones, and he bumps on the trees.
Then he screams: “Speak ye truth! speak to each other, in truth!”
And the leaves rustle,
And they listen.
And the felling stops,
And the yelling stops,
And truth dares to bare itself on the forest floor as
A shoot luscious green, midribs transfigured
In the shimmer of the star of the amber dawn.

(c) nyonglema

Communication can hurt or heal, it all depends on the wielder. But I’ve seen the simple exchange of perspectives lead to new solutions yet unheard of, which lead to bright futures for people whose positions hitherto seemed so radical that no consensus was possible.

Let’s dare to challenge our status quo. The future is ahead of, not behind us

Wake Up #Africa #newEden

Don’t you just hate the incessant annoyance buzzing out of a cellphone?
Your eyes are shut, and dreams are in you, swaying and cuddling you
And there’s this syncopated harmony floating about like US drones,
Like you’re going to get hit. Like you shouldn’t be sleeping, but you,
You love it here. The real world’s harsh with things to fear, fears to bear
Bears in the office, officials plundering taxes, taxes to be paid,
Payments you are owed, Owen missing goals, Goals not getting nearer….
Near this cosy cushion of dreams, the cursed music is played
By transistors you’d bash but for the fact that you’ll have to pay
For the pain of being able to make a call again….
But that’s not what I’m talking about today. No way.
Who are you going to blame when it’s time to feel the pain?
 
Africa! AFRICA! Hey! AFRICA! It’s 6 a.m. and it’s pouring.
You’re stuck in a past of pain, perjury and mourning, looking further back
To dream of glory, gumption in days when you built stone storeys.
Those stories are history…..hello! ….Wake Up!!!  Get out the sack
 
Generations boated in hordes, hoarded to shores where all fell apart
To generations hoarded on their own shores, robbed, tortured, more
To generations seeking for sure, for their brains have lost their heart,
And disconnected from self they float in hordes tormented and more,
 
Are your pedigree. Shall you stop to stare at the tripping stone there?
Shall you mourn the morning that brought mourning till it disappears
To some sugar candy mountain in purple pill colours, and hear
Psychedelic mushrooms hum soothing tunes into your crying ears?
 
Africa??? Who are you blaming now, while the shutters blind your view?
They enslaved you? You’d been doing it for ages and taught them too,
And caught and chose the ones to be sent off in balls and chains in twos
And forced them in exchange for glitter, clothes, status and booze.
 
They signed shady deals? Well not amongst themselves they didn’t!
Not like some shady deal CIA-hidden between Obama and Biden,
Or Paul and Phil. You were represented by the mice with hidden
Agenda at the cheese distribution party. So …..nope they didn’t.
 
Rather than mourn, and seek root in tradition tradition…tradition.
What’s tradition? And who said it was frozen in some distant time
Before others changed your clime? Your ancestor’s oral diction
Was altered, and clothing, and building and art and even clime
 
As you migrated from oasis to oasis, fleeing from wars and drought!
Tradition? That’s a 60s newspaper bashing Facebook for breaching
Tradition. Culture. I’m more for principles, which is deeper, without
Which our bearings are stuck in heavy rotation North East West South.
 
Rather than mourn, and seek root in tradition, reinvent your minds
Adapt, grow. Change is opportunity, and exclusion kills opportunity.
Reverse racism is two wrongs to a right, and no matter what fines
You would levy, exclusion is your energy spent to fix past iniquity,
 
But shouldn’t we be seizing that opportunity? Driving paradigm
Change in little and big ways, and saying to the plants in the garden:
It was tough, but soak it all up, learn from all and then you can design
A new way to live. Then call it culture, call it tradition. Call it Eden

 

(c) Nyonglema

The Wall #heartbreak #lovelost #death #abuseKills

                      Alive                                                      we wove our wands
of magic, Living love                                   to bits with intensity only
A few have come close to. We loved      the unicorns in fairy tales created by
our fantasy in its full intensity:    love in   the imagination of two loving souls seeking
each other, lost in each other. The fairies lived their lives, fluttering around our teen
bellies promising nirvana, like butterflies in my stomach and head, alcohol in each
part of my soul, keeping me in permanent euphoria at the sight, touch smell, hurt
of you, in the morning, evening, night. But Newton’s promise is such a
crime as the floating fays all fell sullenly one by one, and
blaming age to the decay that befell each suddenly.
The end of our Utopia lingered in the air to
push each winged dream out of that our
space, onto the mud whirling around
as earth throttled full ahead
without care. Till my mind
was made up: “Go! Go!”
To flee to flee to
leave and never
come back.And
My heart
bled
As you
Didn’t

Care

 Didn’t bother
To save me

                  Your fairy.

          Dying alone

                 dying.

       Dead

                   by

                       your

                  hand.

(c) Nyonglema

Dying from my porch #stopBokoHaram #Maroua

I’m drifting away, a ghost fleeing its wrecked home.
I’m drifting away, with ghosts fleeing their wrecked homes.

We saw the mother and daughter walk casually past our houses,
Veiled, usual, so we thought nothing of them.
We’d heard of how explosions rocked other cities without announcing,
But it’s human to err, and think it’ll only impact “them”

So as fate had it they lit up their ounces and the blast
Took us all unaware to Peter’s gate, as our bodies breathed their last.

(c) Nyonglema

Looking back at the 2000s #everythingGoes #libertinage

One thousand years ago…I think in 2000-something, or so,

The cure to any basal crave procured in dark alleys was to

Authorise it illico presto

As some means of control

But did anything get better?…well I don’t think so.

 

(c) Nyonglema

WHAT HAPPENS #Africa #Peace #StopWar

What happens when karma turns right around?

What’s clapping to demagogues’ speeches as they mount

Lie on lie,

Promising Sugar Candy mountains,

Each word thought as false as the applaud of the crowd

Gathering round?

 

 

What happens when arms turn your life around?

What’s laughing at demographic decay as bombs amount.

The sun’s less bright;

Dust, blood shoveled on rotting corpse mountains,

Each door wrapt in pain, writhing in tears at the shrouds

Which will cost heavy amounts?

 

 

What happens when mama’s turned down to the ground?

What happens in your heart as that man strips and mounts

Before your eye,

And rips and rakes; all those shrieks you hate mounting,

Each bone crimped in pain at so sad a sound

Tearing your tears out?

 

 

What happens when the army toss your dad around

With laughing? With machete slash his mouth,

Burst his eyes,

Chop him and put another piece to the corpse mountain;

Each part calling your sorrow as flames on the mountain fume in their bout

And your fingers are gripping the ground?

 

 

Mama Africa, can’t you see the arid ground

Soaking up the blood of your children?

Why are you so deaf to the sound?

Why are we cleft so profound into hateful factions?

…

So many questions,

No answers.

That leaves me pondering:

What happens when we’ve stomped all our brethren underground?

 
 

(c) Nyonglema