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
Tag Archives: Peace
It burns not…#cameroon
They said.
Boko Haram just killed 17 Cameroonians in the Far North
Boko Haram's attack just foiled in the North
Two innocent people kidnapped in the Adamawa
Successful repulsion of incursion in the East
Ghost towns dominate in the North West
Blood bath on both sides in the South West
Ransoms requested in the West
And since Littoral, Centre and South are not in the pot
We can conclude that all is ok; the fire is not that hot.
(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
Talking with bullets? Lose-Lose #Cameroon
It was easier before:
The cock crowed, Jesus turned, the tears flowed
The cock crowed, I turned, and the shower flowed
The cock crowed, luck turned, and tears flowed.
Easy solutions were easy to get while things were easy
But nine stitches rhyme with nine lives in their sick essay,
So time stitched hell and instead of being stitched in time
The fabric gaped open to swallow into its darkened slime
The baby, the bath water, the room, the parents, the villagers,
The fires, the char, the innocent, the pillaged, the pillagers.
It was easier before:
But we always want more, and the tears flow
But we always want war, and gun showers flow
But we always taunt luck, and the tears flow.
Easy solutions were easy to get but Greed’s chains are titanium
Laced in a diamond lattice tying down the maestro of pandemonium.
The constitution had saved once, but those promises fell into the slime
Stitched by hell to cut workers’ pockets to benefit organised crime
Where everybody wants favour, everybody seeks the power to sign
At the expense of kids’ futures, mothers and fathers crying.
It was easier before:
But now I need a visa, and I may not go
But now I need a visa, to live in my own home
But now I need a visa, to live.
Easy solutions will be easy to get where competence is worth any
But everybody wants favour, so logic took a stray bullet in the alley
And Cameronians closed their eyes on children crying
Everybody closed their eyes to the economy slowly dying
As if we were not one! I say we are one, and this war cannot be won
Until we become truly one: citizens, leaders (citizens), doing all to brighten the sun
It was easier before:
But now everybody is strapped, like that fixes anything
But now everybody is trapped like they can’t fix anything
But you wear your ego like that fixes anything!
It is still easy now:
Let’s get back to being humans, talking with humans.
That
fixes everything
(c) nyonglema
Tomatoes in the Wagons #stopWar
When I think of the wars in Cameroon, my mind goes to Asa’s Fire on the Mountain: “Could it be love for your country, or for the gun you use in killing?” she sings.
I think she missed the “greed” question, that could desire to sacrifice human life to sustain the funding of the war, and generate income for some uncanny souls. Well finite are the resources, finite are the humans
Tossed around in the wagons, the tomatoes bounce on each other
Squashed one at a time on a path they didn’t decide
On a path they must follow like human life.
Then the owner calls to the controller
And the engineer, yet noone hears
And squash, splat, squash
Till all left
Is just
One…
(c) nyonglema
Something fishy #discrimination
My colleague wants the Art of Zen, in French of course
Translated from Japanese…I suppose, for they started it.
But she wants it from the UK…I’m like: “That’s horse –
Shopping in the middle of the ocean…they’re more likely
To stock it in English, you see. But I’ll search in Italy”.
Then, I find myself in Dakar at some point, and while walking
In the mall, a bookstore calls to me. I go toward it.
They don’t have it, neither here nor at Mermoz. But the thing
That hangs on my brain like a shroud, while the lady pours
Out the information is the fact that English books are here.
Think about it: this is an all French country, colonised
By France, having spent all their lives with them.
They had books in English, and games too …to my surprise.
Then I asked myself about other countries, which should be
Carrying these as standard, where books would be
In every stall in 2 languages as per their constitution.
And my heart sunk. I felt pain for every single one of them
In such countries, where language replaces skin’s function
In the minds of those who wear hate like a hat I despise
And cower to the custody of morbid segregation and fear.
Well, prejudice is a but a bug in the universe’s most infant app
And it takes mere (not sheer) will to wipe it off our map.
Take up your napkins boys…it only seems hard.
(c) nyonglema
Gabonese truth #Gabon
In earnest beyond the Pings and Bongs of firearms
And call to live your life on the ground with raised arms
I see one dying people
Taking shots from lying people
And, they, dear friends lose again amidst the hearse’s palms.
(c) Nyonglema
Fading Smoke #collateralDamage #stopWar #peace #bombs
I wave my blistered hand before my bleeding face,
Waving gunpowder smoke and blood fumes in the mist
To see the survivors, to see hope.
But all I see is crushed bones and leaking skulls;
All around the steaming tarmac lie lifeless lads,
Lost lives fill the air with more choking tears.
But we can’t cry now!
“Run! Run! Before they cast another bomb on us!”
I’m on my feet, staggering forward like an alcohol keg,
Surprised to be running alone to the porous camp shelter;
Oblivious to pain, oblivious to care, I stagger on.
Hoping to get my weapon and answer their fire.
It is then it dawns like a wooden blow on me:
I’m no soldier; they aren’t either!
Infant body parts entangled with women and men’s blood
Litter the town square, and I’m staring at the military shelter:
A wooden icecream stand with holes on the whole frame,
And blood , and burnt flesh reeking in the foetid smoke;
And… I break into tears.
(c) Nyonglema
A baby’s smile #smile #baby #innocence #newLife
Can you describe a baby’s smile? Let me try:
A breath of fresh air while the sewage tanks are drained;
That momentary silence when gunshots fill the air;
Cool palm oil on your tongue after your first crab curry;
when you shut your eyes to stop incoming traffic glare;
when a persistent cramp finally disappears;
Taking off your blistering work shoes when the day is done.
The pureness of the lines, and the innocence written in an infant’s smile cast all my stress away.
Unrestrained, untainted. The pure expression of appreciation that says: “Yes, you count”, “Thank you!”, “I love you” without uttering a word.
Those 5 seconds where everything means so much more, where nothing else matters than how happy this human being is of the mutual expression of love, as you smile back.
(c)Nyonglema
In the comments, tell us what your baby’s smile is like to you….
PEACE #peace #war #stopwar
The soft wind combed her silken hair,
She stood there
Looking at me; a mere mortal she saw
Looking at her shawl.
I saw the accursed bruises she bore
Like a slave at the oar;
Her silver skin striped in black and blue
(She wished I knew).
Her wilted lips losing their colour,
Cut; what horror!
Her clothes told not of misery, but of fights;
Even through long nights,
The clashing of metal. “Oh! Such is not woman’s mettle”,
Myself I said to.
Then she uttered a ghastly echo, as if in strain:
“In vain
I’ve tried to cross, and have suffered like He on the cross”
I was so cross!
I stood wondering at the sight at Earth’s borders.
But worse yet are the plights of my earthly brothers
Who shunned this beauty. May Destiny forgive us.
(c) Nyonglema
waghni 