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
Tag Archives: poetry
Why me? #poetry
Sometimes I ask why me?
Sometimes, the night is darker than should be
Or the light just a tad too bright for me
Sometimes the water is Antarctica on my skin
Or I seek Antarctica to bring peace to my skin.
But why me with
These words to say what I feel and make you
Feel the light bouncing off a distant view,
Floating before your silent eyelids, telling
Tales from long ago, waking memories yelling
From your childhood, singing a song you knew,
But now forgot?
With these words healing through me,
Binding through me, loving through the vessel I am,
When a pen or keyboard stealthily lift up the dam
And the flood cannot keep, and the whole world holds its breath
While history fills up, but the Earth in all its breadth
Cannot answer, and I must just be still seeking, still me.
(c) Nyonglema
Turtle passion #poetry
The slow passion that ebbs and flows
From the mixing of words into some story,
Some hope from some other joyful or not story,
Unexpectedly grips the silence and grows
The words on the pages into hyperbolic worlds.
Then you’re hooked to seeing pages come to life
At the corner of a library aisle, where books
Watch you drink in the words. Those moments are
Magic to your soul as like through butter with knife
You wage epic battles with fantasies unknown.
Then the pages that your consciousness builds
Slowly unfold in Roman script on some page
As you strive to share that passion that ebbs and flows
From the mixing of your words. You’re now part of the guild
Of wordsmiths building hope one metaphor at a go.
(c) Nyonglema
His first poem #NatureIsSpeaking @conservationorg
The little icons play games on the phone screen,
As my little monster muses playing Subway Surfers,
His new drug, my new bane.
Well we parents are keen
To teach him how to live through all life offers
In words, hugs and a cane,
If necessary. I grab the phone like to grab his attention
Fleeting from object to object like bees in a meadow.
But really I did,
I grabbed his attention,
Turned it to the page opening up poetic knowledge’s window
In words unhid,
Yet unknown to me yet. Simple words he must recite
To mum and dad, and Mr Grumpy tearing through age three
Happy to have the phone
Not even turning right
To see the first performance of the object of sibling rivalry
And true friendship shown.
“If all the seas…“, I interrupt the poet rudely
Mouth hanging on the words, longing to utter and make
His parents all proud
Of his bright memory,
“Bow, say your name, then go” I say to the second take
Then he does, opens his mouth
“If all the seas were one sea…” gesticulating as words
Swam out his mouth, climbed the trees, building a massive
One, next to a massive sea.
Waves wrapped round words
Flowing, leaves fluttering on branches with bird nests give
The Axe a legacy
Even more vain. That Axe wielded by that one great Man
Whose only great feat was to chop down the great Tree
And have it fall dying,
Gasping and cursing man,
Gasping and drowning in a Splish Splash which brings glee
To the words flying
Out my boy’s happy countenance splash-washed by accomplishment.
We clap, but those words have left me wondering
As I oft do
Little things made big events,
Why would the great man not wield greatness to support underlings,
But hack on wood
Innocent wood minding its business by the sea, giving you and me
Oxygen, protecting us. That great Tree, now a log in the Great Sea.
Oh what tragedy
Quite Shakespeary
To spear the listener’s heart by killing the hero through his adversary:
Great Man sometimes scary.
My hero hops on me: “Dad it’s your turn”, and I obey
Bow, say my name. Wrap up my congratulations in kind words
Telling him how great
He did just convey
The poet’s message. He’s happy, I’m still secretly thinking his words
Great Man axed Tree Great.
(c) Nyonglema