The sun is up, and rubs itself all over my skin,
Yet I feel no flames, just lead filled with lead
Hanging from my bottom eyelids, swinging.
Sunshades usually cast shadows on eye pain,
But this time, the sun can see right through me.
Nothing can save me it seems, sitting on this bench.
The sunshades cast shadows in the teacher's mind:
Sleeping? Not sleeping? No need to check, I suppose.
The lead's getting heavier, and pulls my head down.
The lead's getting heavier, and lulls me, eyes shut,
Head bent. The teacher draws on the board,
And all I remember is that I sleepily missed it all.
(c) nyonglema
Tag Archives: sleep
Sleep …or not #insomnia
The waves quietly pat the boat where the sheep jump the gates, the clouds float away, the squeegee mops away at the drowning noises of today’s hustle.
The buildings walk next to the roads in discourse about when they saw me, and invite a whole bunch of faces to their rave.
I reach out as they beckon, but there’s a clock wearing a silky tie, with the smaller side tugging on my wrist. The conversations turn into murmurs I want to hear, but
There I go, pulled to pixels, mouses (mice) and little squares taunting me, wishing to be poked at to make the DOW indices hop around.
Sorry guys, I have to pick the DOW
(c) Nyonglema
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
Sleep Wars #bedtime #tantrums #kids
It’s 8pm again, and by my clock it’s time to shut eyes and dream loud
But, by the clock of who run this place, it’s not that time yet…no not yet
The butterflies have called a meeting with snails in a crowd
While the legos still have to drive up the air to the mountains
And the ideas keep flowing out their youthful fountains
And then everything is a reason to complain in shrill air waves
And contort when grasped, then toss the toys to care’s arms
And while we count on Reason to make them behave
We are at war with forces beyond our deepest understanding
Kids who feel it’s not time yet to go to the land of dreaming
(c) Nyonglema
waghni 