In a conflict, the more sensible person should call for a negotiation, whoever that person is. Guns only call more guns. Where the sunlight gives a dying kiss to the watery ripples Of orange despair, my mind wanders like a lost soul. Souls get trampled under dusty boots on the drying Bahama grass, bent over and trying to recoil when The foot leaves it; it has lots to say but its lips are sealed: Children played here under hopeful stars yesterday, While their crease-browed parents argued about the Next stop in their journey to nowhere. The neighbours Looked at their Cicam cloth on the floor in jealousy; Theirs was bare soil, and little food for their brood. Children sprayed bullets at soldiers yesterday While their wide eyed friends laid in red cells, Staring into the distance, avoiding the sight of Brother hacking brother. The macabre sacrifice of Cain, The macabre machination of Nagato Pain unleashing Upon the calm Harmattan smoke-laden wind. My mind wanders where hope and despair clash with rage. Everybody's right in the painting. All that's left, Are corpses, explosions, revenge, decapitations, and a Government that threatens extermination of vermin For foiling their plans of total control and greed Makes you only vermin to be eradicated, cost what may Come what may! Vermin is vermin even in a cradle. (c) nyonglema
Tag: stopwar
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
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
Just one day #worldRefugeeDay
You know that one thing that rents your mind space like a blink,
The tornado of meaning as predicted by feelings and yards of ink
Was a mere heave, and the elements paused to listen to nature breathe
And you’re back to the cocoon whence Nemo got word from the white rabbit.
You’re back to the cocoon whence Nemo got word from the white rabbit,
Oblivious of the maggot feast of society and the prisons of habit
Where hopes meet dreams, and share Hennessey, the other Salmiakki
Some Sake and Odontol in coffins of fun, trust, love…apparently
Some sake and odontol in coffins of fun do, but trust and love apparently
Don’t suit that “Day” set out to deal with what we deal with currently,
And won’t fix anything. But you know most things are so important to humanity
That we set one day out for them, so we don’t forget how important.
That we set one day out for it, so we don’t forget how important
Maimed families from months of murder seeking new grounds to haunt,
Survivors who have everything they’ve lost stored in camps on the outskirts
Of life’s comfort, hidden from the sun’s rays, all crimped together are.
Off life’s comfort hidden from the sun’s rays, they stay all crimped together
Looking to the world which flung death at them, ruffled death’s feathers
Till he came hacking at innocent children watching death unfold
In gory Nandinis of blood, concrete, dust, metal and screams
In gory Nandinis of blood, concrete, dust, metal and screams,
With the distant gaze of art show rooms, I see shattered dreams
And dedicate this one day to something so important to these maimed families,
And dedicate the other 364 to making weapons and wars to maim families.
(c) Nyonglema
This is to refugees, women, youths, parents…all those things which seem important to humanity that we celebrate them once a year, and destroy them the rest of the year.
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
Your breath #refugee #humanCrisis
Thanks to @CrisisHuman for pointing out that “refugee” is just a bad way to disguise human beings displaced from their homes due to other human beings. We live at a time where more and more humans are losing everybody and everything, and have only the choice to leave to live. To all humans losing all, never lose hope….and to all of us, when will our greed stop?
All I wish is to feel your breath in the morning.
The morning bombs thundered our bonds
In shards of glass, piles of dirt and torn mounds
Of once friends, while we planned quickly to abscond
To anywhere Death wasn’t the only sound in the towns.
The blood-soaked dew stained our silent feet
Wading through the floating rattle from shots
Breaking the harmony of our adrenaline chorus of heartbeats
As we walked to the unknown only fearing to be caught.
The camp’s sunrise with promise showed over the horizon
And we got welcomed to our new life with silence
And hurting souls bundled in teary memories and sad songs
But respite too, and hope, nostalgia, food and tents
But all I wish is to feel your breath in the morning.
To wake and look at your eyes bouncing about in a dream
Of our new home, smiling that we made it out of mayhem
To peace. To see your chest heave, to watch the sweat beams
Glide along the tracks of mosquito bites on your bare skin
To feel the warmth you exude as if 35° Celsius
Wasn’t enough, while your hair moves in rhythm
With your sleepy breath, then you turn, oblivious
To all the homeless with us from various schisms.
And breathe heavily as if a sigh of deserved relief,
With the smile of our would-have-been 5 daughter,
Sleeping my pain away in this instant so brief
But healing wounds which would beat our dead doctor
To feel your breath every morning, my only wish
To feel alive again, after my numerous deaths.
Yes, just to feel your breath in the morning
To know I haven’t lost you too this morning.
(c) Nyonglema
What would you do if it were you? #refugees #syria #RCA #somalia #eritrea
There are guns shouting fear through your window shutters,
A bomb blast breaks your neighbour’s home and you’re running down the street.
The kids don’t get it. They don’t get it: why is there blood in the gutters?
Why are hands without bodies, heads with gaping mouths, missing severed feet?
The screaming gets louder, and it’s on your spouse’s and your shoulders
To save them from a threat, unarmed, untrained and the closest
You’d come to death were those Expendables movies in your hard disk folders.
The banks are shut, the bus system is shut, you never even had a Toyota starlet.
What would you do if it were you? If you’re playing metal gear solid in your own town?
Only this time, you have one life, no continue nor save, and to your untrained self are tagged
More untrained and even naive souls counting on you’re strength in this showdown.
What would you do if the only option was either death by exhaustion or having your head bagged?
(c) Nyonglema
Doh Tita #veteran #warHero #stopWar #death
Doh Tita in brown shoes, brown trousers, beige shirt,
The only gentleman shining integrity five miles around.
Doh Tita, everybody knew him, even in the town’s outskirts.
Memory of his war-wrought limping gait,
While he bragged of his world war prowess,
Telling of shrapnel, burnt flannel and some fallen mate.
And as he talked, a tear would have been born
On his eyelid; so much sadness plagued his heart!
But he energetically went on, disclosing the cold tales of that morn.
Like a forgotten folder, he sits and ruminates
About unrewarded sacrifice, the lethal hail all about,
At school with his friends, years of training a pellet deflates!
Wolves kill dogs, must man kill man?
Doh Tita would tell of the glassy looks of the stiff
And we’d listen without lassitude to the Shaman.
(c) Nyonglema
Gun protection #gunViolence
There lay the petri dish in the danger zone,
Fungi flying around to infect those lovely scones
So they put in bacteria to control
And gave each one license to roll
But didn’t plan the proliferation that makes graves of homes
(c) Nyonglema
Tears and Blood #stopWar
My scared feet walked to the battle field,
To see for myself the aftermath of a clash of ideologies.
I expected to see casualties of Christians,
and Muslims, clenched firm in Death’s unwavering fist.
All I saw was humans, twisted beyond recognition,
Maimed by hate in different gear, hairstyles, and tools,
While rain drops slithered between the bloody pools,
As if a sad goodbye from the loved ones they’ll kiss no more.
(c) Nyonglema
