Tag Archives: Syria

joy, sadness

What would you do if it were you? #refugees #syria #RCA #somalia #eritrea

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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

sadness

Doh Tita #veteran #warHero #stopWar #death

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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

sadness

Dying from my porch #stopBokoHaram #Maroua

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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

anger

Let’s Get Rich #bokoHaram #alShabab #fakeIslam #fakeJihad #crime

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Hey! Let’s go out there on a killing spree,
And loot, kidnap and fill our kitchen shelves
With bills from nations here and across the sea,
And diamonds, then weapons to protect ourselves.

Let’s find a bush wherefrom we’ll buzz then sting
And create routes through nobody could think
And in stealthy style steal their everything
Then plant scare as blood and powder stink.

Let’s mourn our dead as war counts their heads,
And hunt more silly heads to fill their beds
But how to go by this, despite the dread?
We must find a solution to keep earning this juicy bread.

Aha! Jihad’s incentive enough for youth to care:
Doing Allah’s work or risk His wrath for million years,
But to do His work means sweet blessings here
And paradise awaits after they’ve pulled your bier.

So say it loud, say it to the young and old:
“Fight for Allah as sacrifice or till you’re cold!”
But show them not our harems and stash of gold
For doubt could reduce the men in our hold.

(c) Nyonglema

fear

Fading Smoke #collateralDamage #stopWar #peace #bombs

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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

fear

The other side of Freedom #theOtherView #EvilBegetsEvil

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They said they loved me.
Then, the metal beasts came, soaring over me
Heaping dust and blood on our city streets,
As their lethal load hit like rain sheets.

I watched their love puncture the city walls
And sever the sinews off the boy and his ball
Leaving the mother crying for her son, then his dad
Till her tears meant nothing in the wailing myriad.

I saw the hate build with each blood drop
Drawn from the soldiers and innocent. Drop
For drop, survivors intend revenge upon this love shown:
This false love which spurs only hate till we’re all gone.

(c) Nyonglema

This is a view from the other side of fanatism. Taking more weapons to the Middle East will only push more bereaved honest Muslims in despair to take up arms to avenge their lost ones: in that state where all is lost, the fanatics find fodder for their ideas, and turn these honest citizens into murderous terrorists. There has to be another way. A politician suggested diplomacy and negotiations. May another way be found, for bloodshed will only lead to more bloodshed. May the souls lost in the wars on both sides R.I.P.

fear

Para Bellum

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Arm deals and more arm deals, that’s all I see.

Calibres change, the type of artillery

Changes, the game players grey and go and

Are replaced by darker capillary

With greater thirst for bleeding enemy

And with more dangerous artillery.

 

Deadly toys in the hands of eager youth,

Intended for warding off intruders:

Scaring them with heaps of artillery

So that they would harder prepare soldiers

If they should covet and desire to loot.

In their minds they have peace in their brooders.

 

But to brood over unused firepower

While only playing with blanks on dummies

Kindles unquiet thirst only blood can quench

Kills empathy for sonless war mummies,

And in blasts of gun smoke the youth’s flower

Drowns its thirst in the thud of fall’n bodies.

 

(c) Nyonglema

sadness

PEACE #peace #war #stopwar

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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

sadness

WHAT HAPPENS #Africa #Peace #StopWar

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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