Tag Archives: yaounde

Breathe ….not #bringbackourInternet

March 25, 2017 nyonglema Leave a comment

Breathe, breathe…I wish I could breathe.
The infant’s face crimped into morbid contortion by pending asphyxia
Breathe, the breath Adam received
The breath we all so very need,
Will dad listen? Will mum listen? Do they care about pending hypercapnia?
Breathe, no I won’t breathe till they care
Till somewhere in those stones a rose springs
Till within their souls they yearn to listen to me
Listen to my tears choking within my lungs
Curdling under my eyelids, hanging on a lash
As the echo of my dying complaints.
Did they hear it? I know it escalated from whimpers
To murmurs to screams…but all are now dying.
Like me, losing my life each dying second,
But nobody cares.

love

Sing for mum #ripNzie #Anne-Marie

July 26, 2016 nyonglema Leave a comment

When you cross the Pearly Gates, will you sing for mum?

I recall those tender dew watered Yaoundé morns

When the cassette spun your voice out the Kenwood speakers,

Lulling my childhood ears to plains which white lilies adorn

And bees buzz the harmony to your vocals and the horns.

I recall especially as each new year died to birth another one

That mum would pop the cassette as metronome to the countdown.

And we would be eagerly watching the TV, eyes darting from clock

To TV, from clock to TV, holding on to the present’s each sound,

Conscious these moments shall roam hence only in Memory’s town.

The lyrics were beyond my mono-lingual grasp, but for “Liberté”

Where I felt freedom of my spirit soaring, and then “Bonne année”

Which nobody needed to explain. This is all I can take with me round

Memory’s town. But mum sure knew all the songs, and would sing away

As I watched in marvel as her lips waved a magical musical day

So Ma’am Nzie, this only I ask of you as you walk the path she took:

Let those words I didn’t understand but which my childhood shook

Pour once again beyond Peter, with love messages from me, three and more

And please, let her… please… harmonize once more every single hook

As once she did, but now in praise to my Maker as He lovingly looks.

fear

HOME (2007)

December 20, 2013 nyonglema Leave a comment

Home’s laughter and joy, where good thoughts mature;
Home’s water for life, and without colour or odour;
Home makes eyes water, but beneath blesses each smile.
Not home the seat of vile yoke-wielders Satan couldn’t beguile.
Not home despair growing from the tree you didn’t help spawn.
What’s home when your peers relish as sadness does you a turn?
No! Not home if I can’t rest at night and wish the morrow.

Home’s children in the present hopeful and eyes turned to the future;
Home’s elders drawing the past to give the present’s pleasant contour;
Home’s youths building the future with the puerile and senile,
All hand in hand lifting Home higher in each while.
Not home hearts buckling under unfulfilled dreams, hearts that yearn!
What’s home if children’s present shames elders’ past, and in turn
Home’s youths’ future condemns their very life so hollow?

Home’s working for your bread and to your produce more manure;
Home’s doing what you crave and in your grave be happy manure.
Home’s scorn for the hedonists, respect for the agile.
Not home the heart-tearing feeling of drying the Nile!
Not home where your greatest achievements meet the urn!
What’s home when greater achievements are mere kindergarten turns?
No! Not home my teary eye sharing in my fellowmen’s sorrow!

Home’s being satisfied that all one needs is secure;
Home’s not wants achieved, but necessities from the store;
Home’s absence of frustration at getting blamed your job’s an empty vial
Because home didn’t offer the tools you needed, though they’re there all the while!
Not home when the doctor gets blamed that the propellers don’t turn;
What’s home when the shoe mender mends body burns?
No! Not home a place where squares fit circles in a mentality so shallow.

There was home in my heart as TV waves my growing heart would lure.
Homewards, I’d think, into prospects of rejoicing in a reality so pure;
Reality, home to opportunities, possibilities: me and my dreams down the aisle,
With home’s resources building a mighty Rome in the eyes of a little child.
That was home as my blood pumped and I awaited my turn
To give home all my feeble self could afford. All I could learn
As age called was broken dreams, and the pain of a morose morrow.