Little Sacred Song (LSS LXXV)

LSS LXXV

Call Him fake! That bait I would not take!

Make your peace by craving all that’s fake

And to your face I will sing to you

Without fear you are a shame times two

For you trample underfoot His Name

Free of stain with thoughts and claims of fame

And knowing he does not His work do

For such as to His faith He is True

As I hold fast to my refusal

Of mud slings at my divine royal

From you or any who with putrid

Slurs try to drag down the slums and rid

My world of light shining from His Heart

To guide my steps for His my shepherd.

Curled from Bill F. Ndi ©2013 Little Sacred Songs 

Anthem for Essingang

O, macaroon covered with poor chicks' feathers

Go sit down and pride yourself in thievery

Like the slums your disgraceful flag shall fly

With your havoc to your name ever true

My father's house that once all tongue could tell

Has now become a house of thieves

So the rest of the world can see

The emblem of the tears of our people





Clan of mbokos, clan of bandits

With death and sadness in our store

Thine be disgrace, thine be great shame

And repudiation for evermore....


Curled from, Bleeding Red: Cameroon in Black and White

My New Baby & Preface by Pr. Ken Wilburn!

Preface by Dr. Kenneth Wilburn, Department of History, East Carolina University

The authors of this provocative book explore distinctions of individual and group belonging, as well as manifestations of not belonging. Written for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and those seeking knowledge about the complexity of identity, Fears, Doubts and Joys of not Belonging examines variations of imposed and self-imposed alienation. Ndi, Ankumah, and Fishkin explore the rich historiography of estrangement in fiction and non-fiction to demonstrate the universality, timelessness, and varieties of alienation. For example, Muslim leaders like Nana Asma’u of the Sokoto Caliphate disseminated educational poems of inclusiveness to the Africans of Gobir alienated by conquest. In contrast, Europeans who organized the Atlantic slave trade sought power and material wealth through mechanisms of intimidation and force that resulted in widespread hopelessness and exclusion. Both groups were victims of alienation, but those of the caliphate were invited in language they understood to participate inside the new society; those who survived the Middle Passage were addressed in languages they did not understand, transformed into chattel, and kept outside settler societies.

Thus, whether inclusive or exclusive in nature, alienation can be imposed, as heretics have often been painfully reminded by the orthodox. Yet alienation can also be willful, as Christian and Sufi ascetics have frequently demonstrated. In this book’s ten chapters, the authors seek balance in our understanding of estrangement by asserting that joy can also come out of willful alienation. From that half-filled glass of life’s serendipity one can often drink just as deeply of joy as one can of despair. This is what Steve Biko meant when he wrote about Black Consciousness, about discovering joy in one’s identity. Alienation can be transformed from a lock into a key to open the collective Global African in us all. Fears, Doubts and Joys of not Belongingmoves forward that recent scientific discovery.

Madiba

Madiba

We are gathering again in Soweto

Soweto where Biko lives

‘cause only silt has flowed our away

‘cause babies didn’t die to live in shanties

the gold and diamonds they have stashed

while the black betty bourgeois drive audis

on dust filled roads that pollute our hopes and dreams.

Madiba

We are gathering again in Sharpesville

‘cause the dogs are in the suites

sipping   moet and chandon

while our passes and blood

are but memories in their sordid minds

while our mothers’ lamentations  lit rooms perfumed with cigars

where evil eyes lust for flesh

where evil eyes undress the undressed bodies

where dark secrets are whispered of money stashed.

Madiba

We are gathering again on Robben Island

‘cause the monsters have turned the guns on the people

‘cause the rainbow is only an lllusion

an illusion for two dollars a pay day

an illusion for putrid water and shanties for homes.

Madiba

we are gathering again in Johannesburg

‘cause Mariam Makeba is wailing

‘cause Hugh Masekela  is trumpeting

‘cause Johnathan Butler is humming

‘cause Ladysmith Black Mambazo is howling

They are wailing, trumpeting, humming, and howling a new song

A new song  of freedom

A new song of liberation

A new song of emancipation

A new song of transformation.

Madiba

We are gathering again

All over Azania

The land where we want to roam free

The land where we want to nurture the baobab tree

‘cause ‘Umkhonto we Sizwe” is broken

‘cause “Umkhonto we Sizwe” is broken.

 Godfrey Cymande

© 12/11/2013

For Red Hand Entertainment

My latest Baby

Outward Evil Inward Battle: Human Memory in Literature

Outward Evil Inward Battle: Human Memory in Literature is a timely humanistic touch to memory studies. It uses literature as a laboratory for the workings of the mind, and characters as the subjects of human experimentation and diagnostics. This book considers authors from different societies and historical periods. The book is a refreshing illumination on the functioning of human memory. It complements the work of neuroscientists who seek to rationalize the workings of the same.

Drawing from various ideas on memory, this rich and authoritative volume results from wide-ranging endeavors centered on the common fact that tracking memory in literature provides an astounding vista of orientations covered in its separate chapters. The writers examined in the various chapters become mediums for unleashing memory and its reconfiguration into artistic images. The eleven separate chapters investigate different aspects of memory in such memoric associations as power, music, resistance, trauma, and identity. It is therefore no surprise that the editors should consider this book as “a veritable menu for everything needed for an unforgettable memory banquet”.

Ma Belle

Douce France,

Douce France

Rassure-moi !

Lance le moi !

Tu es belle !

Tu es belle !

Tu le sais comme le monde d’ailleurs

Mais ton cœur est plutôt ailleurs

C’est l’Afrique

Le Rustique

Qui te donne palpitation et compagnie

Que nous avons cherchées jusqu’à Taverny

Pour nous faire vibrer le chœur

Sans souci du rire moqueur.

Cette Afrique vous fait vibrer

En elle tous vous trouverez

Même ce qui manque chez votre maman

C’est bien cette danse qu’on veut également.

N’a-t-on pas dégusté les contes

De la belle et la bête que racontent

Ces livres assoiffés de la moquerie ?

Seul, le notre sera des pleurs enrichi !

Grâce à ce T effacé de Paris

Difficul Té de trouver un Pari

En France

En transe !

Les clowns de chez-nous

En occident les clowns ont les nez rouge c’est tout
En Afrique ils n’ont besoin d’aucun nez du tout
En Europe, ils masquent leur tristesse derrière un sourire
En Afrique le sérieux qu’ils affichent invoque le rire
Nos clowns à nous se costument en noir
Nos clowns à nous roulent en voitures noires
Leurs cravates pendant comme les cordes des pendus
Indiquant qu’ils se livrent à des actes défendus :
Mouillage
Dans le trafic
Pillage
Des fonds publics
Leur donnant le luxe de rouler en Pajeros
Non ! C’est démodé ! Quoi à la mode ? Les Prados !
Qui d’après eux les accompagneront à la tombe
Nous autres on s’en fiche et attend le jour qu’ils tombent
Par l’avarice terrassés
Quant à nous ? Point attristés !
Voyant les Mercocrates, pajerocrates et pradocrates
Enterrant les peuples comme ils enterrent des démocrates.
Quoi de mieux qu’un clown qui refuse la mime
Ou politique qui enfonce dans l’abyme
Tout espoir d’un peuple rêvant bonheur ;
Asservi sans encombre au malheur?

 ©2013 Bill F. Ndi, Curled from La Croisée des chemins

Les clowns de chez-nous

En occident les clowns ont les nez rouge c’est tout

En Afrique ils n’ont besoin d’aucun nez du tout

En Europe, ils masquent leur tristesse derrière un sourire

En Afrique le sérieux qu’ils affichent invoque le rire

Nos clowns à nous se costument en noir

Nos clowns à nous roulent en voitures noires

Leurs cravates pendant comme les cordes des pendus

Indiquant qu’ils se livrent à des actes défendus :

Mouillage

Dans le trafic

Pillage

Des fonds publics

Leur donnant le luxe de rouler en Pajeros

Non ! C’est démodé ! Quoi à la mode ? Les Prados !

Qui d’après eux les accompagneront à la tombe

Nous autres on s’en fiche et attend le jour qu’ils tombent

Par l’avarice terrassés

Quant à nous ? Point attristés !

Voyant les Mercocrates, pajerocrates et pradocrates

Enterrant les peuples comme ils enterrent des démocrates.

Quoi de mieux qu’un clown qui refuse la mime

Ou politique qui enfonce dans l’abyme

Tout espoir d’un peuple rêvant bonheur ;

Asservi sans encombre au malheur?

©2013 Bill F. Ndi, Curled from La Croisée des chemins

The Child Downstairs

Down south I lived downstairs
And Gee! I dreamt of life upstairs
It was a dream!
Only experience could tell what it did mean

In a rush, seeking safety like a meerkat
I docked myself under my hat
And headed straight up North
Attracted by the lights like a moth

Up North I lived upstairs
Up North my everything was life downstairs
And though not of misery void,
Could not be painted a tasteless tabloid

That dream I had
That dream I told dad
And with a pat he my roots
Did show me my life of shoots

Before embracing my dream beauty
Ne’er had I seen a sight so dreary;
Benumbing with frost biting cold
Stealing from the sun’s glow its gold

And the step I made forward
Revealed two steps backward
The embrace, the dread, the numbness, the frost bite
And I would never any mind divide

With head now to the East
With the sunrise I feast
And would you only a glance steal West
Where the twilights my sun take to rest.

Human History...!

FOR YOUR READING ENJOYMENT!

LSS (Little Sacred Songs) VI

Christ shed his Blood, wept and cried for mankind
Yet, man’s earthly dealings shows nothing so kind
With minds on high chair to drum each other
With songs of otherness far from order.
Like a tiger the strong hits hard the meek
And would say survival knows not the weak
Yet, the most high came in the lamb of Light
With great lessons, none of which about fight
For earthly grandeur, with one all seek first
The Kingdom in which we shall quench our thirst
Without any thoughts of this wilderness
Here on earth where those in power are mindless.
So, relent not for His Name’s sake stay strong
In mind and steer clear through you, comes no wrong!

Tuskegee University

Does it really need to creep in as a dream
For those by the river to catch a bream
When more than a century and a quarter
Ago Washington dressed the painful tear
The blade of iniquity left on us
And for which we were treated worse than dross?
He’d seen the proud shroud cloud us with ignorance
And he chose to show us the importance
Of this awe-inspiring dream to this day
We see here giving us the right of way
We have just one choice to carry forward
With knowledge to reap a handsome reward
Left whole for us all to nurture and treasure
With wisdom and as such garner pleasure

Bill F NDI, © 2011

Books by Bill F NDI

La lune à la une

Une bonne vielle femme, belle comme la lune
Fut celle souvent vue à la une
Pour ses histoires troublant mon cœur
Avec ces richesses qui font peur
Mais à la une, cette belle vêtue
De torchons attire bien le flux
D’images inondant nos écrans
De misères loin de cours des grands.
Ce fut elle qui m’éleva
Sur sa terre nourricière…. Là… !

Nimbus, My Cry

My dark cries the like of nimbus bring rain
If dickhead hears not all my cries the rain
Will hit him hard as hail and he will feel
These long years he has spooled mine on a reel
With jollity and merry-going-round
To bury facts for the grave all are bound
As my pens weep not only for his plight
But laugh at caitiffs putting up big fights
For the glorification of such goats
Who with their kind on rough sea rock the boats
Then jump up and down with flags of success
With all else going adrift in recess.

Anthem for Essingang

O, macaroon covered with poor chicks' feathers

Go sit down and pride yourself in thievery

Like the slums your disgraceful flag shall fly

With your havoc to your name ever true

My father's house that once all tongue could tell

Has now become a house of thieves

So the rest of the world can see

The emblem of the tears of our people





Clan of mbokos, clan of bandits

With death and sadness in our store

Thine be disgrace, thine be great shame

And repudiation for evermore

That’s Him

You’d go round the whole world
One you’d find summed in a word.
He means the whole world and Fonya
His name! For the meaning go to Africa!

Daddy Sixty

Too late
Too late
With drooped open mouth I watch oldies
Here at Chatelet-les-Halles, they simulate
Youths every here and there in baggies
Would that reduced their age! Too late!
Again,
A gain?

Too late
To state
We have come short of the glory of age
As we strive to put our youths off their stage
With no thoughts in ours we fought to be free
From robes of constraints worn on liberty,
The grain
We gain!


01/07/2010

Sea of Poverty.

Were I to translate poverty into poetry,
Everybody would need to climb up a big tree
To see the damage done to my father’s nation
’Tis such none can rescue with any injection.
This ailment upheld by the rotten tip of state
Who’s washed away all the hopes we wrote on a slate
Erupting a silent volcano at his birth
Letting flow all that which his fine luster hid, dirt.
He’s garbage incarnate wired to birth misery
With lengthy motions in hope to stay in history
And not in the memory the nation has of him
As one who wrecked all hopes and made power his whim
To which only the sane pens do refuse to bow
Yet, those of the herded scribes would go for the here and now
Aggrandizing evil for self aggrandizement
In a mad rage by those seeking part in government
Not one f or the people but one on them imposed
Leaving the nation, with poverty, overdosed
With a king and his mentally and morally
And the people and their kin broke financially
Explaining why none needs the big tree of poetry
To fish poverty blooming in our land it’s sea.

What men and their friends (men and women alike) should learn about love!

When Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall and had a great fall,
Most men never understood trifling with a woman in love
would bring home the same drama. So one man tried it out
With a woman who loved him and bore him children.
Guess what! She left for a loving man.
That's when the forsaken man's men did their best
They would want the relationship up again like all the King's men
Trying to put Humpty Dumpty up again.

Blurred Vision

Thoughts of my love clamping up
Drive home a question: what’s up?
The air we breathe was for long pure.
This clamping worsens things anew!

Thus, naively, I was schooled to see
A problem shared, one lost at sea
When unshared would create a great rift
That would set all pure love adrift.

Knowing this, I would my best do
Hoping my love did do hers too.
Then and then we shall gracefully
Sail ever after happily.

In this, the world would read black art
Not understood for they’re not smart;
Hiding hearts’ foliage to love’s light,
The greatest cure to all hearts’ plight!

Problems abound, love conquers all
With no need to receive a call
From Jimmy Little’s telephone
That has been a hard to chew bone.

Your Wish, Your Tag

In my death the light I see your world shan't!
Yet, that unsung dirge I can hear you chant
Disturbing my reposing soul at rest
Which alive you made subject of arrest;
Its crime? A choice of a path unwanted
Straight with merciless greed in you loaded.

You may have me buried physically
This to you I have done spiritually
And shan't with you flex muscles to show off
When you and your tag are not worth a slough
In my society, your place is in jail
Unknown to you perjury invites no bail.


12/15/2009

My Van Heusen Shirt

My Van Heusen shirt cost me fifty cents,
A dollar ninety-nine to clean and scent
After the hundredth clean I had a two
Hundred dollar shirt after one year too!
Its worth in cash my economist says
Depreciates come each passing day that plays.

Long live this name who's got the cash and fame
With my hopes for any all left with shame
And a higher end shirt with a mark that pricks
And picks the pocket with such lovely tricks
My mind would let grasp these higher end goods
That empty our purses and carry loots!

Promises to Keep: A Christmas Poem**

Two years ago the newly governor-elect,
told party delegates at a first conference
how he promised his widowed mother
he would be honest and never take bribes.

“She said: ‘Now, that you won, son,
whatever you do, be honest’.”
“And I told her: ‘Oh, of course Mom,
I’ll be honest because that’s how you raised me’.

“She said: ‘That’s good, son, I know you will.
Let me ask you another question.’
I said, ‘What’s that?’
‘Promise me, son, you will never take bribes’.

“I said: ‘Of course I’ll never take bribes,
not only would that be dishonest
it would be illegal,
and I would never do anything to dishonor
the memory of my father’***.”

“She said: ‘That’s good, son,
I’m sure you won’t,
but I just want to remind you
because that’s how mothers are’.
I said: ‘I know’.

“She said: “Let me ask you another question.’
I said: ‘What’s that?’
She said: ‘Do you think you can
get Aunt Daisy’s son-in-law a job?’
I said: ‘I dunno,
I’ll try’.”

Two days ago,
or two weeks
to 'a very presidential' Christmas,
our duly elected governor
was led abroad from his home
by the FBI...


Achirri Ishmael
December 13, 2008.

EPILOGUE

"I imagine myself in the New World
with Christopher Columbus
for the first time,"

(he mused the following year,
recalling the events at Roy-au-mont)

"A symphony of sounds,
of colors,
of smells,
of desires,
and of hopes.

Then I imagine myself
on the moon
with the astronauts,

and all I see
is gray,
dust,
and barren rocks,

and the earth I long for

is far
out of reach..."


Achirri Ishmael
7 November, 2009

Loops of Memory*

I had forgotten to tell him
about their presence
until it occurred to me.

"Would you love to join the discussion
with Chomsky, Piaget,
and the others?" I asked him.

"Yes," he said kindly,
"Just tell me when".

That was during the conference
at Abbaye de Roy-au-mont,
just outside Paris.

He sat patiently
and followed the speakers.

It was a loud conference
of op-positions.

But his doodle of cats
and other real fantastic animals,
I can't recall exactly,
were stunning...

On the way to our last lunch,
Noam Chomsky,
who had dominated this gathering
of Nobel Prize winning biologists and world famous mathematicians,
philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists, (& etc),

walked up to him,
and shyly said:

"Perhaps
you remember me,
when I sat in your class at Harvard
with Roman Jakobson?"

He looked at Chomsky,
and slowly said:

"I'm sorry, but no".

Those were the only words
he would utter
in that conference.

By Achirri Chibikom 2009

Poetry

Gives you wings
Choice to sing
Freedom to fly
Not one to ply
Yet, one to land
And with a band
Take off without remorse
Landing back to concourse
With neither fear
Nor favour clear
In sight of cowards
With simple words.

Fertile Imagination

I took my niece to a department store.
Her touchy hands did give me a heart sore!
Upon rebuking her inquisitive hands,
“I touch with my eyes and see with my hands!”
She said with such certainty to astound
The sages of yore claiming their minds sound
Where in my niece I would just a poet see
With my pen in hand, I let the world see
How with the hands this can be possible
Even if all think it impossible!

Senile King B…

Who said sunset was not a medicine man?
Is the gruesome night with mysterious calm
Not the devil himself who would smile
At this old fool driven and left senile
To thinking himself Donne’s busy old fool
Swimming in ignorance, his glorious pool?

Old senile King, after twenty seven
Odd years, you’ve left our country so broken
By your deep greed the waters of the seas
Won’t come close to washing the joy that fills
Your measure so corrupt earning your name
That stinks a stench so putrid; what a shame!

The Good Old Sikh & Us

They would have loved to come in droves
As we sat watching flighty doves,
This good old Sikh behind his house
At Sugar Pine Court pined like a mouse

Contemplating peace that cloudy afternoon
Dreaming the sun peed peace here on earthly spoon
For the world to sip with pipes underground
Black gold running the ship of peace aground

This took our good old Sikh again behind
The house to scoop humans out of the bind;
In quiet meditation nodding to the world
Such abysmal nod that’s devoid of a word.

After Aliens

Everywhere, they’re after the aliens!
What crime they committed they know not!
But must be given names in every tongue!
Till they become hyphenated

And tagged home office made
Far from homeland born
In French let’s call them émigrés
Send them to South Africa they’ll become

Ma-kwe-re-kwe-re
If by accident they land in West Africa?
Imagine just how everywhere names shall sprout
Leaving no room they’re after the aliens!

My Fate, Their Gamble

Even if I need not cry, my pains must not go
Unheard by those who my progress would want to slow
I’ve amassed my strength and would like to fly sky-high
Far above foxes and kites thinking themselves sly.
My shadow must not only be left in the clouds
But cover them to mystify just like the shroud

Holding in it a secret to the world of men
So hidden to turn its life all amazement
Birds ply the skies, the eagle above all reign
Wherein the jungle only the lion pulls the rein
And would not on the same table dine with lame dogs
Among men herding flocks with big support from thugs

Thugs who would beat me to crying my pain aloud
Such pains I must not cry but make heard and be proud
Brut force fails where admittance of liability
Would have readily bred freedom and liberty
For all those like me refusing this wild trampling
Which always leaves heads and thugs with my fate gambling

Unlike the birds of the sky, topsy-turvydom
Is the catch word and in which jungle? No kingdom!
No kingdom for the lion priding itself the King
In the mist of such confusion a bush was king
Too blind ruling over the oil wells of the east
With the impunity of an absolute beast

James 1 would rule this world in demonology
And bring the beast and himself up to some deities
Theeing and thouing as par great nature;
This ploy to bring down the mighty, sure
Would make him greater than great in the eyes
Of those before whom about me he lies.

Dreams Die Not

When dreams mature, they cease to be dreams.
When streams dry up they cease to be streams.
One dream I had, I thought would bear fruits
Let my stream flow into its conduits
Without dam built but quickly emptied
To leaving my dream in stream buried.
But how wonderful dreams do not die
Like a hungry poor deprived of pie!
And buried ’live won’t be dreams that live
To be killed only by disbelief
We need kill to give the figment life
Leaving every tongue to say hi-five!

Just Today

Early morning daddy died!
Late this morning uncle died!
Early afternoon mum died!
Late afternoon auntie died!
Not before long brother died!
Shortly after cousin died!
Whose turn comes in this evening?
Shall he hit before the evening?
Where was he when we were kids?
Why is he here indeed?
You may as I wonder why?
Yes, he comes as aids; that’s why!
And his origin remains
Mystery in preserved domains
Where we live in hope to die;
Death our only hope won’t lie
To say our unborn babies
Are turned rock without ages
Just today, this today unjust
Hands turn poor lives into dust.

Upon the King’s Death

Shall my country feel let down?
Yes! The King’s! When he shall drown!
In his mansion flooded with wealth
That from our nation steals good health

Like cancer compounding with might
Our socio-political plight
That’s left our nation depleted;
So, why must the King not be ejected?

Now and just now push him to drown
And let woe sweep him off the ground;
Our ground he has stolen and sold
Wanting his deeds to go untold.

Upon making the scribe beggar
He makes his might appear bigger
Giving to him and his a leeway
To duplicate highwaymen: Waylay!

Our nation victim of this ambush
Has sent many a young man to the bush
Where we see they’ve fallen like angels
Heaven’s sounds sent away to hell not bells.

Baby Ambasonia

Was from time immemorial born
Was through time and age grown
Was of the Federal Republic lured
Was of the united Republic deterred
And by the La République killed
And in death tied to the skilled
Assassin since in hiding gone
By his wall of soldiers and canon
Shielded
By the whole wide world greeted.
Need not emphasise a true story
For all know and none does worry.

Poor Baby Ambasonia
From your ashes rebirth is so near
For my belief in this myth
Has nothing of a heath.

A Cellphone

Badinant avec le Noir

Tranquilles, nous fûmes à la rive
Ne voyant pas la dérive
Voulant nous voir loin de Bavière
Nous poussèrent-ils dans la rivière
Sans bateau et ou sans espoir
Furent-ils maîtres et firent les lois
Nous colonisant y compris
Cons ainsi que sages à tout prix ;

Prix que nous payons depuis lors
Pour la couleur noire de cet or
Identique à celle des peaux noires
Noircissant blancheur d’abreuvoirs
Qui vaille que vaille doivent couler
A flot pour les étanchés
Ayant tout sauf notre rire
Même s’ils croient notre cas pire !

Coûte que coûte, ils pratiquent les maux
Où nous avons le dernier mot
Justifiant pour quoi derrière nous
S’acharnent-ils comme des loups garous
Voraces en quête de proie facile
Qui nie de rendre difficile
Leur jeu de bourreaux arythmiques
Aux calculs bien mathématiques ;

Pour eux une récréation sportive
Pour nous badinage subversif
N’amusant que les régisseurs
De malveillant joug de la peur
Bourdonnant dans les oreilles noires
Permettant de faire couler à boire
Pouvant assouvir les futés
Qui par ailleurs sont disputés.

$£¥€

Our best fight we put to host
These strangers who’ll never their hosts’
Expectations meet sincerely
Where all hosts do for them truly
Die leaving their leafy green backs
Here as hosts have left stabs on backs
Killing, lying, slandering for them
With sane minds to see shit in them;
Such strangers who never come stay
But on man’s psychology prey
And his world does turn upside down
God bless America won’t drown
Flying the flag by such strangers
Flown and guarded by their rangers.

SCHIZOPHRENIE NATIONALE

Comment peut-on être Camerounais ?
Le français est-elle ma langue maternelle ?
Non, je suis né à Bamenda où l’on ne le parle pas.
Comment peut-on être Camerounais ?
L’anglais est-elle ma langue maternelle ?
Non, je suis né à Bertoua où l’on ne le parle pas.
Suis-je même Camerounais ?
Vraiment, je le crois et m’en expliquerai
Mais de ‘pure ethnie’ qu’en sais-je et qu’importe ?
Ne m’insultez pas !
Séparatiste ? Autonomiste ? Régionaliste ?
Tout cela, rien de cela. Au-delà !
Mais alors, nous ne nous comprenons plus.

Qu’appelez-vous Camerounais ?
Et d’abord, pourquoi l’être?
Question nullement absurde.
Camerounais d’état-civil, je suis nommé Biafrais.
J’assume à chaque instant ma situation de Camerounais;
Mon appartenance au Cameroun,
N’est en revanche qu’une qualité facultative
Que je puis parfaitement renier ou méconnaître.
Je l’ai d’ailleurs fait ;
J’ai longtemps ignoré que je suis Camerounais.

Camerounais sans problème,
Il me faut donc être Anglophone en surplus.
Camerounais sans ambages,
Il me faut donc être Francophone en plus.
Si je perds cette conscience,
L’appartenance cesse d’être en moi.
Le Camerounais n’a pas de pièces d’identité,
Il n’existe que dans la mesure où,
A chaque génération,
Des hommes se reconnaissent Camerounais.
A cette heure, des enfants naissent à Bamenda,
Seront-ils Camerounais ?
A cette heure, des enfants sont mis au monde à Bertoua,
Seront-ils Camerounais ? Nul ne le sait.
A chacun, l’âge venu, la découverte ou l’ignorance.

© Peter Vakunta

Ink and ench

The clinker boat's
boards are clenched

As clink is to clench
So drink is to drench
And stink is to stench

Therefore should
we not allow
pink is to pench
wrink is to wrench
frink for the French?

Henchmen may give
(a word to the wise)
a wink to a wench
a bink on a bench
and other inventions
too mincing to mention?

©Phillip Mahnken
11 October 2009

Strong Rock Solid Love

My word my bond with you here will stay
Far from the love that did rot away
For you so love me that I won’t doubt
And if I did so, I won’t call out
As I do by the day and by night
Showing you the love that’s yours by right.

Here I sit and here I wait, you in mind
Being the special find by mankind
Sought after in that love threadbare world
In which like the serpent hatred curled
Around in wait for the innocent
In order to prey on sentiments

Where you are, there I am on my marks
Ready to take you home with no barks
For those dogs willing to still our move
To push our love right atop the roof
Shading new meaning to the word love
With sound knowledge of peace brought by dove

Here we are, love we know that will stay
With no one able to make her sway
From this gleeful glide on these smooth rails
Leading home a love that blazes trails
For dreamers who slain their dreams way back
With no thoughts someday it will come back.

Now we know what to keep that we’ve found
Which is what in love will keep us bound
Together loving and respecting
Each other with just no misgiving
But thanks giving to the light that lights
Love’s path on which we tread without plights.

Count the lines; know the span it’ll survive
In the eyes of men striding in life
All clad in abjection fanning flames
Heating up the air for baseless claims
Claims that in our union has no grounds
Where our rock solid love’s ever sound.

Two kind pipole

Whiteman bin too like Blackman
Ye come for long take Blackman
Make ye ninga for long time
Di gi ye big taste for lime
When ye want go ye spoil place
Like nko di chakara place.

Chop Chop Club

Chop a chop bin be dia mimba
For get chop dem make we ninga
Ninga dem we no want for be
Bicos which mop no like honey?
Dem tif all money sey na crish
Don cam catch economic finish
De small lep whey we bin get am
And we see dia plate carry yam,
Dem hold knife with fork want for chop
Na taim make we pipole sey stop
Bicos wonder fit foolish pass
We no go leave dem fool we pass
Since we no want drink dat quinine
Whey dem shi don no scratch dem skin
Some man must tell papa chop chop
Sey yi must fill up wia cup
No be with lie lie promise dem
We want na just true true one dem
Bifo we go sing choir for ye
So teh ye no go forget we
Whey we Kill dia club for chop chop
Whey boma dem di chop no f’ll-up.

Patience is All

Just when I was about to give all up
I saw sincerity marked on love’s face
By Patience; she was patient with grace
That off my feet knocked and swept me to drop

Head over heels as if by a spell doomed
To this life of happiness as a groom
With honey textured soul in readiness
To cast away that life of moodiness!

With such love am I graced to embrace her
With my glance at her, looking no further
As the bells resound with marital bliss
Leaving me nor any room for a bliss

Tell me why the world I shouldn’t give up
For one so dear lifting me to the top
In form and in spirit full with pleasure
Caressing the heart, knowing no measure.

The strength of love bonds with understanding
Giving our show to the world, astounding
And hoping not in history such would be
You the bee that produces sweet honey

And who said honey was sweet? You’re sweeter!
You make the bitterness in life slumber
Like one who has come and come till he can’t
Embrace and understand jack by Kant.

But once into your bee hive with honey
Full, the genius in him would spite money
And would start digging in nature, pleasure
As would any hunter hunt his treasure.

My Patience had laid patiently in wait
And such treasures as Patience are no bait
But babes to be cherished and lavished well
With love that runs deep, the like of my well!

Prayer for Cameroon Anglophone Poetry

O, Come,
Come O
Muse! Muse!
Come knock at our doors!
We will warm you with the flames,
Anglophone Cameroon burning bright
Under which roof you shall not be in the cold
Leaving your hungry hunters stories to be told.
Muse
O
Muse
Come
O
Come
Hand in glove
We’ll make love
Stain sheets
Take fleets
Free our offspring
No attached string
In a world far from this fashion
One with love and not contention
Not even when you prick
A call with which I click
And pick up my weapon
And with tears of joy mourn
This joyful moment
I would recommend
Should come and stay
So, we don’t stray!
Muse
O
Muse
Come
O
Come
Come and stay with us
Fill our empty purse
Tickle our brain
With windblown train
Whose sound good music make
As our ears’ savoury cake
Like your name so smooth
As you stand for truth
Only our kind die to hear
When crown and mitre wear fear
Forgetting in tears we drown
When they make solid the ground
In which they conceal us poor souls
Dishonouring our totem poles:
Muse
O
Muse
Come
O
Come
Glaze that assassinating mind
Making of it loving and kind
O, Come,
Come O
Muse! Muse!

The Home

Home was fun
With bright sun
And I left home and headed West
And was told that’s where oldies rest
There I went to see for myself
The oldies resting on the shelf
In their home without so much fun
A world in which they are forlorn

The Mad Queen

Carrying her crown of money
She would she swam in honey
When her heart lets flow lava
To turn sweet honey bitter
A fit she reckons is cute
For madness is her repute
Parading darkness by day
Begging sympathy for pay
All true eyes and ears won’t heed
But would get rid of as weed.

The Commoner’s Promise

Not to hold the top of it.
To clean the servant’s shit.
How true is this when truth comes?
Shit he unleashes as comes
With convulsive pleasures
Thrusting rapists’ treasures
And waddle as strongman
Where foundation not man
Needs be mightily strong
To point to him he’s wrong.