My Poetry



We are herein doomed

We are herein doomed
we are herein doomed as we fake the smiles:
We are therein groomed as me rake the wiles-
Sins splattered stiff to our shadows
Lurking unflattered from the laws.
sins fall like sounds from the Trumpet
The Law selling its indulgence,
The church singing in different pitches
About Christ, their rhythms Hoarse from
greed and lies.
Bibles interpreted vociferously like literature.
while we croak hoarse in the pious world,
Penitents reduced to the ranks of pious Alms Givers.



BOTTLES HAVE BECOME BIBLES

I
Bottles have become bibles
In clench of drunks who babble.
Watch their lips quiver
Like some flibbertigibbetic bastards
While shaky hands transport dose after dose
Of the sedated beer to shuddering lips.

Watch them sing and giggle, watch them mystify.
Gutters have become homes
To drunks who grabble
As urine pours throw python penises
And shit flees through beer stained buttocks.

Oh, and they stagger like drunken winds,
Their eyes cocking in lust at every heavy bossom
And every extravagant breast,
While drunken lips hallucinate-
                                      ‘mama, one night na how much?’

Then they belch like hungry whales-
Their eyes darting in desire like vampires,
Their brains reduced to pitiful fibres.
Trentetrois and Guinness, the new anthem-
Smirnoff and Booster, a new stratagem;

The bars fuller than Christ’s home,
The republic shattering under the beer curse:
The Cameroon beer.
Children starve, emaciate and weep
The wife having no keep
As she awaits one Cameroonian standardized
And famous drunk.

There he comes staggering
Urine escaping bleached jeans
While emaciated lips sing in queue:
                        ‘’afofoweti I do you
Afofoweti I do you,
                             I take ma money I buy you
                                You take me nakam for down.
Spittle urinated by beer invaded lips,
As he wobbles along with sheer pride-
Proud to be a up to Cameroon standards.

II
The baby strapped to the contours
Of its mother's lust deformed back.
One innocent Cameroonian
Shaking in fear and distrust
As a shameless mother rocks
 To the rhythm of stale Makossa
And Tabooed Bikutsi
And to the bleats of Coupé Decalé,
And winds her inflated bossoms
To the thrill of malnourished drunks,
And jittles her Medusan breasts
To the confusion of drunken admirers.

The baby wide-eyed
Fed with beer from the opiate bottle
And then it begins to giggle and writhe
And is silently withered and brittle
As it struggles to clutch at the bottle
From which a vampirical mother
Had it beer-fed in its beer tutorial lesson.

The disgrace it is
As beer seizes over the politics
Of the republic
Like a merited birthright.

 “TO OUR POLITICIANS”     

We are not different from toilet tissue
Used in cleaning shit-smeared buttocks-
Those of you unabashed politicians
Who proliferate our ears
With gargantuan lies
Croak with breathe-taking professionalism
And awe-inspiring stratagem.

You these jigsaw creatures that deceive our mothers
With soap and blood maggi
As if our mothers whom we suckled are sheer beggars.

Your voice rise again
In their well crafted holy sermon-
“Vote for me and have tarred roads!”
Begging us to one again
Place you in comfort and wealth
While we are used yet again
To clean rot-caked buttocks.
ACROSS THE ATLANTIC, 1787


This is an extract from Nforche Gerald’s Epic The Slave’s Tale. The poem presents the first person perspective of slavery and slave trade in the 17th century . His name Is Ali Loé, from Duala Kamerun, Who recounts his fearsome story of his kidnap by Mokala and transportation through the vast Moudja (ocean) .
In this extract, he recounts the situation in the ship wherein he and other Kamerunians are shackled, bound for an unknown land while bugs and rats eat into their very bodies.
Then the poem shifts in perspective, and is recounted by Tyack Joseph who is a slave catcher and merchant. He tells the story of transporting the slaves on feet to the sea.


(As recounted by Manga Ali Loé)
…I weeping for myself; fathers lamenting
Their arid bodies wrinkled from shrieking
Their voices screeching in ancestral pledge
Causing our hold to climax to a piteous dirge.

Light strained in through rat nibbled openings
Else we would have left the hold like blind goblins
Vicious to the point of abandonment
Scuffling for blood, mokala’s disbursement.

Aided by the scurrying light, my head worked
East, west, south and north, on shoulders, rocked-
Acquainting itself with the crampy hold
Taking in every detail for any bolt.

In long prodigious rows we humans lay
Meditating, some wide-eyed not to say
Tear tracks dry on our black paling cheeks.
They now submissive despite the reeks.

A cough here, a huff there. A groan here
A croak there.A curse far afield, a stifle near.
A prayer whimpered here, a shiver rippling
There. A horrid sight it was, a grappling.

Water poured from everybody pore
The heat, baking us dead, bringing every sore.
Merrying with itches that chewed our lean bodies.
The bugs tickling us to great agonies.

That pungent stench, from decaying beings:
Men awake whilst parts decayed in rings.
I was nauseated, my eyes reeling, pained
My stomach flaring to throw up content.

And as we baked, dehydrating, reduced
One of us would breathe his last, paying his dues
For all the pain, all the suffering
We found ourselves harnessed to, dying.

We lay naked save a pant to enfold
That bundle underneath, else it awoke to scold.
Rats, bugs, would have gnawed it to its doom.
Rats whose appetite could plunder a room.

And there they ran, hiking on heaving bodies
Playing hide-and seek- on chained enemies.
Tossing about, screeching on their suppers-
Causing a kick here, shrieks there, left-overs.

Ribs striving to protrude our very chests
To celebrate starving bodies in the nest.
Stomachs collapsing from malnourishment
Bones pushing at the flesh in enactment.

Yes! We herein lay, harvested far afield
Sealed in ebesse to another hill.
Is this it? Is this a blessed way to die?
Or am I neurotic? Tell me, am I?

The floor of ebesse was prepared from wood,
As was ebesse itself, which could suit
Only creatures of my calibre, a slave-
Oh! The cruelty of man! Who could save?

Right before my face, as I rested,
Was the base of another floor which nested
Human cattle, another slave battalion
Another prodigy of human abomination.

I cannot describe all the cruelties
That my eyes beheld, forget the casualties
For now: I would come to it. The light failing
Alluring mice to the feast, we whinging.

My wrists, throbbing were shackled to loops
My feet tethered a-pair to metal crooks
Which joyed at draining off ounces of blood-
Beckoning on foragers to the spot.

Elders bunks away cursing profusely
Rattling their shackles ferociously.
Lips hallucinating, the very name
Of gods to arbitrate from native claim.

Curses readily fell, bodies scattily smelled,
Voices rising to a trauma pitch like knell
Delirious we were becoming, menacing
Was our doom, our very bones throbbing.


As recounted By Tyack Joseph.
Boat: Adventure
Sails West Central Africa and the British Guiana
14 July 1787.
Slaves and masters turned due west, mystified- 
But there upon their slave faces, satisfied
Like they’d invoked from primate spirits
This sudden gush, from some ancestral fits.

Man and beast steered themselves against the wind
As it thrashed in anger, pinching, knocking well keen.
And as I planted my heels and crowned
My head with hands, four ‘f my men went down.

The gush piped, roared like the devil’s own fun
Reaching for the bones like a murderer’s hum.
The trees bent in annoyance, sending leaves
To beat our faces, twigs gnawing for cleaves.


It felt like hands clawing me, savage
Ancestral hands, reaching for carnage:-
An ungodly mode for retribution,
Dead primates coming alive in motion.

My coat, well-tailored nearly shredded off my body
As I fought my stand, gnashing wild, not funny;
My interest stolen by some monkeys
Acrobatising in the thrashing trees.

A gagging sound reached my haired ears throbbing;
And I turned to find five gentlemen, kicking
In the shrubs, blood exiting a coat-
Before I could gasp, a hand was reaching for my throat.

Those arms chained a–pair reaching to strangle me:-
My blood ran cold and my fast reflex helped me;
My arm thundered from behind, meeting, pained,
A body, then a thud, then a shriek.He lame.


And as I turned to finish off the game,
While the tumult and yelps climaxed same,
Shots broke the air, nonchalance gaining.
When no yield came, a slave dropped, kicking.

Then the cacophony ebbed like the flu,
The wind now just a loose breeze, refreshing new.
Then we had the herd in order though rotten ,
Before identifying and cataloguing our fallen.

A sad catalogue we had; six dead
So soon, so young, from savage hands, their den:
Men who had come over the seas to hustle
But fallen by an alien zeal, heroic guzzle.

How would these families entertain such
Obituaries? Confused were we, auto-hushed.
Paul Johnson, motel owner from the coast,
Quatz Brooks, an English fellow, hand from Queen Boat.

James Breiser, a talkative from New York
Stretched on the grass, strangled by the savage flock;
Then there inert was Stephen Longfellow,
A good lad, about twenty two and no more.

Craig Sharks, the bully from Indianan county
And Pierson Reynolds; went with our obituary.
Sad was my state, as I gazed, so baffled-
The beasts, blood throbbing in their veins, shuffled.

My assailant with muscles like an ape’s
Kept grimacing impiously at my state
Pulling at his shackles, spittle flooding
His jaws, his muscles throbbing, twitching.

He could be worth maybe three hundred
Dollars and more out there if I were correct.
The guys would scramble for him, those sinews
Would help cultivate plantations anew.

This breed was rare nowadays; such muscles, well laced-
Veins springing on his pitch black face,
While indecipherable abracadabra
Sieved through bulbous lips as he fought in anger.

He was that who’d striven to ring my soft neck;
Those barbaric muscles reaching for my sudden wreck.
I would better die from an English rifle
Than be strangled in barbaric stable.

The few of my flock left and me, men from
Western prowess had to right this dark crumb
From savage hands. We had to send forth
To their savage brains, our anger and worth.

I could not let this get so cold and damp!
The savages had to cry out with cram
A reciprocity for our fallen.
The culpable we lined, their backs moistened.

And on their hides, our whips fell, fell, yet fell!
Breaking flesh, shredding skins during their hell.
Four of the bastards yelped, yelped in pain
My whip nonchalant, my face in disdain.

Their cries sent the birds screeching in fear
Their backs peeling under the whip’s share-
My contentment growing with all the warmth.
Yes! We were their masters despite the worm.
Extract from The slave’s Tale

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About Nforche Gerald