Parting

She stared at her own nakedness in the mirror. Leila realized in a flash that she was beautiful. She looked at her perfect contours−firm and erect  boobs, a flat tummy; well rounded hips−and finally knew why he never wants her away. She passed her hand slowly through her body. It felt good but it felt better if he did it. Garry is his name. She has never conjured up enough reasons as to why she loves him that much. She stopped there for he loved her too.

Leila touched her breasts and she couldn’t help but visualize his hands working expertly on her. The ecstatic feeling pleasantly invaded her body. It reached deep inside her, depths she only imagined were there but never had the chance to really find out if it really existed. If it did, no one else made her feel so except the one and only Garry. Reality stopped her fantasy, as the dawn of many days away from Garry chilled her.  She would be going away to a far off place, so far from him. The thought of confining his love to a mere phone call was unwelcome. She wrapped a towel around her naked body and made her way out of the bathroom. She wanted to call him. She wanted to be with him for one last moment. She wanted to exhaust her fleshy desires for once.

Leila could hear the phone ringing at the other end for a while before going silent. She stared at her phone. She lacked the energy to try again. She thought of all the bad things. It was hard for to understand why he couldn’t be near his phone. May be he was doing to another girl what he did best to her…….

A knock woke her up from her reverie. She wondered who the intruder could be. All the energy she had fled her when she needed it the most. She rose from the couch and headed towards her bed room. The intruder would wait. The urgency of what brought him or her to her place would be tested by patience. The knock persisted and the place was taken over by silence she has known the few times she spent her day there (she spent most of her time with Garry)

She picked her phone and summoned the energy to dial his number. The urge was swallowed by an inscrutable fear. She felt a weird feeling rise inside her. She realized she was breathing faster than usual. She looked at the number on her screen and moved her thumb to press the call button. The she jerked into life as her phone suddenly vibrated in her little palm. It was the number she was trying to dial. It was Garry.

“Hi honey…..”She stammered unnecessarily.

Hi, where are you sweetheart?” He asked before she could regain her composure from the shock of his sudden call.

“I’m in my house,” she answered him.

“Why can’t you open for me then? I have been knocking for ages,” Garry said and hang up before she could explain herself.

She rose from her bed and fastened the towel around her. She fumbled with her flip-flops as she hurried to open the door for him. The door flung open and she fell into his arms in an embrace she was sure would last for a long time before she could forget. He stroked her chin playfully as they made their way in.

She left him on the couch and left for the bedroom. She found it necessary to change. A towel only on her could spark temptations, though they were welcome, it wouldn’t be nicer than those slowly initiated, and paving way to that heaven like climax. She changed into her blue cotton pajama, with white floral designs. She seldom avoided looking at herself in the mirror ad she didn’t wonder why she didn’t care today. It was a special day for her and she didn’t want to waste even a single second on needless things as standing in front of the mirror when he can tell her how good she looked. Mirrors didn’t talk.

She strutted back the couch, tying the straps of her pajama on her small waist. She couldn’t resist a giggle. It seemed to be the only way she could express her joy in seeing the man who meant everything to her right in front of her. She sat on the couch and looked straight into his eyes. She always felt overpowered by his gaze. He seemed to look way beyond what an ordinary human eye could perceive.  It was Garry’s own way of looking at things. She was certain he could see the contents of her heart.

Leila stretched her arms for the remote on the table. She saw it fit to mute the television. It distracted their moment. It took away Garry’s attention and she felt entitled to maximum attention from him so that she could feel loved. She wanted the memory of the last moment she had with him could last like an engraving on a rock. She wanted the moment t be ageless, staying fresh for the length of time it would take them to feel each other side by side once again. 

 Both their fingers intertwined as she moved closer to him. They were silent. Their silence spoke of the magnitude of each other’s presence. It spoke what held their hearts together. Leila hoisted her feet on the couch and laid her head on his laps and closed her eyes as waves of love swept through her, from his gentle strokes of his hand.

Leila found it hard to accept the fact she was leaving him. If she could choose she could prefer otherwise. Life’s a dictator, its states without giving a chance for the other party to state the other side of the story. Leila was beginning her attachment and it meant they would scarcely spend time together for a close to three months. It would hard considering the number of years they’ve spent together. Four years to be precise. She saw that as cruel burden that it would take more than courage to bear.

“Baby I don’t know if I will manage a life without you near me,” she finally mattered, more of a whisper, like she wasn’t speaking to anyone in particular.

“Don’t worry we’ll manage sweetheart,” Garry’s deep vice penetrated deep in to her soul. It stirred the darkest corners of her heart and left a smile on her face. She reached for his face and touched slowly, moving her palm up and down. It was rough owing to his unshaved beard. She diidn ask him to shave. It was manly to be rugged for once and she let him be. She rose and kissed him.

The touches increased in pace and their skins longed to be in contact without any restriction. It didn’t take long before Leila was screaming from unbearable pleasure. She liked moments like this, when life stretched to eternity making her immortal for a while. She loved the way he worked her body. No one else understood her body like he did.  No one did because she never bothered to find out. Why disturb oneself when she had found what he was looking for? She would be bothering herself for absolutely no reason. He was hers and nothing would change that, only death would−she was sure of that.

Good things are only appreciated when they are taken away for a while. She thought as the bus pulled out of the parking lot. Tears welled in her eyes as he disappeared among the crowd. He seemed he would disappear forever and never come back to embrace her the he did. She thought he wouldn’t forget her. This was her greatest dread.

Parting is such a sweet sorrow, only if the very thing that holds together souls doesn’t break as he distance grows in between. She would have him her heart wherever she went.

Unsolicited Advice

When we were growing up, we were told all manner of do’s and don’ts. I bet most of them curtailed our freedom but nevertheless we adhered to those which we could and endured the flogging from those we never mastered the art of living by them. We grew up anyway.

Many years down the line we are still advised. Everybody older than seems to be so generous with advice, even our friends with their handful experience unashamedly tell us what we should or not. The one bunch of people whom I can fathom their advice is a stranger. You meet one along the street and he feels he should tell you that you are not dressed well, or that hair needs to be trimmed. If you dish out some dollars I would mind visiting a barber shop.

The urge to snarl at them gets the better of me, almost always. It has never sounded appealing at all, no matter how wrong I am. I am not at home and this is the only chance to act weird, be wild and exclusively from the reptilian watch of my parents. He should just understand from the look on my face that I am not hearing a damn thing he is saying.

There are some types of warning or advice that only fuel the urge to find out what is being denied over the other side. The lesson is never learned from mere hearsay, it must be experienced in order to be regarded lesson. The only shield is the hope that it won’t be too late to learn, as things may at times turn out be.

I always laughed when our high school teachers claimed that we were having the last free advice as we neared the end of our stay there. Who loved their advice anyway? I quizzed my friends and were all glad that those boring pieces of advice would finally trickle down the gutter. Those morning assemblies were a source of worry to some chaps whose concern was never near cleanness. Every day they were dirty from Monday to Friday, week in week out, for four good years. And they knew about it. Does that person need to be advised, really?    

Enter the real world. Folks went to display their prowess in leaking pieces of useless words in the name of advice. The respect for their age stifles a barrage of expletives. I hear pointing out weaknesses and dismiss them at the instant their lips stop moving.

I have never needed advice. i might need when my atm card fails but for the moment am content with what I have accumulated in the years that I have lived through observation. If you come with your advice, I might listen and even nod in approval but deep down me am saying ‘HOLY SHIT.’

This Word

Fast running way

This word I want to say

Strolling away, increasing its speed

This word, so callous when am in need

One minute you are here

Next you are leaping away like a deer

This word I want to grasp now

Need I bow?

This word help express this thought

She deserves all I got

I mean my love−the whole of it

You word, help achieve that feat

DISTANT LONGING

It’s clear by the bindings of distance

Love is no longer a cherished feeling

Neither is it a recipe for nice romance

Yester day’s are all we got, am reeling

Not a single second goes by each day

That I don’t stop and think about you

You’ve always made me stare and sway

Swaying away the thoughts of you

Loving now looks like a distant longing

I trying to find a way to make of this

All these leaves my heart aching

And healing lies in your sweet kiss

The darkness tries in vain to conceal

The silhouette of your body imposed

By the moon light tickling my nerves

Am titillated by your naked smile

It makes me aware of true beauty

That am staring just in front of me

SOMEDAY

Someday everything shall make more of sense

Than these allusions of invisible bliss

Someday everything will wear out nonsense

Someday I won’t be able to recognize these

Someday all my efforts shall come to fruition

Putting up with sleepless nights for the dream

Someday, someday I will live from my passion

Someday everything will be better than it seem

Parents shall exhort their kids to be like me

Someday I will be the object of admiration

Saying ‘be like him,’ with so much emotion

Someday I will be full like the ocean and sea

Someday my life shall be confined in a memory

Told with tears through the backing of this story

Someday I will be nothing, but living through poems

Someday I will live only through my poems

THERE

Take my hand I will take you there

Don’t ask me where the place is

Ask me if I will one day dare

 Abandon you when something’s amiss

Upon my breathe you will be the reason

The reason our destination is so high

High above the sky through every season

Stay with me until times get nigh

Lets walk there girl of my passion

The place is beyond the heavens

Look, it overshadows intuition

My heart is yours a safe haven

LOST BATTLE

The last words she said still lingers

She said I wasn’t fit to be her lover

Somebody else had made her see

That all along I was a piece of shit

She said that too without any shame

 I’ve lost the battle I had won

Locked the armory, threw the key

Made home a comfort zone

Now she gone, it’s a war zone

Battles are fought fruitlessly

HUNGER AND FLOODS

A forlorn face greeted its arrival

It’s posed a real threat to survival

Pockets barely enough to sustain

Mouths try to feed on the remains

                                                                                                                                                  

Aid has already been sent, we hear

Tons of food worth to last a year

Pangs of hunger do not relent

Bought patience−didn‘t cost a cent

The sun’s is scorching us on the north

But we hear floods have made food rot

And our brothers swept on the south

All long for something in the mouth

GRAPPLING WITH DYING

When age catches up with man

He bows down to instructions

Of mortality

No one wants to imagine that one day he shall leave the earth and join the ancestors in their inscrutable abode. Death has always scared me ever since I was a kid, way back in primary school. I tried to grapple with the thought that one day I would be no more, except bones that would extract million of years to come and be a case study of a certain species of the human being.

I partly lay claim to my mother for these thoughts. She tainted my imaginations and filled me with dread at such a young age. Though she didn't intend to, she ignited a sense of powerlessness into my young life. Her genuine intention was to warn me but inadvertently spilled overboard. I remember being so much scared t sleep, I thought that morning would come and wouldn't see it. And I was the only boy…..imagine how my night was sleeping all alone

Each day I would stop and think about dying like I had a terminal disease. At that time we lived with a destitute family from the North of Kenya, where Tullow Oil Company is trying to find use to the arid land. A mother and her two young boys. Their presence a midst us was a thing we couldn't fathom. I personally could bring myself to sharing anything with them. Mother was generous and gave them food. I always cringed seeing them munch gluttonously eat‘our’ food which no one else was entitled. It belonged to us and us alone.

During the day they would a company us to graze the sheep. Sometimes they would go alone on the orders of their mother, especially when she knew there was nothing to eat. That way she would be assured that her children would have something to eat. Taking care of the sheep was a pleasant thing and I would order the around with a cane. Its one of this misdemeanors that mother caught me. She warned to stop but I didn't. I took them to the river side where their cries would be muffled by the raging waters and whipped them like slaves.

I didn't stop whipping them because I couldn't. It instilled in me a kind of heroism. Mother realized this and warned me that I would be cursed. And that was when I got scared of dying. I had heard that someone had been cursed and he died. My cousin knew him and told of him with concealed pain in her voice. He was her boyfriend and she didn’t want to show it. It would have earned her a severe beating back then.

From then on wards, I treated them with kindness, although feeling deprived of my only source of heroism, which was replaced by the scary tough of dying. I even became religious, seeking forgiveness when no one was watching me. Life then became so dull and meaningless.  I didn't want to play with my age mates. It ate me. It took way my innocence. I lived like a man nearing his old age at such an early age.  

The thought gradually disappeared as I grew up. But at times I would recall. Those moments taught not to take life for granted and live each day like it would be my last. I have now accepted that its where every human being will end up.  

She Hates Me

S

She is a stranger to me. I know little about beyond her name, Abigail. A beauty if you widen the spectrum of gauging it. In other words she is ugly. Her company is fancied only when the sun goes down and not everywhere but in the remote village like Turkana or Pokot. She repels everything that illumines owing to her pitch black skin.

I met her the other day in town. It wasn’t my own thinking to meet her but by the virtue of helping a friend back at home, too tired of typing onto his computer. He wanted some up to date computer games, which I was to purchase and hand it over to her. Sadly she came earlier than I had anticipated and her incessant calls yielded to frustration. With each passing minute I still kept telling her to wait for some minutes even after hours had elapsed.  

Nevertheless she waited. Bothering me with her calls and texts which I am glad I managed to ignore.  All in all she couldn’t leave without the precious merchandise; her relationship did bind her to him. I admit it is kind of sinister for this guy has never met her. In fact I conducted a viability study on her and declared her unfit for occupation in his heart. Seems my words fell on the wrong side. May be she is more than I have described her earlier. May be she’s cast a spell on him.

 A few minutes to five o’clock in the evening I made an audacious attempt find the extent of her rage. True, she had that haggard look and talked to me with a tone that left a trace of her anger. I mumbled a sorry which was diluted by ‘I have waited for you for like forever’ look.

We parted ways as quickly as the penis parts with erection once it pukes the white precipitation, that substance responsible for human life. Life is like this, I thought as I shoved my way through a multitude of people making way to their destinations after sunset. You rarely have what you want unless you are the one giving it to your own self. Depending on people can be disappointing. Coupled with the mobile phone, you can be assured of something before it is even made, if it can be made. This technological world is not for the faint hearted.

Abigail didn’t want to deal with me anymore. I had delivered half of what I was asked to and the rest was with me. She seemed to have dreaded the thought of seeing me again−once bitten twice shy. My consciousness told me I had failed and the only way was to clear it of regret. I offered to take it to her but the problem lay in bringing myself down to accept the fact that I didn’t know where she was asking me to board a bus. It meant bruising my ego, welts emanating from it can take forever to heal. 

Again I managed to fail even after combing the whole city looking for the bus station. I skived class just for that. I suck in taking directions, I always alter them.

She too knows less of me but she can’t never trust me if I choose to stalk her. What I did though not a representing of the real me has left me utterly deprived of a reason to be accorded another chance to display the real me. She hates me. That’s all I know of her.

LET ME TALK ABOUT HER

I made a startling discovery a few minutes before dawn

That she gracefully strutted in my mind on and on

Her bewitching smile captivating like the morning sun

I rose from my slumber; sure she’d be with me every turn

Allow me to talk about her though I may not exhaust

I admit her presence always make me look so lost

Lost in a world full of any conceivable bliss

She holds my breath in her hands with ease

I’ve suffocated numerous times, still I don’t care

Am so used to it, it is not something to be called a dare

Let me talk about her nose, it makes her face looks so pretty

Like a rose yet to be plucked, her name is Betty

Let me talk about Betty, now that you know her name

I first saw her in the park and I’ve never felt the same

She was the missing link, my heartbeat told me so

I loved her and did let her know, her lips parted before

She could say I love you too, though after awhile

Ever since my life’s been so worthwhile 

BROKEN DREAM

Looks like I parted so much for so little

The future blinks with faint light

A concern for one who loves it bright

Not for me, a man of weird mettle

Reality sinks like an overloaded migrants boat

Clinging to each other, for that’s all they got

Seeing an end never anticipated in the beginning

For their hearts crafted an attitude o f winning

Days on end yet nothing attracts joy

Instead it meddles with ambition s like a toy

Overused, waiting for good hands to discard

No one is available, it’s that bad

And end is imminent and sure as the dusk

It lies in content of unaccomplished task

 soul unaware of a broken dream

That tried to scale upstream

A Mirthless Life

      Life sometimes makes me burst into a long mirthless laugh. I might look like a replica of a weirdo but am too real, though I have won a fair share of accolades that only a sane man can proudly lay claim to. All along my life I have cultivated a penchant for criticizing almost everything that has been conceived under the able hands of the Lord. Plenty of times I have thought I was too good to live for everything seemed wrong; everything my eyes fell on had that unpleasant look embedded unto it, everything I heard sounded like an alien language to me. I trudged on with life, with the burden wearing me heavily.

      The challenge bestowed to me, as my innocence slowly waned, owing to schooling, was one to be of use to the society. Nothing alluded to my own, and there was never even an attempt by anyone to explain why it was the way it was. I would rise daily to the beckon of the birds morning merry, oblivious of the destination education would take me. At times I would grudgingly oblige, often after a few strokes of cane from my mother. Sulking and throwing useless tantrums I would go to school, perceiving it as a punishment. I remember the day I was bought the uniform−a pair sky blue shorts, a blue shirt and a maroon pullover. I sighed, not for anything better but one that spoke of an ending journey that was about to commence I remember thinking I was done. I remember my little sister crying also wanting to join me in the process but calmed down when she heard that people were being beaten by teachers.

     Going to school never at any single moment made sense to me. It was a way of robbing me a chance to play all day while herding the family’s sheep. The only option lay in sitting still as a teacher drove away my ignorance (including my classmates’). We shouted ourselves hoarse, our voices never exceeding the walls of our classrooms, a mud walled structure. At noon I would make our way home and tell with bovine innocence of my day, making an off key rendition of the songs of alphabet much to the delight of my mother. It made me happy and longed for another day to display what I had learned. And the cycle was the same each day.

    Years went by. It was too quick for me to notice. Several Christmases passed calmly like water under a bridge.  Sooner than I thought I had cleared primary school, albeit after changing schools. Discarding an old uniform for a new one is what I dread the most to date. Its smell nauseates me. It kills the purpose of reason. The branding, often with an acronym of my name, because it can be stolen. I never understood why someone would forcefully lay claim to a clothe that doesn't belong to him, worse still when everybody has two pairs as was declared in the admission form. Nevertheless life went on, weeks seamlessly fitting into months, months paved way for years and my knowledge paved way for a cynic and nihilistic attitude.

    The purpose of life crumbled upon the feet of examination. I bore the brunt of a father’s anger and dejection that spoke of a hidden frustration, often twined in motivational talk. I would pretend to pay attention and quickly discard the advice. Reading for exams really made life a hell−and it still does−and it was even more stressful on the day it was to be released. For all the stages of learning I emerged on top of my fears, passing well enough to be regarded as a having fruitfully went to school. Passing is an humbling experience, just ask one who failed.

    All the knowledge failed to instill the courage to confront life like everybody did. I was overcome by my own conscience, intertwined with pride and a philosophical mind. The bible was eroded of its reverence, I questioned its authenticity. The sacred pages were nothing more than antique poems. Nihilism started here. And to this day little has changed though I long it would. Those Sundays were horrible. Being forced to go to church wasn't a thing to smile about. It was akin to being caged in a stingy cell without the consent of will. They said it was a rule to be in church but it was an harsh one to me.

After high school, life assumed a nonchalant mode, though in the dark it was marked by anxiety. I never wanted to imagine how did my exams and just waited for that moment when I would be proclaimed an intelligent idiot or vice versa−I wouldn't any where far from this two. All the idling bore boredom. I had no friends. I was my own friend and I let myself down so many times. Writing something in the stillness of the night, only to tear the paper a few days later. I hated myself like no one would. I was my own virtual enemy.

      During the moments of hating, that then I formed the perception that life was worth a pence. My father and mother had made the greatest mistake  falling in love. My angst was visible in the posts that graced my social media account. Reduced to nothingness I found little that tickled my amusement. Everything assumed an invisible pose or I had gone blind. Either way I was withdrawn and kept everything to myself.