Sunday 23 February 2014

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 patiencedidn‘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

Saturday 22 February 2014

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.  


Tuesday 18 February 2014

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.



Thursday 13 February 2014

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 

Sunday 9 February 2014

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.