What are you without trust?

What are you without trust?

You are like a tree without roots

The leaves may be there

But will wither eventually

What are you without trust?

Even when deep down you’ve changed

It seems to others that you are joking

And it stings if it’s a loved one

The dreams become hazy

A shadow between a billion shadows

And no dream makes sense

You are alone, in abyss full of people

People living their lives to the fullest

When You Were Full Of Dreams

There were days when you dreamt

Beautiful dreams

Of a thousand suns

A vast blue sea

Of stars hanging so close

So close that you would grasp them

Pluck them and hang them like chandeliers

…but those were those days

Now, without concrete dreams

And if you dream it involves dying

The days are cloudy, the stars hide

In cracks in the sky

The moon is mourning

The sun is shy,

It creeps across the sky

Sometimes stealthily, other times it creeps

Behind the shrubs of clouds

Hold My Hand One Last Time

Walk beside me one last time

Be absorbed in my sheepish tales

Smile and laugh, I want to get lost in your radiance

Hold my hand one last time

The sky and the birds witnessed us

Loving without conditions

Sometimes even without dreams

Living and breathing for each other

But then ends sometimes beckon

With vengeance unseen, demanding

For us to cross oceans, climb mountains

But without each other’s comfort

Hold my hand one last time

Feel my grip, feel it loosing

Feel it feels to let go forever

Feel how to feel without love

Promise to gaze at my pictures

Think about us during those good times

Don’t dream or long

That we shouldn’t have met

Don’t Bother When I am Gone

The destiny of man is the grave

Bitterness may be all I gave

Laughter and love may be what I hoarded

Don’t bother, the ship of oblivion I’ve boarded

Don’t bother when I am gone

To pray for my soul either dusk or dawn

For I will bargain for my fate hereafter

Don’t bring men who earn from the altar

Don’t bother when I am gone

Tears and pain in this world a conclusion forgone

And a world, a blameless world awaits

Without bills and fear of being among misfits

Don’t bother about me

Don’t regret the things you’d have done

I tried to drown me

And live the life you projected

Poetry Reading

You clapped the loudest in that poetry reading 

People throw weird looks at you every time I am on that stage 

Yet all you notice is my brilliance, or lack thereof, 

Your belief is steady, strong 

And when the two us are reduced to a mere bubble 

In a city where lights become a boon for thieves and whores 

You look into my eyes and say ‘let’s have pizza, 

Junky though, but mursik will cleanse us, 

And we’ll live straight to the edge of life,’

That’s how we plan – to accept life with the calmness of a dog 

Munching that Italian culinary invention, 

We get brilliant ideas such as: isn’t good to grab a whiskey? 

And we grab a whiskey and board that noisy manyanga to my ‘sheet hole’

Intoxicated by love, we look drunken in love 

I am even amazed by how my ‘introvertness’ wears out 

Suddenly I am superman feeling like I can’t pay the fare, and they will do nothing 

The Scientist

Clutching the phone close to my chest

I walked by the railway,

Dwarfed by thoughts

Numbed by the memories

I saw us relaxing under the eucalyptus shade

Talking,

Willing the time to stand still

I saw us by the verandah, smoking

I saw me waiting for you at Flax,

Anxious that you may have changed your mind

I saw us eating roast maize,

I saw us listening to Justin Beiber

Having nothing but our love for each other

Then I saw that I had lost it all

All because I couldn’t give you what you wanted

Because all I offered was love

 

I was a walking dead, without feelings

Lost in the cool November breeze

I lost your love and lost meaning

Coldplay’s Scientist spoke to my heart

It was a such as shame for us to part, the lyrics went by

I walked diminished

Wondering

Dying slowly when the thought

Of you doing the things we did with another man

And I clutched my phone every night

And listened to the songs that made us fall in love

Because all I had was a memory

A memory that wouldn’t keep me warm

Neither would it make go to sleep

The Chaos

Listen to that oppressive stench

Smell the noise of the beeping electricity meters

Sense the chaos in your house

Look at your feelings, study them

They resemble a poor man’s

That’s not the clothe you are made of

Aftertaste

The idea of love, for once

Adopted the metallic aftertaste

The taste of the mouth after vomiting

-repugnant

Repulsive

Stirred revulsion

And the thought of ever being love, ever truly,

Became an irrevocable impossibility

The Purity of Love

The idealistic dreams of love are amazing,

A life with the love of your life,

Dreaming, waking, eating, talking, walking ,

With you being present in each of these moments

Loving the simple smiles, the jokes and the laughter

Your love’s heartbeat an echo of yours

And the idea that someone is your whole world

Becomes something that you live everyday

And then you fall in love, plunging ‘heartfast’

The ideals are thrown of the window

All you remain with is a vacant room

Sometimes quarrels and arguments

Make a visit to your self-created kingdom

That kind of love was the kind you signed up for

Yet you don’t want to give up, you’ve never nursed breaking up

Because people just don’t stop loving so far away from forever

For love is ever intent on going off script

One day the two of you wake up and part ways

And if you were the strong type, mourn a few days

Then wait for a time to fall in love once again

But then if aren’t the strong type

You spend your time going through the memories

Studying intently each and every page

Of the story of love that ended way too abruptly

6 Rules to Abide By When You Visit From Shagz

The days of our great grandfathers were the perfect days. The only struggle one had was growing up. Once you grew up, a bride that had been selected for you is brought, and you learned to love each other as you build a family. They gave you cows to start with, and a farm. Not now. In addition to cramming mathematical formulae that you won’t apply anywhere, you have to contend with job seeking. It’s frowned upon to be in the village when you have that degree most covet. For that matter people keep streaming into your hell hole in the city attending interviews and whatnot. Some, for morbid curiosity. In this civilized world, it’s prudent to have a few rules to those who intend to visit. It goes a long way enhancing your visitor’s stay, as well as yours.

Bring your own charger

As a visitor never take this important gadget for granted. You don’t know what phone your host may be using. It could ile ya pin ndogo. Do not be fooled by the fact that your host is ever online on whatsapp every time you check in, that it is a smart phone he or she is using. Better yet, some of these phones have the lifespan of an orgasm. Don’t be an inconvenience. Bring your own charger.

Inform your host of your special dietary/medical needs

There many things that can go wrong when you consume foods that you normally don’t ingest. In case of such a scenario, it is critical that you inform your prospective host so that he or she can send you the budget (it varies from hood to hood) for your stay to make your stay a little livelier. Otherwise, you may find out that your host, although many will go out of their way to prove otherwise, depend on KDF for all their nutritional needs.

Don’t outshine your host

Once you get there, don’t sneer at the sheer lack of organization in your host’s house. Don’t comment on the pungent smell that emanates from secret places. Do not be a hygiene Nazi. If he or she doesn’t spread his bed, please do not make an attempt to. If he or she does not shower, please do what Romans do. If he or she sleeps up to ten in the morning, sleep up to 10.01 am. And most importantly don’t complain, complement your host. It goes a long way.

Note that you alone is welcome

It is extremely rude to bring along a friend, or a romantic partner. You didn’t come all the way from your village to engage in bedroom conquests, did you? Find a lodging or a dark alley if you can’t afford one. As a visitor you have no right to have to invite another visitor, not especially when you expressly stated that you had nowhere to go. Contravening this rule will be tantamount to treason.

Feel at home does not mean feel at home

As a matter of fact, when your host tells you to feel at home, he or she doesn’t actually mean it. People just say it, and it is as important as those mathematical formulae you learned, or more precisely just as important as political pledges that we hear every five years. To interpret in layman’s language, it means get done quickly with whatever brought you to the city and leave.

Don’t overstay

Finish your business, and leave the following day. It does no harm if you follow this principle. Even though your host may act like he wants you around a little longer, he keeps wondering when he can fart carelessly like he used. It is egregious to overstay. You may overstretch your host’s budget, and the sad part is that he may not complain because he is aware that you are messenger to villagers that want to hear so badly how life is torturing you in the city, just to feel better about themselves. 

The Kitchen

The kitchen has never been my fortress, except of course when I am going to fetch food. Being brought up in a girls only environment exempted me from doing any chores pertaining the kitchen. But nature has a way of making you curse a privilege you so immensely enjoyed, thrusting you in a jungle where you are all alone. In your stray wanders, you find yourself relishing the magic that happens in the kitchen, and of course Miss Google comes to your rescue, a subservient kind of girl who obeys all your instructions but doesn’t do anything. She tells you how to cook rice and bolts out like she wasn’t even there.

Back when we were young, I’d watch my mother cook, letting my eyes indulge in every single move her hands made. But then, as a man, it reaches a point where it becomes sort of an abomination to be in the kitchen anymore. The kitchen in the village sense is a smaller structure constructed specifically for cooking, and more often it would be blackened by sooth. The sooth would collect over years until it forms something like a goatee. That sooth goatee served a purpose, a medicinal one. I have never bothered to know the kind of ailment the sooth-goatee heals.

I am glad I am not alone lost in this jungle that is the kitchen. When the pangs of hunger bite, a man’s got to roll up the sleeves, hit the kitchen with the hope that he will concoct something palatable. Plenty of times the food comes out exceptional (in its whackiness) and he finds himself really grateful for whoever has ever cooked a meal for him in the last quarter a century. Mothers become heroes all of a sudden, and if she was already one, the spectrum only widens, so does respect. Imagine cooking meals day in day out, whether she feels like it or not? I think that’s the definition of valor.

The first day is often the harshest. You burn yourself, the food comes out tasteless, too much salt…..plenty. The only consolation is that no one has to remind you of its tastelessness. But then when you are done, another bigger challenge confronts you; doing the utensils. Most of a man’s utensils have been discarded having stayed long enough for mould to grow; making a permanent abode on what was once a bed for ‘mouthwatering’ delicacies. The reason is a man will find it too hectic to wash and will resort to buying, especially sufurias, instead of washing.

As a bachelor, there’s always that one lady that makes a visit every weekend. She believes that there are no lies in your truths, sometimes she questions but ‘love’ makes her constitutionally ignorant. She’s upbeat every weekend doing chores around (cooking, washing) as you head out to catch football in the hood. In the evening when you head home you find everything clean, and food on the table or at your beck and call. Before long, you are asking her to move in with you in order to counter the effects of your whacky cooking. In between, when she’s gone, the man in you only cooks meals that involve boiling and doesn’t make the sufuria dirty.  

There will be always another woman who knows a man’s favorite menu, the kibandaski woman. She knows the number of chapattis you’ll eat when in a certain mood, she smells your broke ass many miles away and she knows why you don’t show up on weekends, yet she is not jealous at all.

People Against Exams and Assignments

There’s a fancy water bottle she carries along. It has the color of wood. It has water in it, but it’s just an assumption-it could be liquid oxygen. It seems like it is standard survival procedure for women nowadays, to carry water bottles all everywhere. It is as if they have special information that water will run out any day they don’t do it. Joke on them!! We men just need oxygen, and sometimes beer (insert your favourite poison). She’s a lecturer, who in my estimation is in her early thirties. At irregular intervals, she sips from her fancy water bottle, sometimes just opening it to see if the water has turned into wine.

It’s always a long drawn class, with her monotonous voice ruling the room. It hovers above heads, from which it leaves vital information such as ‘let me doze off.’ To keep myself listening, or seeming to be, I have to stimulate my mind by mentally stripping her, one clothe at a time, just for the fun of it. Of course I never get there, because she throws a glare at all the darn time, especially when I am about to flay her. One time she asked a question in which the class spokespersons had no interest in speaking for us. She left the room and emerged a few minutes later with foolscaps. And we had to write an exam. I personally cursed the talkative people who failed us at our hour of need.

But not this time, I am very alert though. I sit next to a talkative foreigner, whom I am more than glad he has never discovered the miracles google can do. He asks questions, answers questions like he is just about to take over the class. Even then, you would think that such kind of a person would be nice to be around with, more so when you have no desire of answering any questions. You are wrong. It is not possible to live without have a kind of hatred for such a person. Not the hatred that makes you want to shoot them in the head though, but just a form that you can’t pinpoint. You just know you hate him, or put more precisely your person desperately want to have a concrete reason to hate him.

Then bingo!

The lecturer with a fancy water bottle spills the beans.  This whacko has been going around our backs, asking for assignments. Not once but twice. This is what you’ve been looking for to hate this person. What kind of person actively seeks to be given assignments?

In the spirit of people against exams and assignments [PAEA] he needs to have his head examined for contravening one of the most important rules; ‘you shall not, in any form whatsoever, display an abnormal love for exams or assignments, through gallivanting with the lecturer/teacher, for this is traumatic to some (all of us), unless under extremely unavoidable circumstances.’   

However, the group is very lenient on those who contravene this rule and a light punishment has been proscribed for offenders. It states that,’ anyone who contravenes this rule is liable to a mandatory brain examination, which shall be conducted by highly trained surgeons renowned for vigorously and relentlessly hitting the offenders’ head until he asks for forgiveness by collapsing and going limb.’ This punishment has been argued to so lenient, although the use of guns was banned on the grounds that offenders had a relatively easy way confessing.

In the spirit of unity and harmony, we do not like assignments and exams at all. If anything, it should be replaced forthwith with something less serious like drinking water from fancy water bottles. Even though it may be indispensable, we would like to proclaim unequivocally that we do not like it.

Do Not Ask Me

Do not ask me to stay

For I abandoned my heart

Somewhere, far away

In the secret stash

Where you store unwanted hearts

Do not ask me where I am

Everywhere, I am home, like air

Once there was harm

Where I thought my heart

Had found a home

Do not look for me anymore

I am an unsightly ruin

A ruin with a steady door

Shut tight from the outside

Have my heart, and leave me in peace

Without one.

Shape Of My Heart

x   

Source:bkreader.com

     

      An air of fear stiffened my muscles

I could see the particles in an awkward dance

It had been a long time since we met

And I wasn’t sure what you felt about us

And so I did let Backstreet Boys speak for me

In the form of ‘Shape Of My Heart’

And you sat there, on the edge of the bed

Frozen with a distant and blank look on your face

When the song ended you didn’t say a word

How I wanted to eavesdrop on your thoughts

To dance to their rhythm as they cling

And embrace each other to form a coherent thought

Right now my heart is shapeless

Without a memory, except long nights

Of tormenting thoughts,

Thoughts that were always punctual

Like an alarm, waking me at 3 am

To think of you, to think of the same lofty thoughts of us

Sorry Mama

A sad man [source/nvf.org]

Mama, I am sorry for not being a good son

You see, I suck at being an adult

Because there’s no manual for it

And there are no maps to refer to when I am lost

Mama, I am sorry for taking you love for granted

You see, it’s the purest there is in the entire world

Whereas the world’s just receives

Yours gives without intention – so unconditional

Mama, I am sorry for disrespecting you

You see, I thought I was too grown up

To ever receive instruction from you

Yet it was just the teenage hormones doing the thinking

Mama, I am sorry there have been plenty of days

You see, days that offered a chance at redemption

To be a better son, to see the bright side of things

I am afraid those days are no more

Mama, I am sorry to have to let you down,

You see, I know you did not bear a failure

But every single day I have little energy

To live up to the expectation you have of me

Mama, I am sorry I’ve heard of a better place

You see, I do not believe in paradise or heaven

But paradise to me mean not paying any bills

Because capitalism is the yoke on the neck of men

Mama, I am sorry we may never meet

You see, you soul is bound for heaven

For that’s what I pray for unconsciously

Because there can never be anyone like you

Seasons

The cold wind harshly caressed your feet

Its two am in the morning

You are there by the verandah

Glad you’ve seen the new day,

As fresh as it is, 

You buy some more time before going to bed

So you don’t think of her once asleep

When you finally lock the door

You lock her memory with the night hounds

To listen to their mournful howls

As you drift to a dreamless world

A world that will stop existing

When you open your eyes

Some nights you’ll dream of her

A nightmare of course

Because you’ll dream of her making love

To another man

And you reach for your sword

And slash his manhood

And pierce his heart

And then the heinous crime wakes you up

Its four am, and you begin thinking of her