Live Again

 When chicken go home to roost

We will rise to raise our cocks 

And let them crow the entire night 

Or take off in debauched flights 

So What

 What does it mean to me?

Even when it feels the whole world to you

It can't be you, you can't be 

We can't see the world with the same eyes 

Unless I poke yours 

The Eff Up Artist

I knead headaches like a seasoned chef

I marinate disappointment as if it was chicken

I serve cocktails of frustrations

Because, somehow, I have learnt the art

Of not giving a damn

And when history of ‘effing’ is finally written

All my names shall occupy the first four places

Because, when you serve me my poison

I become an artiste –

An ‘effing’ greatest ‘eff’ up artistes

I just can’t help – I have tried a thousand times

The artiste in me looms like a colossus

I can’t ignore him 

Disjointed

 And, 

for the love of things, 

frowned upon things, 

things of the world, 

a man smiles at oblivion 

And, 

for the price of dreaming is too high, 

and the lazy bones creak under its weight, 

dreams demand more than one can give

the slow ebb of time passes by. 

before you bring me a cup of poison 

look at the disjointed bones 

disjointed dreams, 

and worry not about why I am who I am 

The Bleak Existence

 the essence of life wanes 

as the clock ticks - 

a silent diabolic tick. 

A signal to an impending doom 

Where are the crevices, 

nooks and crannies 

to hide a weary soul 

from the vagaries of living

The toils. 

The frustrations. 

The debauchery. 

and bars set set too high 

let me sit on the sina taabu 

and ruminate, one more time, 

for the thousandth time, 

of this bleak existence  

Exquisite Pains

 I have grown accustomed to these pains, 

these exquisite pains, 

pains that glitter inside my bones 

For in feeling them

I am filled with dread, 

the ever-numbing dread that 

I am still alive 

The Toil

 the sun unwraps darkness 

revealing a gift to mankind 

a gift of endless toils 

for it is the price we pay 

if only to stay alive 

the gift of light is fine 

a fine for our desire for exquisite 

or unrefined living 

or for survival - it does not matter 

That Night

And when you smiled 

bathing the night sky with an alluring gleam 

I knew there was much more to it 

than mere infatuation 

There was more to those pearly white teeth 

revealed to me under the night sky 

You asked me to hug you

God, you asked me to hug you 

Like I did not know what a man was supposed to 

Because I did not know what to feel then 

I wasn't sure how to act 

But then we lived through the awkwardness 

The awkwardness thawed 

and warmth slipped into our hearts 

melting every fibre of resistance 

Being Broke

With a face of grim concentration, as though you are being watched by an enthralled audience, you deliver a prophecy: ‘ii ni ile wiki gas itaisha.’ You see, the conditions are perfect – you are broke and have no prospects of seeing any money in the foreseeable future. the trouble with the prophecy is that you do not know the exact date or time the gas will sneak a surprise on you. But you have a rough idea: it will happen when you are jovial, when you are halfway cooking ugali, and at approximately seventeen minutes before midnight.

It just happens that when you have no money bad stuff and surprises sneak up on you. It is in the constitution under article (7) (f). There is nothing much you can do about it except chin up and get used to it. There just isn’t any school, or app that shows you the percentage of gas left in your cylinder. And you, right there, have the audacity to think that we are civilized? Well, if you think so, why don’t you cook with it?

At that point you have no energy to resist the thought that some people’s lives are far much better than yours. People who use firewood to cook. First of all, there is a way food cooked with firewood tastes so much better. It is as though there is a hidden cooking intellect hidden in the sooth-producing source of fuel. Second, you’d know in advance when you are about to run out of firewood, and plan your cooking. There is no way, in a hundred years (unless it rains), you would wake up in the middle of the night to make a meal.

The last time you checked out, there was a student who had invented an app that would tell the amount of gas left in your cylinder. It involved a laptop, and some application that eludes even your wildest imaginations. It would save you a lot, that app. But you’d have to make that university student rich first. Which might be something you are reluctant because you cannot figure out how such a man’s brains works while yours only comes up with the most mundane stuff like: ‘let me have a drink. I may have ideas.’ Then you have ideas, and it all revolves around having another drink. That goes on until your wallet begins making hearty jokes when you tell it about other better ideas. Usually it is the following day when you wake up with only 50 shillings and an unopened packet of condom.

The Day Everything Changes

 the head feels a little light 

a testament of bleak and blurry thoughts

running havoc, yet running things 

and the strides, leading astray 

adopted its purposeless 

each metre gobbling up remaining active brain cells 

and there was no guilt whatsoever 

because it was a day everything changed forever 

and strange gathered around, 

as though the camp fire the listen to a sage 

of a man well traveled, 

well travelled not beyond the walls of his bedroom 

consuming thoughts of greatness 

of vanities 

of the consuming aura of penury

but not today 

because today everything changes forever 

the beguiling sense of much sought affection 

usurped senses, dreams suddenly stalled 

for she stood and said; lets go 

and the men scampered 

and a chapter began 

a chapter that's still being written  

Nervous

 It is one in the morning

I am nervous. I do not know why I am nervous

Boyz II Men is playing 

I am alone in a sea of people 

bobbing up and down the waves 

Clinging to twigs

I am drowning in a sea of men 

Men having the best times of their lives 

I am nervous 

And I do not know why. 

Something is grinding my intestines 

A diabolic being is guiding my thoughts 

My conscience is blurry 

Like a king's impending death 

I am no prince 

There was never a kingdom 

Wheelbarrows For The Poor

 The 'Hustler's' chopper raises dust 

Amid chants from the poor and the downtrodden 

The poor who wants the hustler's crumbs 

Crumbs for a bread - a stole bread 

For the hustler has never owned a bakery 

It is Well

 It is well, if it will be well 

For nothing surmounts the will of man 

Nothing - not even death 

is a barrier to a hopeful man 

It is well - even if for a second 

Even when the pains resist medication 

It is well 

Second Chances

We'll dream once more, 

and we'll shout on rooftops 

So that world can know 

that our pains have'nt washed away hopes 

We'll lift our fists in defiance 

Our fists gripping the last of our dreams 

Because every day present a chance 

to toil every second until the sun dims 

We'll pursue the same horizon

With the same glee 

Our pains are all but gone 

We'll to thrive, not just be 

Listen

 Listen, it was all my fault 

Nowadays I do a good job at 

making mistakes 

Nobody makes mistake, repeatedly, 

like I do 

Listen, there is no joy in making mistakes

There is no joy in being insane 

Listen, making mistakes is sometimes fun 

You just subtract common sense 

And have yourself uninterrupted moments of bliss 

Even when it involves serpents 

Ever waiting to sink its fangs on you 

It's still fun 

Because it does not involve your brain 

Listen, 

I do not promise you I'll change 

Change is for people hoping to make 

this miserable earth a wonderland 

Change is for people unattached to hope 

For I have learnt, in my wanders, 

That hope is a dangerous thing - 

it can kill a man 

 

Listen, 

There is nothing to live for 

Listen, 

Beauty has lost all its gleam 

Washed away by flowing pains 

Some real, some I imagine them 

Some have coursed through my veins for eons 

Reluctant, to devour me in one swift bite 

 

Listen, 

I cared - there are moments I still think I do 

I care because I am still alive 

I care because I still effortlessly breath 

I wasn't born doing this but I am so good at it 

Not Knowing About Tomorrow

It saddens a bit,

But then a little is all enough

To make the world seem daunting

To make the next day distant and aloof

Because the next day just is not worthy of hope

At least at the present

 

The threats are there, hanging like a noose

Ready to snap a neck upon the slightest nudging

And with that thought,

The world sucks a little more

 

Except one person, everyone else was born ready

The heaps of worries are mere mole hills

Yet his seems mountains

To scale empties his soul of the single shred of hope

But then tomorrow shall come

And if alive, he shall still be have last year’s worries

 

It saddens a little more,

The thought that he may not be alive tomorrow

It saddens,

Because he won’t cry for his own self

 

But then, even when everything is coated

With a thick layer of hopelessness

Life’s still beautiful

It is. For everything goes on

With or without him. Is he willing to miss out?

Global Warning

Dear world, arise from your deep slumber

The entire galaxy laughs at us

The melting glaciers and the rising sea level

Arise and heed the warning

 

Look at the price of industrialization

Few get rich while all suffer consequences

Of the emissions and the effluents

Steadily choking our existence

 

The ever erratic weather patterns

Stick like cancerous tentacles

Gripping our senses ever more tightly

As people die of starvation

 

Arise humans, and tend to your planet

We’ve conquered it, and conquered ourselves

For it becomes inhabitable

We’ll go the way of the dinosaurs

Utopia

Bury your heads dear humans,

Bury them in sands,

As chain saws gobble up

Water catchment areas

 

Encroach forests, build timber houses

Plant cash crops all around

For when the last drop of rain is a tear

Generations after will eat currency

 

Brother, cut that damn tree

Yes, that one. Cut it down

You mean birds live there

No, who gives a damn, just cut it

 

The Sahara is hauntingly beautiful

Think about the sand dunes

How about the far apart oasis

Isn’t the entire world worth a Sahara?

Libation

 Thick black smoke dances to the sky

A song of destruction emanates, noisily

From the tireless turbines, turning

Churning effluents on Mother Nature’s belly

 

Without guns, and not so much of intelligence

The effluents have a dictatorial grip in water sources

Choking life as well as the aesthetic appeal

And we sit by and wonder what went wrong

 

Our ancestors succumbed to industrial sludge

For it is the only form of libation on the menu

As people seek new ways to earn a living

Yet unknowingly killing the living

 

Did God advocate destruction? When He gave man

the power to conquer earth, did He?

Did God give man power to pursue currency?

At the expense of humanity. And nature 

Gone With The Wind

 With boundless energy,

A cocktail of childish glee and invention,

We chased butterflies that painted the place

With a cornucopia of colors

They lithely flew away, darting our tiny hands

Before we knew it, they’d be gone

Leaving us tired and wasted

But we knew seasons were about to change

Now the butterflies are gone

To a world unknown

 

Sulking and throwing useless tantrums

We’d troop to the river to fetch water

Mother’s warning ringing in our ears

‘Pay attention lest you drown’

 Now the river trickles like a child’s piss

Black rocks stare at us as if in deep shame

For having their nakedness exposed

The banks have receded tremendously

Like a bald man’s receding hair

 

Days gone, the area was blanketed by trees

And stories of ogres were way too real

The rustling leaves, dancing in the wind

Made us think of the ogres’ whispers

But not anymore. The land is barren

You can see the horizon

The land has been stripped bare

Leaving it as alluring a witch’s nakedness

The Future Is A Lie

 The future is one big fat lie 

It is a large neon sign in the sky 

That human ignore as they toil 

Investing in a day they may not see 

The future is one big illusion 

One that has been accepted in every station 

A bright future awaits you, the lie 

And an innocent kid's soul is lost in a mundane pursuit 

The future is an unfathomable lie 

Your employer wants you to work first  - sigh 

Your landlord wants your rent first 

The landlord is right. He accepts the futility of the future 

What is a future if not mere accumulation of seconds?

And the past one is gone forever

The succeeding one so fleeting 

And when all these are combined together 

You will realise that we are barely alive more than a second each 

The Circle Begins Again

it feels like the sun 

going round and round earth 

indefatigable 

shining as it has for eons 

and each day 

it trudges up the sky

hour by hour 

until it descends into the horizon 

it feels like you are the sun 

only without purpose 

without light 

dimming everything around you 

you are a sun 

you love the circles 

gathering hours and hours 

of wasted dreams 

 

The Bright Day Drips

 The bright days drips its seconds

At the same rate it did thousand years ago

The dreamers bake their souls in the sun

The doers drain themselves in the sun

And time wills itself, effortlessly away,

As it is wont when one desires it still

Mocking the dreamer expertly weaving excuses

For the day he made excuses his mantra

He had long since stopped living

Except because it takes too much effort

To stop breathing – to stop breathing while poor

While We Lived

Even though we were united by love

It seemed as though each of us

In their own love cocoon

Created parallel universes

Cemented by an occasional call  

An occasional I love you

And even though we saw each other

Travelling in the same direction

Hoping to meet at an unknown destination

Yet content knowing we are headed the same direction

Content in not knowing we are headed to different places

And when we break down along the way

And we try to reach out to one another

We realize there is a huge gap between us

We realize we were never going to meet again

 

The Butterflies

 The butterflies that grip you 

as you sail in the waves of a memory 

it is all you could live for once again 

the taste of that song in your ears 

enthralls, you feel your heart rejoicing 

it was all you lived for 

but then its all gone 

dawns get you staring at the horizon 

knowing there is an abyss right in the sky 

that she will never come out of

The Tattered Soul

 

The tattered soul flusters lethargically,
A curtain covering a wounded house
The gaping holes tell its stories
Stories of both woe and valor
Of incredible pains, adorable pains
For their paths were paved with roses
Roses of bad decisions and frustrations

Beautiful Phrases

 The words were there, 

Beautiful phrases that even Shakespeare, 

Despite having been dead for so long, 

Would have marveled at my ingenuity, 

Shake his head, and declare forlornly

"I wouldnt have thought of these lines, 

even if I had lived this long." 

But then the words are not there anymore 

They will come in drips some other time

Like a faulty tap, 

And me, desiring a quick full tank, 

Will go elsewhere to look for other less beautiful words 

But beautiful nonetheless, because they'll gush

The Wandering Man

 The wandering man wonders -

Wonders the thoughts of a money-mad man 

Thinking, always thinking - and never doing 

What will your thoughts amount to?

Except the frustration 

of having done very little for the thoughts

And desolation, 

Because your wanders in distant lands 

bore nothing

But if you count other things 

it could include diseases such as cirrhosis 

 

 

The Meticulous Drunkard

 At exactly two in the night, Onjivo swaggered into Club Datura. For those who have been to Datura, one thing is certain – it exclusively for people who do not give a damn about aesthetics. For one, there are concrete pillars that someone stopped halfway, as an afterthought, while in the process of destroying it. It leaks when it rains. It is not a place where you would gladly have fun destroying your liver or lungs or even libido. Onjivo did not care about having fun, neither the aesthetics. He was in for business.

Even with the absence of aesthetics, Onjivo still manages to be meticulous. Despite the cold that seeped straight to the bones, Onjivo wore only a basketball vest, and a Chicago Bulls cap. He sat on a Guinness branded plastic chair, and near a socket. Nobody knows that a socket is there, for it looks as though you could be risking electric shock what with the wires all naked and hanging. Once seated, he dives his hands into an orange reusable bag and retrieves a tissue paper. It is weird for a man but Onjivo is a man who is meticulous about everything. With a gloomy yet serious face, he gingerly wipes the table, but only the area he projects to use.

Once done with the cleaning, Onjivo dives again into his orange bag and retrieves three smart phones from the entrails. He also removes a charge, plugs it into the dangerously dangling socket and turns it on. A blue light emitted by the socket bathes a few centimetres of his table. Then he plugs USB cables into the various orifices that came with the charger. Meticulously, he charges each of his three phones. All this while, cigarette is dangling on the corner of his mouth. He stops, takes a deep puff, and places it on the table.

A recently hired waiter walks to him and greets him jovially. She knows him which means that Onjivo is regular at the club, which is not typically a club. The first moving drinks here are the cheap third generation liquor and keg popular with boda boda guys and casual laborers. For the latter, however, you would be hard pressed to understand what casual thing they do at night. Onjivo is not a casual laborer, neither is he a boda boda guy. He orders two Guinness bottles and settles on his chair like a boss.

With the cigarette dangling at the corner of his mouth, he again dives into the orange bag and takes out a jelly. He scoops a huge chunk of it and proceeds to oil himself. It is for mosquitoes; he says to an inquisitive patron who has just come to sit next him.

The plump waiter brings him his beers. At this point, he is checking his merchandise, jaba. The waiter marvels at how much they are. She is intrigued by him, or by his money. Before long, customers go to him, one by one. Onjivo measures them and puts them in a tiny plastic bag. They part with their money and take their leaves, perhaps to chew cud.

Heaps of Me!

There are a thousand heaps of me 

Neatly stacked, one on top of the other 

And the weight? - o, its hard not to bother 

Each day the world is too much of me 

There are a thousand layers making me 

To know me, you need to unfold all 

But what you will achieve will be dismal

Each layer is so thick, you will see 

There are a thousand dreams within me 

Each yearning to be lived at the same time 

They all ring like a thousand bells that chyme 

Each waking second feels like a stormy sea 

What's there to live when I am mere heap?

Of bones and flesh stacked together 

Of grating dreams that are a great bother 

Making it so hard to have a moment of sleep

When The Rain Stops

When the rains stops raining 

And you finally feel the sun shining 

Enjoy the the scene 

Toss everything into the bin 

All the extra baggage 

And let you skin bask in the sun's glory 

Dawn!

 Whatever the case, 

Dawn all announce its arrival, 

Never too late, and never early 

Yet its punctuality shall not be welcome, 

At least not today, 

For there are many things that need hidden 

Under the blanket of darkness 

But, dawn - the ever insolent dawn, 

Shall walk in without an iota of shame 

Stacking itself among many unwanted dawns 

As if it shall stand out - it thinks it is the only dawn 

That was thought of yesterday as tomorrow 

It is in for a rude shock 

It will cry in the toilet of history, 

Broken hearted, because it was rejected before it arrived 

Like an aborted fetus 

Dumped, and never to fulfill its dreams 

It had no dreams 

Metric Disconnect

 It was an incident that, thinking more about it now, would be the hallmark of tremendous disconnect between the education system and reality. I had been sent to buy nails, and as you know, nails – just like certain influential male organs – come in inches. Not millimeters. And certainly not centimeters. That would be grossly demeaning to nails and the organ, who may write nasty comments if you do so.

I was in high school at the time (and on holiday) and seeing that I didn’t have much to do except loaf time, it was deemed that I was fit to run the small errand to Flax Centre to purchase nails. There was a little construction project going on, and as constructions are wont, certain materials suddenly become sparse or are suddenly needed.

“Three inches,” they said even though I had heard the fundi say it. I hauled my juvenile self, neither with ambitions nor hurry. It seemed a minor inconvenience, but the prospect of keeping change acted as the only motivator. Also, the project had stalled because of the slight. The nails were needed in a hurry.

After three kilometres (where did those who use miles learn it from? Movies?) of walking, I was at the hardware. I asked for a kilo of three inch nails. The attendant weighed them, handed them to me, I paid and began the long walk back home. Even if they were not needed that day, I still would have gone back regardless, because there were no suave ways of idling back them. There were, but I was not good at them.

I got home and delivered them to the fundis. One quickly rummaged through and announced grimly, ‘it’s a girl.’ Just kidding. He said that I got the wrong nails…not the wrong nails actually – it’s not that there are yellow nails or nails za kienyeji – but the wrong inches. The inches were nearly double than they ones they wanted.

I think that must have been the only time I felt good when one of them acknowledged our ignorance in a way that detached responsibility from my actions. “These young people do not know anything,” they said as though distinguishing three and five inches required the same intellectual depth as neurosurgery. As far as they fundis were concerned my knowledge of important things such as inches competed favourably with mucus.

Even then, I was perfectly willing to correct the anomaly by trekking back three kilometres. However, the fundis showed tremendous fortitude by improvising. They were in a hurry to get the project done, hit a drinking den, and probably brag about how people like me were clueless about inches.

“I thought he was intelligent, but he brought six inches instead of three,” one will say amid an uproar of laughter.

“How can one not distinguish between an inch and two inches?” a fellow drunkard, well versed with matters inches, will as ask.

I am not ashamed to say that they answer to that question is me, and I have plenty of reasons to back it up. We never learnt about inches in primary school. I have no memory attached to inches back in primary. This is special because I spent most of my last years in primary school pensive and a nervous wreck converting milimetres to centimetres and to metres. And vice versa. At no point in my life did inches feature. I do not remember being whacked because I could not correctly convert from inches to any of those aforementioned metric terms.

Even then, if the guy who had sold me the nails knew what inches were, he could have given me the correct ones. I guess he was as clueless as me. Either that or he was desperate to make a sale. It is not really a one man’s blame. It is two.

If you think like I do, then you must be wondering why what is taught in school cannot be applied in real life. Even metric system yawa. You can excuse learning about the hypotenuse or trapezium, but not something as vital and life-giving – if you get my drift - as inches. Another stupid one is foot. I haven’t got the hang of it.  and miles too.

Every time someone uses metric terms I did not learn in school I feel like smacking them in the face to atone for the beatings I endured back in school. Trust me, there is nothing as torturous as the thought that all your years of schooling were up to nothing. It is even much worse if you spent a few years getting so scared of being wrong – a small wrong would earn you an unforgettable beating. It does not do justice to the moments spent tucking your hands between your legs, trembling and your teeth clattering every time you were in class. All that and you were not taught about inches?!!? Gerrarahia!!