WITHOUT THAT SMILE

The laugh, originating from deep within-unfeigned,

Had become a soundtrack to the movie Loneliness,

Caressed me in the was way moon does to earth at night

And you filled every part of me with undefined longing

The kind of longing that stretches time, each tick tock

Succeeding each other with distinct clarity

That every moment without you, without that laugh

Without that smile, without you close to me

Would be- without doubt-one long spell of a time

THE NIGHTS ARE NO LONGER LONELY

The nights are no longer lonely, neither are the days

It has become bearable, the thought of you

With another man

Doing the same things we used to do

And telling you the same lies you didn’t decipher

The same lies that had you running to my arms every other night

Now, I am learning how to miss you

But it is just as hard as quantum physics 

THE MUSE OF A LONER

He cuts a figure, sad to say

Of a man whose life was stolen

-he has no life, he never seemed to-

But he breathes blunt optimism

That surprisingly doesn’t choke

Day in day out he mulls over

And turns in a bed he doesn’t own

To mull once again over things

Beautiful- but he is mortally afraid

To rise up and reach for them

He thinks of a woman he wants to love

A woman who has captured his mind

And yet not the soul and heart

He thinks about her everyday like a job

Should she accept him, what would she eat?

In his mind empty worlds exist

And creatures beg to be brought to life

By the crying pen, he looks in askance

For the creature might be too big

To roam in such a small world as his

DEUCES: BACK INTO

The cream painted wall looked alluring

For into it I stared into my future, or rather hacked

Into what would have been then, just as is

Then, a projection of nothingness, sobriety

About she, nothing but a vulture, waiting for me to F up 

JUST ONE MORE LIE

Can I ask you if you’re still mad tonight?

Or you still think you decision is right?

I want you to banish those thoughts away

I still have one more lie you might believe today

One more chance baby, I can make it right

Without you, I can’t endure one more night

Your love is my delight, the sweetest of all

Just believe this lie and let us stroll

I can make your dreams come true baby

Don’t lie this is what you don’t see

Everybody knows we were meant together

Believe me, like a goat to a tether  

Just one more lie I want you to believe

Accept me back and offer my heart reprieve

Don’t make me grief when you are still alive

Don’t let me die from heartbreak, let me live

LEAVE YOUR MORALS BY THE KITCHEN SINK

Leave your morals by the kitchen sink

Let your mind lose itself awhile

As we journey to the very edge of life

Where you’d glance at life with a smile

Let my hands crawl up your silk skin

And relieve you of what’s burdensome tonight

Kiss you thoroughly as you unclothe your mind

Let’s journey up to the fifth delight

Heave, sigh, groan, before the splinter

Before the burst of the pleasure jar

Before a million heavens crawl to your sight

But you won’t see because I am a blur

I’d give you the entire world baby

But first I’d take you around it

Only if he didn’t make the chemist

The only place you must visit, each morning 

BANAL DESIRES

The body acquiesces to the most banal of desires

Guilt rips through, knowing, what you’ve known

All along to be as dangerous as petrol fires

Save for a moment of disregard, without caution

She lay besides you, eyes begging for more

But your mind is begging to know her more

Beyond her name, beyond that pretty face

And what course through her veins apart from blood

She implores you with those eyes, damn those eyes

Eyes that melt something inside you

Something that makes you feel more alive

Something that makes you reach for her lips, and breasts

She is be the fire that you yearn it could consume you

She is the storm that tosses upside down the vessel

Into a sea full of creatures, hungry for human blood

But only in bits, a torture you think you can withstand 

ONE SIP

It wasn’t meant to one sip

But it touched so deep

Gifted me wings to fly

Way beyond the sky

The world comes alive

And I can at least survive

Don’t ever leave

For I’ll forever grieve

Take all my liver

Do with it whatever

For you make feel good

Don’t leave if you should

WHY DID I MARRY NJERI?

I don’t even know how to describe her eyes

When she looks at me when I arrive at 6.30 pm

Sometimes Njeri says a word or two

Sometimes she’s just as quiet, like she’s absent

I know she’s counting days when she’ll say,

‘ENOUGH IS ENOUGH’

She ran down the business I had started for her

I did it for my undying affection for her

And she sunk it, thousands of shillings down the drain

Surprisingly, without any guilt or remorse

Tell me, doesn’t she have the capability to finish me?

The first thing she asks in the evening is money

The money I have toiled for in the baking sun

And if I beat the curfew, which I often do

She kisses me like she’s afraid of being seen

Like we are two teenagers hiding

And then she cooks that tasteless food of hers

I wonder where my money goes

At night she turns her back on me

She’s ever tired, and with a headache

I haven’t inquired if she’s cheating around

Though I am too scared to suspect she’s cheating

But I have heard of a young man

I know even the government introduced free education

And it’s illegal to deny a young man education as my Njeri does

I dread being doused with hot water

I dread being openly stripped of my dignity

As a respectable member of the society

And as a loving husband to Njeri

FALLING

What is it with love

That men can’t control falling

Trusting a devil’s calling

And they hurt their damn brows

What is it with loving a woman

That a man gives up everything

For the beckon of her single pleasure

Even when it’s disguised in ruins

What’s with a woman’s adoration

That men fail to think straight

How they stand by the gate

Of happiness and eternity

IF IT MAKES SENSE

I haven’t stopped thinking about you

Why is it a little special? Because-

Because you may never know

And I am not proud of this secret

It nags my mind, constricts my veins

Knowing too well that you could be

The one coursing through to my heart

And transporting oxygen to my brain

How would I even bribe my self

To bring me into telling you how I feel

That you are the most awesome human being

And that my life would be lit by your smile

Sometimes I wish it were as easy

As walking a supermarket and picking stuff

Then I’d pick words and walk to the cashier

And the words would be ‘I want every piece of you’

But then I am here, missing what I don’t know

Figuring how it would with you snoring beside me

Knowing you’d be there for the longest time

And life, in its shambles, is complete, in its own way

The Quiet World

Related Poem Content Details

BY JEFFREY MCDANIEL

In an effort to get people to look 

into each other’s eyes more, 

and also to appease the mutes, 

the government has decided 

to allot each person exactly one hundred   

and sixty-seven words, per day. 

When the phone rings, I put it to my ear   

without saying hello. In the restaurant   

I point at chicken noodle soup. 

I am adjusting well to the new way. 

Late at night, I call my long distance lover,   

proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.   

I saved the rest for you. 

When she doesn’t respond, 

I know she’s used up all her words,   

so I slowly whisper I love you 

thirty-two and a third times. 

After that, we just sit on the line   

and listen to each other breathe.

AS LONG AS MY AMBITIONS HOLD YOU

The world looks                                                                                                                                          beautiful from below

Cloudless starry nights such a delight

Which we can watch and talk about dreams

And what holds our ambitions tight

Partly, mine is to rise to the zenith

Dine with the movers and shakers

But it will take time to get there

Rise with you, and probably meet the makers

But how long will you stick by me

How long will my ambitions hold you?

Before you bolt for the proverbial greener pastures

How long will you find my love true?

As long as my ambitions hold you

We could starve and you might like it

We walk not because its healthy, we have to

For at the end there’ll be something sweet

PATIENCE FOR LIQUOR

There’s too much to worry

And a lot to be sorry

Hand me a bottle of patience please

Let the bottle top escape with a pop

More like an amen to damned hope

Let’s toast to a glass of patience please

I am gonna stagger home tonight

Drunk AF, every shitty thing is a delight

What potent drink did I consume? Patience please

THE PHONE CALL

She sounded cold; detached and distant

Between odd stars and light transfixed

Ponders I, with a tinge of care and regret

For in today’s world heroes are few

And I am many

She sounded cold and aloof, unemotional

Like someone was prodding her breasts

Her mind unwilling, her body yielding

And she struggles to balance the battles

Without betraying the background in her voice

I fumbled for words through the call

Unsure what to say to her troubled brittle soul

Seemingly beckoning sympathy

I struggled but my coldness wouldn’t allow me

I accepted long ago, I am no hero

She hangs up almost too quickly without byes

Just the way I wanted it, the way I always loved

It fills the space and time between us

I am accorded precious time to indulged in vanities

And write letters to ghosts that have stopped visiting 

LATELY

Lately her words seem to point at affluence

Like how she just moved to a bigger house

A house she can’t afford since she’s jobless

Her survival isn’t just a mere fable but scientific

Lately she’s taken to taking mirror selfies

Ass first, ass the point of focus, she loves life

The many hashtags belie her peasant upbringing

A huge makeover, a sudden metamorphosis

There’s so much happiness in that sneering voice

Castigating my hustle, demeaning the man I am

The brain sometimes fails in outwitting the heart

And it works overtime to stay intact instead of leaving

Valentine ’s Day is steadily approaching

She’s hinting at nothing less than a Bomas Inn night out

Previously we would stay indoors and drink mursik

Lately she wants none of that, just champagne

Lately she’s hinted at her being miserable

At a place where it had become home

Out of the blues, Kipruto’s rickety car looks so beautiful

Even when we loved trekking, talking all the way

DO YOU?

Do you, in the stillness of the night, wonder

And crave a text or even a call from me

Do you wander to far off lands in daydreams?

With me in tow, plucking flower with abandon

Do you crave a moment of reckless abandon

Unhinged and without regrets at dawn

When you wake up beside me, entangled

Do you crave that smile that you’ll wake up to?

Do you crave that I crave you

Do you think about me in moments of solitude

Like I do often, like every time I breathe

Do you crave a poem, written for you?

Yes, I crave you in the stillness of the night

Indeed I see you often in my day dreams

I crave your touch and you lingering smile

And most of all I want you to crave me

SHOULD I GET RICH

Should I get rich, and I feel it’s imminent

I will buy all the things I don’t need

So that others can also buy what they don’t need

Mind you, I will carry myself like a dignitary

When times of spending on a budget are over

I will traverse all the golf courses in the country

And overly indulge my soul in the boring game

Just because the rich can afford the swing

I will track down Vera Sidika, for heaven’s sake

Everybody thinks she has a million dollar vagina

I will make an attempt at it, not to hit it

But to turn over screenshots to desperate bloggers

Should get rich, and I feel it’s imminent

Judging from my unbridled love for sleep

I will vie for an elective post and steal form Kenyans

How they love people who steal from them

Should I get rich, just for fun and pleasure

I shall erect a giant middle finger statue

Next to my ex’s home, their front yard

To remind her of the zero fucks I give 

I HAVE NO CHOICE, I DECLARE HER YOUR WIFE

Barely home from a night of bingeing

Hardly asleep yet someone’s knocking

With fury and intent of breaking it down

“Open the damn door you useless clown!!”

My mind is in disarray, fumble with the blankets

Look for clothes to wear among the water buckets

The intruder is quite now, he’s heard the noise

He can break the door, but he’s reserved that choice

As I struggle to adjust my pupils to bright light

With bloodshot eyes betraying my nocturnal delight

He pulls me by the collar of my shirt, furious

Like a short changed drug dealer, dead serious

“Son of nobody with brimstone down your loins

How dare you lure my daughter with coins

And cooled your burning down the coveted stream

Now it’s dry, with nothing to hold to, without a dream”

In tow is his daughter cowing with fright,

We’ve met before, in fact spent many a night

The inevitable had finally happened

Thought I ‘A rough ride here, seat belts must be fastened’

“Isn’t he the one?”  he turns to her once pretty daughter

I cursed her, she couldn’t tell me she was sired by a monster

Chit, my whip would have cowed with fright

May be I would enjoying the sleep I forewent last night

“You leave me no choice but to pronounce you

A husband and wife, find a way to get through

You can have her for the rest of your life

Should she set foot in my home, your neck will stop a knife”

MY LOVE, I HAVE BOUGHT A TRANSISTOR RADIO

When you go to Ravine, dear reader

Or pass by the place

Please find my love Cheptoo, and tell her these

If she doesn’t a phone, that is,

Oh you are asking how you fill find her?

They live in a mud walled house before the stream

Or ask a renowned drunkard in the area

They’ll lead to her father, there you’ll find her

Now that you know where to find her

Please tell her I’ve bought a new transistor radio

And two bi speakers, 

So that she can tune in to her favourite station

Also, my small brother finished school

And left me his mattress, its more comfortable now

Tell her she won’t complain of back pains when she visits

Tell her, this is important, that my uncle promised me a job

Not a fancy one, but in the great city of Nairobi

I will a security guard, with my own uniform

Tell her I will come for her and take her with me

So that she can know what it means to miss mursik

And eat thin transparent chapati by the road side

Please don’t get jealous, please deliver this message

She’s is my light during the day and even the night

Tell her I think of her like Kiprono thinks of gold medal

Tell her I dream of her like Raila dreams of presidency

Tell her I will cling to her like Mugabe to presidency

Tell her I miss her and she must visit me soonest

Or else I find someone else, like I have done sometimes

Tell her none have been comparable to her, of course