OF THINGS TAKEN FOR GRANTED

Granted twenty four hours of health

How have you used it differently

From he who was bedridden?

Granted two eyes to see

What have you seen

That a blind man would envy?

Granted food to give you energy

What have you done with the energy

That makes a difference to one who had none?

Granted shelter and clothing

What’s it with self-loathing

Wanting what your neighbor has?

Granted a computer to study

What’s the difference between you

And those who have none?

Granted the feet to walk

Where have you been on this earth

To show a little bit of compassion?

Granted parents who have stuck with you

Through their own inadequacies and troubles

What do have to show them at the end of the day?

Granted books and the ability to read

Granted the time and the brains

What is the difference between you

And those who can’t read?

Granted people who care about you

What would you give them

When you walk like they don’t exist?

She Left Me Once

She left me once and I allowed her to leave

I didn’t fight for us, maybe I didn’t believe

I thought I was so immune to grieve

Sometimes, many times I cried to seek relief

I remember that Monday morning, chilly and cold

She’d be gone for a while and I had a feeling

That someday somewhere I’d be told

The saddest news that’d leave me reeling

I turned my phone on, at six or thereabouts

Previously I had written her a poem

That I had painstakingly labored to write

And I knew I would get a reply, or I hoped

Sure the reply came through

I struggled to adjust my eyes to the blinding light

Then I read her message and heaved

Read once more and hit the delete button

Maybe it would help to think I didn’t receive

Before I could act, she called and asked

“Have you seen the message I sent you?”

I lied I hadn’t seen it, it was better to lie

Than to imagine she was gone

All within a blink of an eye

I had been anticipating that day, though

But it just came too soon for me

“I know how sad it is for you to bear this news….”

You know?!! I fumed inside but just could tell

If she was right beside me, I’d have given her hell

I could have given away everything

Just to take away that feeling

But then how could that have been possible

When she was my everything?

I rose from my bed, without a thought of the cold

Put on my brown heavy jacket, it reminded me

Of cold nights I braved the drizzles drizzled

Just to talk to her on a high ground where

I my phone would catch the network

A chill down my spine- all that had been to vain

And headed out to recharge my phone

I conversed with myself all the way the kiosk

‘I enjoyed all the moments we had together

And I wish you all the best in the new chapter’

No, how about this

‘I didn’t love you anyway

I lied to have sex with you by the way’

That looked worse

‘I have all along suspected you are a whore

I’m glad I’m getting back to my life as before’

No, worst of all

‘How about I love you and I want the best for you

Wherever you’ll go just know that I always was true

I can’t figure out how to love anyone, not ever

Because I was sure you were my forever ‘

That would make her guilty,

Yes, I wanted to make her guilty

‘But she’s gone,’ my conscience tried to argue

‘For better things, for a better life

Or for things you couldn’t provide

That which she’d choose to be a wife’

I was mad at myself, I was mad at things I didn’t do

Things I couldn’t even explain, I just knew there were things

She loved me, I heard her tell me several times

She said she loved me, I told her the same thing

But then, I felt there was something more to back it up

To reinforce it like steel to concrete

Hoping it wasn’t too late, I told her straight

‘I love you…and I can’t ever figure out

Any being on this earth whom I’ll love like you

Maybe I made mistakes in the past …

…and I want to make it right….just name the price’

She didn’t like hesitate, she told me like she’d rehearsed

“I’m afraid it’s too late for that”

“Why do this to me? Why?”

“You wouldn’t understand….circumstances

Everything is hard right now…..

….and I don’t think you’ll help me

I wish you would but I know you can’t

…just live your life”

Damn money!! Damn the world

Money robbed me the precious

Of all my possessions

The prized among all, love

‘I’ll wait for you,’ I bluttered

I wondered why it wasn’t easy to let go

Chart a new destiny and live life anew

Or get used to be alone

Probably I wouldn’t be too alone

She said she loved me

She’d leave him when things get better

Maybe we could be together

Once more, till forever knocks at our doorstep

It wasn’t the easiest decision I ever made

Days crawled, the sun seemed stuck up the sky

I still asked myself why

Why I wouldn’t let go, to start letting the memories fade

My world was suddenly confined to an ominous gloom

The flowers even in its full bloom spelled doom

And my heart seemed to be giving away slowly

I longed for a way of forgetting things, instantly

But the more I longed the more she became engraved in my mind 

Of Silly Women Who Think They Are A Gift To The Men

Ladies, picture this. You have brains but you’ve found it irrevocably stressfully to use it. As you walk around town you spot a woman in a sleek German ride or the famous Range Rover (Sports or Vogue). You want to be her. You discard reason (the little you had) and write a silly post about how Kenyan men are silly, thinking they are the sort of gifts to you. The truth is we are, some of us aren’t. The ilk you get attracted to doesn’t give you the right to bash the many us that are ideal, the epitome of manly perfection, who understand the position the society bequeaths to them.

Hey lady, don’t blame every other male for your ability to attract semi-men, the men who realized they have dicks like, ‘look here mate, I got a dick! What am I supposed to do with it?’ and his mate as dickly as he is replies, ‘women. Use it on women, they like it.’ Bingo! Off he goes thinking it’s the gift to you, brainless woman. He learns what you love the most, easy life. He gives it to you. Sooner you are complaining of how he treats you when you are the one who did set the standard. And of course he doesn’t recognize you in the morning and he surprised just as you permanently are. Don’t blame us.

The modern woman. God apparently created you when in high spirits. And most importantly when in mood for modification. What an arse!!! The modern woman goes about mocking God in every conceivable way. If God was in high spirits, He would have conjured up that, in the near future you might be in need of red lips, large behind, flawless eye brows and very good Brazilian hair (you love your hair so much because you aren’t smart enough to love something interesting)

Truth, the modern times do not favour a woman suckling a clan of babies. She doesn’t belong to the kitchen anymore. But that doesn’t mean that as a man you have to depend on Kenchic or Pizza Inn for a living. Real men eat real food cooked straight from the farm. In deed times are modern. The measure of man is in his ability to provide for his family. The greatest of them needs is financial. The rest is almost miscellaneous. What can true love from a poor man do? It can’t feed you. It can’t clothe you. Neither can it educate the children. The modern woman wants a loaded guy, who will foot the bills when need arises. The modern woman is jealous of her hard work but she wants to be treated equally to men. What a mirage!!

The downside of these modern women is, she so used to board room wars that she transfers that to her home, to her husband. Truth is, for her success, there is another woman who takes over her wifely duties, sometimes to the extreme. May be these kind of women don’t need men, but would surely want them from time to time.

IN FRONT OF THE MIRROR

In front of me a man contemplates deeply

Gazing at my blood shot eyes as I into his

Seeking vainly not to reveal what’s amiss

He tries to smile to dismiss any eventuality

Those are the eyes that first saw her

How celestial her beauty was-still is

And cracked lips which she did kiss

And every piece of him became astir

Behind those eyes, a brain that never ceased

To find things of awe and wander each day

Some to describe wouldn’t be enough a day

I loved her, knowing that I often eased

BRING BACK MY SORROWS II

I had all this emptiness for me

A gift from my lonely sojourns

And it embraced me and my inner being

You came along and it suddenly dawns

The light of dawn drove the blissful dark

The kind I had learnt to grope my way

And I coped perfectly well

I owned everything just by owning nothing

And you gave me the false of owning something

That I would never really own and I thought

I had the best of you, all the sweetness you got

And you made away with the sorrows

That gave me warmth in times of my solitude

And you gave yours, ours, that appear alien

That sends a cold shiver through me

As I take a hot shower each evening

Bring back my sorrows, the kind I’m used to

Go find your place wherever you came from

Here, wasn’t meant to another of yours a home

I am used to my solitude and I’ll get through

Many a dreamless night

BRING BACK MY SORROWS

Everything made sense back then

Emptiness warmed up this place

This life was imbued with grace

Then you came along, love heathen

Bring back the sorrows

Only those accustomed to me

Those that I wouldn’t long to be

Those that don’t fill false hope of tomorrows

Tomorrows that entertain happily ever after

That fills false dreams on each new chapter

That’s breeds contempt in my character

Tomorrows that ask why we’re still together 

Never Google Your Symptoms

Its Sunday morning and you wake up to a stiff headache. Then the events of last night light up your morning in the same way the sun does, only that it derives its tenacity from the yester. The bladder is abnormally full and you involuntarily step with a cat’s stealth, out of your bed to the washrooms (a leafy term I bet). There you whip out your willy (the one you’ve pointlessly doubted its size) and alas there isn’t that pleasant feeling as the liquid excrements gravitate to a God knows where. Instead there’s a painful sensation and the colour of the liquid isn’t normal either. You hold back some of it and make a painstaking retreat to your cozy bed. Your mind has run multiple sprints when you reach your bed.

The templates of the previous outings begin to unfold haphazardly in your mind, with an uneasy sense of humour. It jeers silently. It castigates. It rebukes. The blinding light your cheap phone produces gives a strange sensation as the eyes adjust to a sudden exposure to a copious amount of light. A missed call and a message confront you. She just said goodnight after you failed to pick her call. It doesn’t matter to you because it doesn’t seem to matter to her. You recall the previous encounters with her, and you are convinced she’s the cause of all your impending tribulations. Too much sugar cause diabetes, you think, the comfort offered lasts barely a second before it throws you back to your hell.

For the first in your life you are thankful that opera mini is located ‘so far away’ on your Nokia phone. It’s worth the myriad procedures you navigate before you finally lay your eyes on the best invention on earth probably since gravity, had it been responsible for people falling in love-Google. How it has churned out lazy literates you included and how many brag of that degree that bears the hallmarks of Google. Your certificate could have a Google logo watermarked (KEBS should check on that). Now you are here, conjuring up terms that would give a definite answer. Pain when you (you check yourself) and type urinating. A million plus one results pop up and you quickly click the first one. The ailments you could be suffering from ranges from gonorrhea, syphilis and all those STIS one could think and associated with pain when urinating. Reality hits you where it hurts the most and you suddenly prefer a wound because it would heal in some way sometimes to come. This doesn’t heal, doesn’t abate. Nags so unpleasantly in your head. Then they say you must seek medical attention as quickly as possible and your partner too.

Hospital. The last place you want to be. The distinct smell takes over the room, the kind that draws lines of death all over, only they aren’t straight. Woe unto you if the first story you heard involving the hospital was when somebody died. Then you turn in your bed and begin visualizing you and the doctor, preferably female. Your name is called out loudly by the doc and the temptation to look around, hoping desperately that there’s somebody you share a name in the room. A louder call tells you otherwise and you drag you thought-filled self to the doc for diagnosis. She greets you and make a feeble attempt to respond.

“What’s wrong with you today?” she asks like you’ve always made a visit to the place. A tone of familiarity creeps out of her puffy lips, stern eyes deflating your inexistent ego. You summon courage from your inner self even with the knowledge that it isn’t there, only the fear of dying forcing your lips to part inaudibly.

“I experience pain when I urinate,” was it easy as that? You wonder with triumph, the kind synonymous with Arsene Wenger when his team scores an equalizing goal in the dying minutes of the game.

She asks the day it the problem began and also wants to know if there’s any discharge. You answer all quickly and she scribbles as you stare at the stethoscope dancing rhythmically to her heaving bosom. She doesn’t look at you. She doesn’t ask any more questions, those that you actually expected. Did you have unprotected sex?

You scan around the room and your eyes are obstructed buy hazy figures, dancing like shadows on an uneven ground. The water bottle at the corner, the curtains, and the stack of files on the doctors table….everything dances to one tuneless song, except the doc. All her features stand still against the odds steeped against it. She seems half human, not scared by ailments that ordinary mortals bring to her table every single day. You think experience has taught her how not to give a damn. Your mind takes you back to Google, how to not give a f@#k about ailments……

“Take this to the counter,” she looks at you sternly like she is about to say go home and get well nigga.

A few minutes later you prance out of the clinic. The only disadvantage is that you have been prescribed drugs that demand you to abstain from alcohol. And you are pretty sure from that very moment that impromptu alcohol bingeing sprees will thrown around by your friends as if to celebrate the incapacitation of your liquor appetite. Two steps from the clinic the phone rings and its one of those drinking mates…God let me get well now, you mutter words of prayer and its seems the only time you’ve genuinely prayed.

“Ng’ombe ii!!” A voice reverberates through the earpiece as you turn the corner. It’s a happy one, a sign of good tidings. It’s a voice that creates suspense and you’ve almost always had good moments.

“Sema gunia ii,” you respond gingerly.

“Sportpesa nayo. Lets meet in the evening we do justice to this windfall.”

Windfall?! Jonte is fond of exaggerating things. In a world where he greatest stories are those that a team(enter Arsenal) messed up a bet where one staked as low as 10 shillings and expected to reap 66799 shillings, Jonte is legally allowed to lie though it’s a trait of his. You will not be surprised if you find his phone number saved as Jonte Mwongo in the phones of people close to him.  It doesn’t matter to you. You have been given a temporary restraining order from entering liquor zones. You are like a twelve year old once again, trying to enter a bar.

You trace your steps back to the lecture room. Everything appears distant within your sight. All those sumptuous behinds do not hold the promise it often has, albeit awhile. You take the stairs and for the first time you wish the building had a lift. You recall having seen one and you rubbish it because had it been functional it would have been reserved for the vice-chancellor, even when his office isn’t in that building. The class is half empty, considering you left it full. A group of your friends are huddled in one corner arguing wildly about football. The pretty girls are taking selfies and others are about their own business, perhaps wondering why they came all the way from Githurai to idle.

No alcohol. The brown sachet says proudly. You toss it into your bag and wander off the places you’ve had the most beautiful drinking expeditions. You remember that day when you failed to climb the last stare to your room. You remember that day you woke up in the most unfamiliar place. And you resign with a sigh, telling yourself that today would have been another one of those beautiful moments…