AN ANCIENT PIECE OF JUNK

She lay there, still like she is dead. She stares at me with unblinking eyes for straight two days. I prodded her, slapped her, and almost flung her against the wall. But that’s not how I was raised, and besides she has been with me through thick and thin. Finally, realizing that she was not going to budge, I carefully placed her inside a bag, and went about town seeking someone who can heal her. We’ve been through this process a couple of times, save for one moment that I abandoned her for a slay queen. She’s been faithful, even when all around have been giving up on their lovers. I can legally say that we complete each other.

I am talking about my computer, an ancient piece of junk that I have been using since I can remember. It is a hand down. However, I do not plan on handing it down to anyone. A few days ago it became seriously ill. I thought it was the ebola of machines or something viral. It turns out it needed just a RAM. And I rewarded it with a 2BG. She’s happy with. There’s a remarkable improvement in her attitude. She doesn’t sulk when I command her to open a word document like she used to. It is like she’s just been reborn.

One thing that I do not like however is its gross forgetfulness. For example I can shut it down, and the next time I boot it up it says that I am in 1980 (its favourite so far). Sometimes I am in 2025.  It gives me problems when I open the documents folder, which I have arranged according to the date modified. I have documents that I have written sometimes in the future (hehe), others have been written or will be written later this year, then it comes the present (today), earlier this week, last week, earlier this year, and lastly those that have been written a long time ago. It allows me to time travel.

And because I dream in series

I haven’t yet found someone to try my new insult on, preferably a woman. It’s mainly for the type of women who fall asleep too quickly, as if they dream in series and can’t wait for the next episode to begin. Knowing about this system of dreaming, it involves thorough intellectual skills such as sleeping all day and expecting to be a millionaire in a year. Through sophisticated research, I have discovered that you can perfectly dream the same dream, in continuous form if you sleep in on a Sunday afternoon. At exactly 4.37 pm, your mind will start by replaying the last scenes of the previous episodes. You should read the findings, I have pasted them on all public toilet walls. Pop into one and have a bliss.  

It’s perfectly normal and easy to dream the same dream as I have stated above. I am the authority in this field that’s why you should read my peer reviewed journal. For those who would rather empty their bowels in familiar toilet bowls, I am going to explain a few things so that you can make progressive political decisions henceforth.

The dream begins a long time ago. As young man, barely into my teens, I doused in gasoline a grass thatched house back in the village. It served as village drinking joint, an equivalent of your favourite joint, say Kiza Lounge or 1824. It had no name but it was perfectly useful so long as people would find it. As it turns out, three drunkards did not make it out alive. If you value progress like I do, you wouldn’t be bothered by the fact that the world was less of three drunkards. As fate would have it, I made away with the murder. Life went on normally; I ate and shit normally, breathed normally, and of course I will die normally in my sleep and in old age. People don’t do this anymore but that’s what is in my script which is being reviewed by god. Except for my transgressions, he may….I don’t want to make suggestions yet.

I may have lied that life went on normally, because I would dream being pursued by petite ladies who were on the trail of the bizarre and shocking murders. It think you can agree with me that there was something wrong with the ladies because we often ended up making out until the passed out but then I would wake up scared stiff that I may revealed that I killed people as men sometimes brag in when they let passion override the faculties. The ladies would show up. We would go through the same sequence again and again. For ten years. Until today. Fourth of February twenty eighteen.

And so today came. A call came through.

“Hallo, are we speaking to Kipchirchir Rop?” the caller asked

“Yes, that’s exactly me,” I said boisterously because that’s the name I would love to be known by when I become a famous author. I thought that may be someone one had spotted my writings somewhere and decided that I was good enough to be awarded a contract for my debut novel ‘The Sound of Invisible Things.’

“We are calling you in connection with murders that happened ten years ago,” the caller said.

I tried hanging up. It wouldn’t. I had to remove the phone battery. I hurriedly packed my clothes in a sack and left home. I had the idea of fleeing, to a country like Kenya where fugitives usually hide. 

When I opened the gate, I found a large number of soldiers with their guns trained on me immediately I stepped out. In shock, I dropped the sack that had the best clothes but instead rats squirmed out. In shock I woke up. I think in the next episode I will be in jail or Kenya. The later seems more likely.

GLEAM OF NOTHINGNESS

Misty, blurry-the gleam of nothingness

And thoughts stream out incongruously

-everywhere at the same time-

Potent in its futile attempt to fill blanks,

The crevices that her sweet scent once filled, gape

With long –deep, desirous, almost delirious

And, Doctor, another thing has got me worried

And, Doctor, another thing has got me worried:

I’m not drinking as much as I should…

Distinguished men, and by that honorable term, I mean men who aren’t afraid of whatever shall befall their livers, call it poison. A favourite poison. It kills slowly, in fact so slowly that you actually enjoy its bitterness going down your throat. As a man of little means, my favourite poison is a kinda fifth generation. Street quacks have included it into their gimmicks to persuade idle people to hand them a few pocket change. You’ve seen them, rugged looking with dirty clothes. A glimpse will give you the impression that they just emerged from a hole. Their presence leads to a conclusion; survival.

I crave for the poison, just to get even with that cliché that people seek strength to accept things they can’t change. Frankly, I want the drink to accept that I have accepted to let life runs its course, the actors in it (important somehow) to choose their own stories which no longer shall involve me and I to seek enthrallment from the shreds of my solitude, fix them like a jigsaw, one at a time and until I can get space to write a line of a poem.

At the moment I am the emptiness in every liquor bottle, purposeless and contemptuous. I like it like this, it makes me string my worth from ruins, from discarded memories and dreams and may be even write. May be I can be Kenya’s Charles Dickens. Or may be some else that shall be referred to in future, as colossus in the literary scene, a thing I prefer.

Henceforth, I will be mesmerized by a woman’s ass because it will stimulate my favorite body part. And by favourite I don’t mean the part linked to manpower but my brain. Whenever I shall see a humongous behind, I will automatically think of kilos it weighs and wonder when the government shall announce a tender for the supply of such fine asses. I can begin to think the features; natural, unlinked, smooth and curvy…

I have accepted, most importantly, that my phone shall henceforth be vestigial. I will not bother to bother people’s daughters with text messages and I won’t accept any bother from them too. My second favourite body has to also accept that it has had its fair share of meat. We’ve closed that chapter unless sanctioned by a qualified medical doctor, which is highly unlikely.

And for music, I shall listen like a scholar would. I shall listen for the aesthetics and creativity. I shall listen for timbre, tone, pitch…..I will be a music scholar, bottom line.

Horrible Bosses

A while back, we hear about auditions for a radio host at Capital FM. People who were hopeful streamed in to try their luck. Then after everything has been done, hopefools sweated out, the winner was announced. And it was one of the judges. Or something they called a coach. It is humiliating that you wasted your precious time which you could have used to do meaningful things such as watch porn, or more importantly lying around for no reason except because oxygen is free and that plants need a constant supply of carbon dioxide.

This very despicable, extremely diabolic act brings me to a movie I watched way back. One dude was made to work from 6 am in the morning for a promotion. For six months. The boss would give him shit for being two minutes late. On the day of promotion, the boss sauntered into the meeting room fifteen minutes late. He gives him fresh shit, which he of course attributes to his drinking problem.

 “I have finally decided who is going to be our new senior VP of sales.” The boss begins. “He is right here in this room,” he dude who had been working his ass off adjusts his coat and winks. “It’s me.” The bombshell drops. “I am going to break down the office that would have been the VPS and create one huge enormous office. However, I am going to be entitled to only 85% of the additional salary. And that is self-sacrifice people,” the boss concludes.

This brings me to the question of jobs, especially for the jobless people out there who are overly qualified. One day a job advert will be posted on the numerous Whatsapp groups you belong. The qualifications fit you perfectly well. You go about assembling all the papers that are needed, travelling up and down, and agonizing over the cover letter. But all this is a mere formality. The company in question already has a new employee, even though he or she may have studied plumbing or better yet nature interpretation.

I may not be a staunch religious person but this people make me wish that all the things they talk about hell are true so that these people can be punished forever. I mean why subject people to a meaningless process? Why even short list them and ask them to go for an interview which already has a preselected candidate? Fill that position without bothering people. 

THE END OF A MAN

A man steady demise begins

From perceptions he holds within

About his inadequacies

A man is half dead

When he thinks there’s someone better

Far much than the deserves good things

A man is dead, he who fears

Because he can’t bring himself to action

For his mind conceives destruction

A man ends begins when he craves

Solitude, away from a woman’s love

For solitude is self-euthanisation

A man’s thoughts make him

Good or bad, it will manifest

In what he attracts not what he desires

Be mean to thy self

And the world will reciprocate

Give, and the world will too

A POLITICIAN’S MIND

The electorate is one mass of ignoramus

So very clueless about the taxes they pay

So I’ll promise them that I and I alone

Can bring them development never seen

I swear they don’t even know they pay taxes

And that development isn’t to be promised

But a mandate of leaders

Last time I promised them roads

Tarmaced to a baby’s skin smoothness

None of roads were constructed the past four years

This year, I’ll bring out bulldozers

And ask them to elect me, so that I can complete projects

The ones I started, but I truth, I am not done

Visiting the world with their money

I haven’t been to Bahamas yet, that’s the incomplete project

We will be doomed if we walk the talk

The hospitals will be well stocked with drugs

And facilities, the doctors well paid

The roads will be well tarmaced, passable through the year

I mean if we do all these, where will we steal?

What will we promise them every five years?

We don’t need to the moon, do we?