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.