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
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 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 flusters lethargically,
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 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
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.
