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 

GHOSTS WATCHING TV

Photo:Courtesy

He loved a life, where many sane people, even those who harboured the most-wicked intentions in their darkest of minds, would frown upon, and without imploring their own dark souls, conclusively declare him a Satan incarnate. Eric loved being on the periphery of things, wicked things, cheering bloodied bodies, headless human bodies freshly beheaded and most importantly the wail of people, deeply affected by the atrocities inflicted upon their loved ones. It sounded deeply romantic, and he enchanted, danced like he was hypnotized under the moonlight. He loved humans writhing in pain, he adored when they couldn’t take it anymore. He loved their stillness, their breathless bodies sprawled on the cold floor. He loved when they couldn’t protest anymore, the moment before plunging their damned souls into an abyss they called eternity, which to Muslims masked as heaven and the rest hell.

He kicked the bucket, like every other mortal, though with seriously obstinate hope that he’d live forever, that he would see the world end. But it wasn’t to be. Every passing day he got closer to his death, like a lover stalking and asking for a date. Sometimes he would think about him, after his mother warned him that he would be cursed by the Turkana’s whose kids he loved to bully/torture. That had sent a precedence of fear and he’d wake up in the middle of the night sweaty. There was no light to switch on, no electricity, except a paraffin lamp which always ended in his mother’s bedroom. One time he was too afraid that he slept in his mother’s bedroom, having been too scared to sleep alone. Then he was a young boy aged 10 and that was fifty years ago.

Eric now is immortal having conspired with evil underworld forces to return back to earth to haunt and act the hand of god. He had pleaded his case, of how it had ruined his childhood, robbed him of happiness and he had been chosen to return back to earth because of sympathy and because other aspirants of the envied role had been murderers before checking into the underworld. He had been coronated in one big ceremony, where human skulls and blood donned the place. Some were hoisted upon long thin sticks, some were laced with gold, silver depending on their seniority in the underworld. These were witnesses to his reincarnation as a ghost, who would roam the land of the living, and act the hand of God.

And he loved to roam, dear Eric. Sometimes for fun, sometimes to conduct prefeasibility studies. His ceaseless wanders, as the air, always took him to an apartment in Hurlinghum, called Mursik. He loved to visit house number A7, where he’d slip through the gate as silent as the wind, pass by the ever unconscious watchman and up the stairs. Sometimes the aroma of food would hit him and he’d wish to join the owners in partaking the meal. But then it would past mid night, maybe he would risk the ire of a fellow high ranking ghost. Protocol had to be strictly adhered to or else he would be cast among those who have been eternally damned-child rapists, sodomites, politicians, drug dealers and a few doctors. Those would never be reincarnated into anything beyond street mongrels, to be kicked about by everyone, and cursed by their own names. Then they will die a slow painful death and misery, and therefore, eternal damnation.

Eric rushes up the stairs with lightning speed to house number A7. Its 2 am in the morning, a time when everybody is asleep. The scantily furnished room, two single seater coaches, one three seater coach and a table. A small TV stands low at the corner. There’s a residual smell of cigarettes in the air. A newspaper spread is on the table, which had acted as the ash tray. He can also detect a faint smell of perfume, which leads him to conclude that a woman is in one of the rooms fulfilling a man’s most basic need-sex. He can hear the heaving, the sighs and the moans but that’s not what he is interested in. He just wants to pass time in front of this small JVC TV. He switches it on.

Previously someone had walked up to switch it off. Twice in fact. He heard him curse in his thoughts. The next day he switched of the sockets on the wall and he didn't have a reason to be there anymore. He didn’t want to leave finger prints on the wall. 

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

Why I wouldn't want to date

Photo:Courtesy

She said I’d meet someone, she who would knock me off the apex of my loneliness or the craving of the same. For me it’s more about the craving to be alone, be reckless, sleep at whatever position I desire and most importantly lock the outside world from intruding into my sanctuary. Not so an exciting life but just worth the introvert in me.

A relationship has so much hassle in it. You won’t be able to repeat your socks, leave them wherever you want, sprawl dirty laundry however you feel. It has perks though, but with a price. The price is commitment and sometimes you pay with your own freedom. It constricts your life, fitting into a narrow prism of a woman’s mind, her stupid and nonsensical ideals, aimed at molding you into the man she wants. Shit, I don’t want that.

And her problems become your problems or at least expect you to be the super hero, chase after the villains and deliver her to a perceived heaven. Be it financial, emotional, physical (which you have to insist about her beauty every morning) and even political. She’ll tell you about all the problems she has had, what her mom has had, her father, brother, sister….pretty much everyone in the lineage of their family. When all has been said and done, you wonder what the F was it all about. Nothing changes.

Often, you must fit her into your schedule no matter how tight it is. You must check on her all the time. Woe unto you if you don’t. You aren't supposed to busy and more so broke. Where do you suppose money come from if we keep responding to your stupid texts? Then she goes to a broke guy with time in his hands, gets disappointed and leaps to the greener pastures, the octogenarian sponsors, staring at their graves.

Enter social media. She’ll ask why a certain girl keeps liking your mundane posts and photos. She’ll want to tell the entire world about how relationship is the best, the envy of everyone. She’ll advertise you, tagging you in everything she does. That’s the epitome of insecurity. We don’t need to be everywhere on social media. It’s a ‘keeping up with us’ kind of shit. Nobody has to know about how happy we are in the relationship, which, thankfully, research has disapproved, terming such kind of uncouth behaviour as that of a very unhappy couple seeking validation and approval from strangers online.

I love the peace of solitude. I love looking at my phone with pride, knowing there’s no girl in the entire world whom I am obligated to check from time to time. I love the peace that comes from not being involved in another’s problems. I love doing things the way I want it done, the way it pleases me. I love not the torment of being accused for something I haven’t done, just because she’s in love with me. Relationships just suck. Nothing but bunch of compounded problems.