2012

2012 beckons and threatens
the coming of thunder
and the renewal of vows

my people desires a MESS-iah

i am but a rehabilitated con wo/man

i will lead from behind
it is safer there
for the frontline
is awash with risks

flying bullets
and scattering smithereens
could slice my pretty face
i must lead from behind

i am a true revolutionary
in the Kenyan meaning of terms
i will declare the action
and prescribe the masses

i will provide transport
to ferry the mobilised
i will arrange for coverage
by the scribes i have in bondage

then
when the bullets flower
and tear gas begin to choke
when the helter and the skelter
converge in fateful mortality

i will summon for me a conference
and the news to make i shall
not in the canister-laden streets
neither along the blood-stained emergency wards
where 'my people' now lay in agony
writing in excruciatingly sweet pain

neither upon the pulpit of the grand mosque
nor on the steps of the city's cathedral
but in the comfort of my securely gated abode

it is a great sacrifice you see
this leadership thing
'MY PEOPLE'
 © December 2011

FORBIDDEN

Not all those who wander are lost
Of old things far off
that but few hearts can keep
cold shoulders and parting shots
receding silhouettes of dreams deferred

dreams returned
we were legends for the fireside

am now in love
with the wind

and you?
you are my achilles
a stubborn insistence
of a life after life

let me go....please?!

© November 2011

RAIN CLOUDS

life is not a straight line
this they said

suspect bends....
.... unscrupulous speed bumps
jolt you into unwelcome awakeness
sobriety regained!

am a brother unto the night
a sailor's lighthouse
in a turbulent sea

you're a sister in distant lands
asleep when i wake
awake when i sleep
never give up

distance is the road travelled
not the journey,
really

signs i missed
of gathering cumulonimbus
so here i am
drenched in mournful wetness
of scattered visions
a mission so aborted

you were
just but a sister in distant lands
asleep when i wake
awake when i sleep
so never give up

© October 2011 

ESCAPE

you sleep. i stare
i smile. you moan
outside, the night hisses by


steadily
the autumn rain drops
softly pattering upon the windowsill

down below,
Westcott Street clears

yet you know
that here with me
you are in a safer place

© October 2011

YOU ARE THE ONE

we rise and we fall
we sing and we cheer
we laugh as we cry
we shoot and we miss

the rains never stop coming
the dust never really settles
the drumbeats of change are late
everywhere we search for the One

what if we saw we as the One
and stopped the futile search
for the One

what if we chose
to be the change,
that spark of brilliant humanity
we so passionately envision
..... and desire

what if we stopped searching away
and turned
for a moment,
to us

what if we found
we are the One
we've been waiting for
searching for
longing for

life happens

let the rains stop
let the dust settle
let us fall to rise
.....never fail to rise
let the tears and the laughter mingle
because you are the one you've been waiting for

change happens

© October 2011

DARK TESTAMENTS

Even though I saw you cry

Wiping tears of great loss

Even though around you

Your feet wobbled

And the earth sunk

You must not cry

For you were among them!

Among those who went

To bed with the sun

While the wind slept in the horizon

Among those who sneaked out of Nyayo I

Hidden by the infancy of a new day

When the blades of grass

Still lay in conjugation

With the dews of yesternight!

You knew Brother,

You knew that chics must play

And anxious thighs lay

In wait for nomadic shafts

You knew that chics must play

Yet you joined the horses in their bay

To the rhymes of moral decadence you swayed..

And now,

Caught in the web of dark passions

You ask:

Which way shall I go?

Which way?

You will grope in the night

Lost among thickets of blind emotions

You will tread decades of broken promises

Your conscience craving redemption

You will search in the dim groves

Where gods no longer resided,

Gods who served REDEMPTION.

© October 2011

ICE BERG

As blows the wind upon land

Sweeping all in its wake

Thus flees the glory of this world

In your days take heed brethren

In totality to live right

Right and nice

For the melting ice

Of wealth and trappings

Beneath your sacred feet

May one day give way

And carry the weight

Of all possessions

Loved and cherished

From the poles of plenty

Percolating across

The tropics of scarcity

Leaving you vain

Helpless in the face

Of howling storms of life

This life

Without shelter, and naked

Alone

         In

           The

                Rain!

© October 2011

Perhaps…..

When you sat

On the shadowy pillows

On the coldness of mortality

Perhaps when you climbed

To the highest echelons

Of happiness

Of eternity….

Perhaps

You did not fathom

The emptiness in us

The pain of departure….

I love to visualise

A contented you

To sit and sing and swing

Of the dirges then

The sorrows I bore

As we marched on

Holding your immobile self

Destined for final abode

Perhaps

It was meant to be

Perhaps t`was end

Of the stream for you

But a sad end for us

Who remained below

Nursing our solitude

Merely hugging nostalgia

© October 2011

WORKING AT THE SARIT?

i walk
i stare
i sit
i stand

Java is busy
almost suffocatingly so
slices of home frys later and am sorted

now back to work
momentarily
too many distractions
from God the Artist

a mass of diversity entertains me
at every turn
adjascent,
an octogenarian is dozing off
to the chagrin of her 'date'?!

big black swings by
an 'eyes-only' ninja exits in a huff
white slender is almost swept by the wind
they say the thinner the better,
aah!

what is !?!

i smell the sweet baby corns
turning my head
i see more more variety
my eyes entertained yet again

Aah, God the Artist

i digress again.

© October 2011

MAN MADE HUNGER

Kneeling
on the shores of home
smudges of (in)humanity
colour my inborn
but now mediated naivete

i cross the streets
sunken in this
turbulent vibrancy
imagining home as it was
not home as it is

yester-night's tv images linger
my mental storage capacity
floods with disaster pornography
of dead mothers and dying infants
livestock staggering to mortality
childhoods stolen, livelihoods lost

in this land,
farmers rot in poverty
as uncollected milk quenches
the thirst of a grateful earth
and maize and sugar barons
belch in amoral satisfaction
elsewhere,
babes hold on to lifeless emaciated breasts
dangling from expired Mamas

when will this madness stop

No!
mr Prime Minister:
distribution. not production
common sense. not rocket science
even GMOs at gunpoint is not enough

Kenyans for Kenyans is not enough
there has to be a way
a deeper way
another way

which way Kenya

© October 2011

TERMI-LUO-LOGY - How luos call them

THIEF                                      - Wealth (re)Distribution Officer

GARDENER                            - Landscape Executive
HOUSE MAID                         - Domestic Operations Specialist
TYPIST                                    - Printed Document Handler
MESSENGER                          - Business Communications Conveyer
WINDOW CLEANER -          - Visibility & Transparency Enhancement Specialist
TEMPORARY TEACHER       - Associate Tutor
TEA BOY                                 - Refreshments Overseer
GARBAGE COLLECTOR      - Public Sanitation Technician
WATCHMAN                          - Theft Prevention and Surveillance Officer
DRIVER                                  - Automobile Propulsion Specialist
RECEPTIONIST                     - Office Access Control Specialist
COOK                                    - Culinary arts and Allied Officer
BARTENDER                         - Certified Liquor Specialist
HOUSEWIFE                         - Permanent Secretary- Home Affairs

© October 2011

DOOR OF NO RETURN

I hope the sun
shares its warmth with you - always
i hope you'll be true to your heart as in dreams

i hope life treats you kind
ever so in the toughest of tempests
you'll find solace in the future's flattering possibilities
i hope too that you smile when you remember

always

and when you descend into the underworld
an find that the waters are as blue
as the illusions we see
days darker than the worst nights you knew

adorn not your latest shades
but take heed of the telling signs
and your heart prepare for a grand return

© October 2011

VIGILS

Love shatters like a glass
if left unrubbed
perhaps untouched it can't glow

a member so tender
from a love now rendered motionless
movement without progress

i lay prostrate throught the warm night
immobilized by your present-absence
let me go please!

what am i saying

© September 2011

WAMBUI OTIENO SLEEPS

The Empress sleeps @ Lee
unperturbed by the Niles of our teary eyes
content with grandiose battles fought
colonial ghosts that were rendered obsolete
and a clan at Umira that will always remember

Every long journey
renders whumanity to the ultimate
a dreaded stride to a climax of loss

Wambui sleeps.

Global mother,
if strong bonds of accepted kinship
violently and unwillingly
now tear you from us who barely 'knew' you
what then of the loved ones you bore and nurtured?

yet this motionless body
is just a but a vessel
that carried your indefatigable spirit
that will lingers eternally in us

here,
we salute
a commitment to fair freedoms
unshakeable belief in justice for one
as justice for all

rest my dear
now you must rest

the cherubs celebrate your return
this return
      to a place where we all know you belong,
a peaceful abode for gallant warriors
our freedom s/heroes
are lined in anticipation of their kin

say jambo to Pinto
Muge and Kaiser and Akumu too
remember JM, Kimathi and Murumbi?
a hug to Samoei and a toast to Mekatilili
tell Jaramogi Not Yet Uhuru endures

virginia edith wambui waiyaki otieno-mbugua sleeps.

tell them sister-soldier:
tell them the homeguards rule still
yet still we rise in search of the promise!

and the betrayers of Uhuru?
they look down in shame
their hearts palpitating at every turn
in search of redemption

their earthly surrogates
still terrorize widows, orphans and squatters
of their land grabbing orgies

rest dear Sister-Mother
warrior-Queen
defender of our Kenyanity

rest now
Mau Mau Daughter, rest.

© September 2011

FLOWERS

If the future is not present
and the past is absent from the sunken pit
of collective memory

this then is an illegal gathering
only a strike of lightning
can stop this act of subterfuge

the season of bloom
is here again
no space for gloom in this era

lift your eyes

© September 2011

FULFILMENT

To find that true you
to walk after
follow that intuitive urge
to live each day
from the heart of oneself

this is to find inner peace

because then,
only then
when our inner voices
chime and rhyme
with the ceaseless beats
of an edgeless universe

only then
shall joy become
the soundtrack of our lives

© September 2011

SWEETS pt. 2

Broken hearts can't see
for their vision is scattered

bleeding hearts too
can see no love
they're blinded by the blood
and their vision,
thus is blurred

so then stop the bleeding
so then that love can return

we may be down
out although we ain't
river Jordan to have crossed
yet far from Canaan i know we stand

i am but a good soldier
unbroken
unbowed
and time stands no still
so still intact i remain

i know some will say
i know some will nay
but time soaks all sorrows
when happyness follows beautyful tomorrows

insanity?

courage.

hope.


© August 2011

JULIET

Verona
not Paris
Verona it was dear

In the minds of my heart
it is to that legend
to that city
so eloquent in love
that a surprise trip was planned

Verona it was
remember!?
not Paris

Ooh Verona of my dreams!

© August 2011

NOW YOU KNOW

Now you know
that when i said yes
that long ago by the nameless stream
i meant also daima!
a commitment not minor

now you know
that when we both walked
among the tall eucalyptus,
embraced in the glow of receding daylight
it was then that our souls were soldered together

still i know you know
that when i chose to stay behind
chose that unpermitted extension
it was of a graduate's uncertain paths
it was for a greater purpose
but unpermitted none-the-less

now you know
that when you played
and i never strayed
'twas not for a lack of playfields
or a dearth of skills

i know now you know
with the settling of dust
and the silence of spectator drums
that i truly meant

a return to the source!

© July 2011

LET IT RAIN

how now can i know
what it is not to know
that the period of cold
would then necessitate the hold

i am bold, this i know

but how could it be
that i passed you by
dashed thru' the glistening night sky
before you could turn right
or i could see the light

don't come close
surprisingly strange i know
given the gist of the chase
and the wreckless persistence of restless feet

but what else when i am but
just in love with watching you
space is safe i guess
but distance ain't the best

now i know
so let it rain

© July 2011

SACRIFICE

You can't cash hope
like a cheque

(Obama did!)

Four seasons of hope
as singular currency
lie buried
beneath the bleak, grey
blistering cold of Syracuse

i believed
i could stand for more punishment
far greater than this shit-hole of
nature's wrath

but that was before 2009

four seasons of a mirage
is all i now hold
in these frozen hands
on this blizzardy wintery morning

'thrive' stands superior to 'survive'
how could i embrace the former
when my heart,
torn between Afrika and America
bled always for a return

Yet for this survival
for this sacrifice of self and other
i lost both future and past
precious inheritance
irreplaceable legacy
swept away by the power to read

how 'disempowering!'

what then, is sacrifice
when it consumes us in its wake
our unbeing there at the end of it all
when the villagers dance and women ululate?

what is sacrifice?

© May 2011

WILL YOU BE

Will you be the man who
choking with desire to violate
for things as flimsy as her dress code
or reasons as 'justified' to high heavens
will choose to see humanity and not commodity

Will you be the judge who
true to the call of fairness
will resist allures of the possible
not turn our justice into merchandise
dispensed, but tempered with class

Will you be the employer who
torn between tribe and merit
will choose to see Kenyanity and not ethnicity

And now,
Will you be the voter who
faced with the vanity of 'our own'
will chose the person, not the party
effectively pronouncing death
to a politics of Ushenzi

Will you
or will you not be the one

© May 2011 

GRASS WILL GROW

Where grass has grown
grass will grow - they say

But the barrenness
of the earth persists
rolling seasons of calm
invite counter-seasons of turbulence

bouts of nostalgia
must now give way
to sweeping floods
of shared memories
memoirs of oneness

the rains will come
this i know
it is the growth
of fresh grass that i doubt

but if it must grow
of what use is mere growth
if it will never flourish
in the acid-soaked raindrops
of bitter concentrates
a memoriam of acid rains

it is!
  
© May 2011

WHEN YOU WERE HERE

When u were here
i thought you'd never disappear
i played in the sun
unknowing it was merely a turn
and that soon you'll return
to that place predestined by the tribe

Still when you were here
i thought the chase was complete
settling was'a done
and the future secured in place

but alas!

These blessings i counted too soon
should'a waited for the full moon
before dancing in the night
unknowing that soon you'll be called
to that place predestined by class

Now it is no more
like an eel
slipped through my crooked fingers
i stand by the sea shore
engulfed in trepidation 
as i whisper to your vanishing silhouette
and the scent of lost tomorrows

© May 2011

O'CAMPO-2

how can my soul
ever-bleeding from political rape
blend with the sky of optimism
that now sweeps over my whole being

how will the cocks' incessant crows
mend the torn threads of our Kenyanity 
or repair the strained bonds of our common humanity

can the criminal deliver justice
in this land of paper sovereignty
where victims are jeered
victimizers cheered
and the guilty cleared

will humanity sit and cheer us on
in this our search for a livable past
or will they compromise,
like the church,
to the infantile rage of spoilt political imbeciles

© April 2011

SWEETS

silent laughter
invisible happiness
hidden fears
as reminder of past tears

detained!

when darkness shines
to light our paths
and the winds soothing touch
we see but can't feel

what is unfreedom !

aah!
the burdens of history
the history of burdens
hold me hand dear Lord
understand me this road

for it is not dying am afraid of
but never having lived in the first place

© April 2011

MALINDI - by the beach

just a carefree retreat
in a world of make-believe
we venture into sea
holding her drenched bikini
here, civility wins a tough battle

giggling and gliding away
my joystick in salute
i must sit in the waters

'like the banker she was
i too am a doctor
i repair broken hearts..'
she adds ....

giggles ... laughter...
am dead ooh!

© April 2011

FAREWELL IN WASHINGTON, D.C

You came
all the way too
for this ceremony of teary eyes
across the Potomac River

Washington Museum was kind
so was the night before then
some things last
some just don't,
or so we agreed

And then there,
at the Metro Station
at Woodley Park
hand in hand along Calvert Street
nugged along by the soft glow of a hesitant nightfall
suckling in the freshness of the evening  wind
we let ourselves loose
        in the legendary vibrancy of Adams Morgan

And then in the morn
when i held back
the impatience of the elevator doors
from sliding away a shared past
the soft hum of its return trip
kept us company

Then we embraced good bye
as if to keep out
a future we both dreaded
but knew we must confront

DEATH AT SUNSET

Ah!
Kencom
Like a reed
At this Kencom bus stop

Or a  kite in the wind
Only untethered you were
But perhaps tied you were
In a knot invisible to my nakedness of vision

Is this death by the seashore
Or merely the swinging affection
Of the seesaw?

Leaving the world behind
Taboo ideas crystalize
As i try to unsee
The swirling elements of desire

You see
Am also legally blind
Unsupposed to see these things
Depart now i must - i believe
To rediscover my equilibrium
Or is it to overcome
My tentative disequilibrium?