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