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