Poems

Smoke rises from the lone manyatta in the distance
In the thicket, crickets chime a dirge
For the one who is lost

A dozen lay dead by his side,
Obliterated by the single force of hate
Brewed for months on an ancient pot of curses from animal sacrifices

Ruto, a hard-nosed negotiator
With sticky hands,
Slit tongue, dripping with honey and malice
Lay in a heap of humans scattered across the field.
Chei!

When asked not to touch,
He touched
When asked not to speak
He spoke.
He stood on the trains way
Believing in an ancient weak god for protection.

A ghastly sight
All the false dreams cut shot
Obliterated by the single force of hate
Brewed for months on an ancient pot of curses from animal sacrifices

A snake slithers through the nose,
Disappears into the nearby thicket,
Sheds its skin and waits
For another time.

‘Appease the gods or face the same fate’

Unpublised, 01st Oct 2022

Mixed thoughts in my head,
Worry, the diabolic conductor enchants them all.

It is a repetitive chorus,
A rigmarole of dwindling fools

I should be able to stay up late tonight,
Till the angels’ whisper in my ears while I am awake.

So,
What else can I become?

Time has gone
Dreams deferred, no iota of belief left
So one succumbs to flimsy hopes
Just getting by
No way to end the suffering
Because some preacher said seppuku is bad
won’t enter heaven.

Contradicting the eastern religion of reincarnation

There’s truth is none!

‘You chose what to believe and it becomes you’, the new ager shouted

‘You are what you think about’, all religions agreed.

But why is your belief so limiting?

Trapped, unfathomable
Like a bird suddenly caged

It is Robert Monroe
That comes through!

Binaural sounds uplifts my vibrations
Out of the ensnare
Am free.

27 August 2022; 4:57am

I noticed your love

Flowing through your wish,

Through blood that wasn’t mine, to me.

The feelings we share

Through flights of imagination

And like of impression.

Our meeting in space,

And the barriers in between,

The hurdles we defeated.

Why did it take you too long?

And why all this pain just to share

Or is it a crime to announce a rightful affiliation?

Why was I interested?

To hold and kiss you in my trance.

In the first place, you didn’t announce your aspiration.

Only in your fantasy you disclosed and resided,

With mixed feelings about your interlocked yearning.

Didn’t you know I had a tooth for you?

All this time longing for you,

Yet you my love are unknown to me.

(written in 2005)

– Odhiambo Kaumah

I walk through the rough path
I’ve been promised solace in the new city

They say it is nearby, yet I’ve walked for years
Oftentimes, I stumble upon pale images of the promise

I know this because I carry a treasure hunt map

I’m my sleep, I dream of faces,
Carefully tucked in my bossom, sabotaging me
I feel my life is veiled
With the blanket of mischief,
undercutting and forever lurking above my head

Like death, when it comes suddenly to a antelope
The cats claw on its shoulders, teeth deep inside it jagular
I’m slowly losing the verve

My human strength and knowledge fully committed
Yet the results are like a flies work on the asshole of an elephant

I careless, trudge own to the promised land
Not giving up
More incessant and aware
I step carefully, not to detonate the IEDs placed on my path.

I walk on.

I wish you luck.
The luck that follows one through,
to pave the way of goodness and success

A luck that protects,
and gifts from all of the good ancestral spirits

A luck which surrounds with hard work,
and propels to unimaginable heights.

The good luck which shuts up the mouths of the living dead,
and dethrones the machinations of the wakeful dead.

Marriage is tough,

deal with yourself.

There’s none that is perfect.

But some appear so.

Disrespect

Not in tandem, breaks it all.

Who said that you have to stick around?

Make it easy for the kids, if they exist

22^nd November 2018