How do you do it?
Have me flying in the crisp air,
Over fluffy clouds, up there…
Then suffocating a second later,
Head down, waist deep in a pit of tar.
How do you do it?
0
Life is like the jigsaw puzzle thing,
Only that there is always a piece missing.
I’ve become more insomniac of late.
Even night sits by me whispering, “Hey Mate.”
I read, then write and fill my mind with music.
Of late, I’ve become more insomniac.
I wake up hanging over the edge of a cliff.
Sweating, panting and fingers going stiff.
A thousand friends are stomping on my finger tips,
Knuckles give in and the rock suddenly slips.
The cold air screams past and I’m going down down down down down…
My bones readjust, ready to crunch into the ground…
Down down down down down
Someone silence Sean and Wayne,
Someone, please, before I touch down…
I’ve made the wrong turn again,
Everyone I ask for direction regards me with disdain.
I stumble, you know who holds me? Nobody.
I rise, learning to smile in the wake of tragedy.
I’ve mastered theatrics; my face is the mask of comedy,
My heart; his ever sorrowful brother.
I shouldn’t have drifted this far from my Father,
I’m I turning into a skinnier version of my father?
NO! I won’t make his mistakes…
“I never make the same mistakes,
Moving with a change of pace,
Lighter load…”
Thank you Nassir, but my load is now heavier,
Thank you Mimu, you are like an evergreen blade of Napier.
Lush and sating… to be proud of and held dear,
But still a wrong stroke razor…
“All I need is one mic…
Fuck cars, the jewelry…
All I need is one mic…
Scream my voice to the whole world…”
Heck! I’m still on the desk… I’ve been drooling,
Fifteen minutes past my last clock glancing.
A nap at two in the morning, I should take something.
“How did Mandela…” I love you Warsame, keep playing.
The first day I kissed you,
I wanted to shut my eyes forever.
Then I opened them and saw yours gazing back,
And wished I would never blink.
°
When rain falls on the mountainside, everything is reborn. The sky is darker, the blue less opalescent. Grass grows, in the morning. Little green blades cracking the ground and standing tall, looking down at gravity. The river roars, no longer humming. You can hear it from your bed early in the morning as the sun starts to caress the earth for morning glory. In between the crescendos and staccatos of the birds nesting in the creaking cypresses and the dying chorals of the crickets. When it rains on the mountainside, everything is reborn. Everything replaced, except the scars on human hearts and the dark patches of evil on the white garments of their souls.
Never tire skinny hands
strive on bony fingers
Empty you innards plastic quill
And you feathery words,
stick to these pages.
Don’t you dare fade
or hide your twisted anatomy
till the day
when
My beloved shall flip these pages
then, I know, then you’ll fly
to the deep recesses of her existence
and whisper to her soul
let her know my waiting was sincere.
But till then
Tire not my skinny hands
write on my bony fingers
let go of your essence synthetic quill
And you, feathery words,
stick to these lonely pages.
°
Its the day after the Father’s,
My pen once again wets the papers,
Celebrating my genetic Pap,
The first piece for the chap.
Thank-you for the genes, that night I was conceived,
you were there.
Thank-you for the kicks and few punches on Mum,
I understand, women can be a nuisance when pregnant.
When the pains struck,
I wanted to view the world,
I kicked and drove mother mad with pain,
thank-you dad, you were …
I popped out in a ward, small and smelly,
My immediate neighbour donated petroleum jelly,
My grandma’s khanga turned into a diaper,
As my mother healed her scars,
thank- you dad, you were …
When my brain thirsted for letters,
and my fingers learnt to shape them numbers,
I learnt to walk knock-kneed to school,
You wrote three names on my book,
Two of mine and Mom’s.
thank-you pops, you were …
When my life’s first down appeared,
I couldn’t school, my fee wasn’t cleared,
Mom was hustling all She could,
Thank-you, for you, being a perfect dad, were…
… were in a pub, nursing a bottle Paps,
with a plump whore on your laps.
That painful snippet of history only served to give flesh
to this poem and to maybe jog your memory,
but forget it, I cut the story at its dawn,
to wish you a happy father’s day,
A day late,
for I know you have just walked out of a pub,
where you, The Perfect Role Model, were …
°
Two ladies, endowed and fair,
Chanced, as they trudged in painstaking care,
Upon a fortress, a moated lair.
Curiosity drove those brilliant minds of theirs.
I know what drove their hearts’ gears
As they jumped across, devoid of fears
And returned, the moat’s spiked fatal stares.
They could have just turned their backs,
Pushed the sight to their crevices of dark.
They did not, just took on an impossible task .
They dived into ice to get the Pearl of trust,
they scaled walls of glass, so this is a toast,
For after the struggle, disappointment and all,
Their heads have popped above the wall.
°
