G

(10.05.2019, For my friend who was contemplating suicide)

No, G,

I cannot promise you that.

In fact, I cannot promise you anything at all!

Average Jobs

By Karani Kelvin

Boss says, average performers
Earn average wages, marry average
Spouses, have average children
Stay in average houses, in average
estates - if you can call them that!

The Feeling

By Karani Kelvin

I know

It grips me too

Rolls me, spins me

Sends me hurtling

Into the abyss

Everything is distant

I cannot find myself.

This is for us

By Karani Kelvin.

This is for us 
Who after years of toil
Our bodies were worthy of the gown
Oh, that precious crown 
Villagers travelled to see
And yet,
After so many years still lost at sea

Nguva ya Mombasa

By t. Michael Mboya

She volleys back jokes
in an ear-caressing lisp
that seeps through
a beauty gap in her teeth. 

Then there is her laughter:
water falls
under which I slough off
and have my mind renewed.

Reke Tumanwo

By t. Michael Mboya

This could have been
just another tiff
but for your spiteful words
these flames of a fire
that have brought my tears to a boil
tears which dribbling down my soul
now melt the spiritual chains
that join me to you.
There is nothing more
to say, really.

A dew drop

By Karani Kelvin.

A dew drop

Round like a ball of mercury
Stands atop a tomato
Like a sentry from the future
It guards its post, holding
A mini iPhone in its hands?

Tell me something else

By Karani Kelvin.

Tell me something else, politician
Not the usual bamboo talk
Hard outside, hollow within
Never strong enough, always
Breaking under the weight of time

When I am no more

By Karani Kelvin.

When this heart no longer beats
When my veins crumble
And run dry
Like a stream in drought
And the dark shine of my skin fades
Take me back home.
I want you to take me home!
Do not let me lie lifeless
In the open wide wild world
A carcass not even fit
For the hungriest hounds!

To my sister

By Karani Kelvin

Yesterday

Scrolling through updates on Facebook

(And never posting any myself)

I saw a picture of a man – an old,

life battered white man, diapers

hanging loosely in his greying boxers –

holding hands with a charming

ebony skinned twenty-something years

old supple young woman

In this Nairobi

By T. Michael Mboya

Here comes the man

your mother in Uriya[1]

warned you against

in tale, song and proverb

that kept alive

the fire in the hearth.

Moving

By T. Michael Mboya

These go into the pickup truck first

The hard bulky stuff

the beds, the bedside tables,

the dressing tables and their stools

(detach those long mirrors

lay them on the floor

Of the boot of the car)

the mattresses

the computer desk and its chair

the reading tables and their chairs

the book shelves

the TV stand

the sofa set, the coffee table

the stools and the pouffes

the dining table and its seats

the fridge, the gas cooker

and the gas cylinder

the satellite dish can perch

on the dining table

Take these crates, too

they are books

Lean the wall hangings

against them

and besides these, supporting them

that box of shoes.

Postcard

By t. Michael Mboya

The Wedgwood Bed and Breakfast,

Melville, Johannesburg

10.10.2016

Are my eyes opening in a dream?

Or is a dream opening my eyes?

The furniture in the room floats

In still steel-grey half-light

Dear God: Selected Poems Now Out in PDF - Get Your Copy!

By Karani Kelvin.

When I first shared the link of my ebook Dear God: Selected Poems (2016), I was humbled by the amazing response it received. But perhaps what was more humbling is this -  that a good number of you wrote personally to me, and some of you even called, to not only wish me well but to give me suggestions as to how you felt this enterprise could best be undertaken.

This our home

By Karani Kelvin.

Let us say

Tomorrow has already come

The country we had known

is no more

Its gone with our dreams and wishes

With our get rich quick schemes

With our freedoms and rights

With our big five and silver beaches

With our senseless demos and politics

And the fruits of our labor

Are bodies lying in the open

Heads split and stomachs slit

Covered in blood soaked mud

Nothing moves, not our fiery tongues

That once cheered us into streets

Not our hungry ears and roving eyes

Even the crows and hyenas are still

Aware that this is their last meal

Ashes of what was once progress

Floats about, lazily, landing like

a child's steps on the charred earth.

What then, compatriots, was the need

for tribes, coalitions and plain greed ?

Can any of these raise the dead?

Storm, Uref1

By t. Michael Mboya

Driven by whistling wind

The drumming of the rain

Becomes melodic

Sings the trees to frenzy

   And beckons the spirits

My chest heaves

   My spirit is stretching his wings

I rise and walk to the window

   My spirit is flapping with the trees

This trance dance

The trees shaking off frail leaves

This trance dance

My spirit shaking off frail feathers

Nyasaye Nyakalaga²!

Somalia

By Karani Kelvin.

Forlorn

Crushed

Failed by her own body

She sits

Teary eyed

Lips dry and cracked

A river bed in drought

Her body has

Relinquished

Its power

Viciously attacked from within

It has let go

 And the cancer
             Is going for her soul!

The love song

By t. Michael Mboya

I grow old … I grow old …

An old man is a bowed chrysalis

Standing, he only sees

The ground around his feet

But his spirit, lately eclosed,

Criss-crosses time and space

And history, seeking the Truth

I am getting hot

The wings of my spirit are fluttering

My stiff fingers are fumbling …

I trap my truth. You. Tapo!

The Matatu Passenger

By Abraham O’Obunga

Twelve o’clock.

Into the matatu.

Beside me, a ‘plump’,

Behind,

A ‘slim’

With tobacco ridden breath.

A freight train, he is.

The ‘plump’,

Her fundamentals,

On my laps.

Gone

By Karani Kelvin.

I see you grope in the dark
Touching
Spaces that once were warm
Clutching
At my retreating shadow
You stretch to cuddle
But there’s emptiness there
No warm breath against
Your neck, no fingers dripping
Desire all over you…
You whisper my name
But even when I was there
I was already gone.