IF IT MAKES SENSE

I haven’t stopped thinking about you

Why is it a little special? Because-

Because you may never know

And I am not proud of this secret

It nags my mind, constricts my veins

Knowing too well that you could be

The one coursing through to my heart

And transporting oxygen to my brain

How would I even bribe my self

To bring me into telling you how I feel

That you are the most awesome human being

And that my life would be lit by your smile

Sometimes I wish it were as easy

As walking a supermarket and picking stuff

Then I’d pick words and walk to the cashier

And the words would be ‘I want every piece of you’

But then I am here, missing what I don’t know

Figuring how it would with you snoring beside me

Knowing you’d be there for the longest time

And life, in its shambles, is complete, in its own way

The Quiet World

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BY JEFFREY MCDANIEL

In an effort to get people to look 

into each other’s eyes more, 

and also to appease the mutes, 

the government has decided 

to allot each person exactly one hundred   

and sixty-seven words, per day. 

When the phone rings, I put it to my ear   

without saying hello. In the restaurant   

I point at chicken noodle soup. 

I am adjusting well to the new way. 

Late at night, I call my long distance lover,   

proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.   

I saved the rest for you. 

When she doesn’t respond, 

I know she’s used up all her words,   

so I slowly whisper I love you 

thirty-two and a third times. 

After that, we just sit on the line   

and listen to each other breathe.

AS LONG AS MY AMBITIONS HOLD YOU

The world looks                                                                                                                                          beautiful from below

Cloudless starry nights such a delight

Which we can watch and talk about dreams

And what holds our ambitions tight

Partly, mine is to rise to the zenith

Dine with the movers and shakers

But it will take time to get there

Rise with you, and probably meet the makers

But how long will you stick by me

How long will my ambitions hold you?

Before you bolt for the proverbial greener pastures

How long will you find my love true?

As long as my ambitions hold you

We could starve and you might like it

We walk not because its healthy, we have to

For at the end there’ll be something sweet

PATIENCE FOR LIQUOR

There’s too much to worry

And a lot to be sorry

Hand me a bottle of patience please

Let the bottle top escape with a pop

More like an amen to damned hope

Let’s toast to a glass of patience please

I am gonna stagger home tonight

Drunk AF, every shitty thing is a delight

What potent drink did I consume? Patience please

THE PHONE CALL

She sounded cold; detached and distant

Between odd stars and light transfixed

Ponders I, with a tinge of care and regret

For in today’s world heroes are few

And I am many

She sounded cold and aloof, unemotional

Like someone was prodding her breasts

Her mind unwilling, her body yielding

And she struggles to balance the battles

Without betraying the background in her voice

I fumbled for words through the call

Unsure what to say to her troubled brittle soul

Seemingly beckoning sympathy

I struggled but my coldness wouldn’t allow me

I accepted long ago, I am no hero

She hangs up almost too quickly without byes

Just the way I wanted it, the way I always loved

It fills the space and time between us

I am accorded precious time to indulged in vanities

And write letters to ghosts that have stopped visiting 

LATELY

Lately her words seem to point at affluence

Like how she just moved to a bigger house

A house she can’t afford since she’s jobless

Her survival isn’t just a mere fable but scientific

Lately she’s taken to taking mirror selfies

Ass first, ass the point of focus, she loves life

The many hashtags belie her peasant upbringing

A huge makeover, a sudden metamorphosis

There’s so much happiness in that sneering voice

Castigating my hustle, demeaning the man I am

The brain sometimes fails in outwitting the heart

And it works overtime to stay intact instead of leaving

Valentine ’s Day is steadily approaching

She’s hinting at nothing less than a Bomas Inn night out

Previously we would stay indoors and drink mursik

Lately she wants none of that, just champagne

Lately she’s hinted at her being miserable

At a place where it had become home

Out of the blues, Kipruto’s rickety car looks so beautiful

Even when we loved trekking, talking all the way

DO YOU?

Do you, in the stillness of the night, wonder

And crave a text or even a call from me

Do you wander to far off lands in daydreams?

With me in tow, plucking flower with abandon

Do you crave a moment of reckless abandon

Unhinged and without regrets at dawn

When you wake up beside me, entangled

Do you crave that smile that you’ll wake up to?

Do you crave that I crave you

Do you think about me in moments of solitude

Like I do often, like every time I breathe

Do you crave a poem, written for you?

Yes, I crave you in the stillness of the night

Indeed I see you often in my day dreams

I crave your touch and you lingering smile

And most of all I want you to crave me

SHOULD I GET RICH

Should I get rich, and I feel it’s imminent

I will buy all the things I don’t need

So that others can also buy what they don’t need

Mind you, I will carry myself like a dignitary

When times of spending on a budget are over

I will traverse all the golf courses in the country

And overly indulge my soul in the boring game

Just because the rich can afford the swing

I will track down Vera Sidika, for heaven’s sake

Everybody thinks she has a million dollar vagina

I will make an attempt at it, not to hit it

But to turn over screenshots to desperate bloggers

Should get rich, and I feel it’s imminent

Judging from my unbridled love for sleep

I will vie for an elective post and steal form Kenyans

How they love people who steal from them

Should I get rich, just for fun and pleasure

I shall erect a giant middle finger statue

Next to my ex’s home, their front yard

To remind her of the zero fucks I give 

I HAVE NO CHOICE, I DECLARE HER YOUR WIFE

Barely home from a night of bingeing

Hardly asleep yet someone’s knocking

With fury and intent of breaking it down

“Open the damn door you useless clown!!”

My mind is in disarray, fumble with the blankets

Look for clothes to wear among the water buckets

The intruder is quite now, he’s heard the noise

He can break the door, but he’s reserved that choice

As I struggle to adjust my pupils to bright light

With bloodshot eyes betraying my nocturnal delight

He pulls me by the collar of my shirt, furious

Like a short changed drug dealer, dead serious

“Son of nobody with brimstone down your loins

How dare you lure my daughter with coins

And cooled your burning down the coveted stream

Now it’s dry, with nothing to hold to, without a dream”

In tow is his daughter cowing with fright,

We’ve met before, in fact spent many a night

The inevitable had finally happened

Thought I ‘A rough ride here, seat belts must be fastened’

“Isn’t he the one?”  he turns to her once pretty daughter

I cursed her, she couldn’t tell me she was sired by a monster

Chit, my whip would have cowed with fright

May be I would enjoying the sleep I forewent last night

“You leave me no choice but to pronounce you

A husband and wife, find a way to get through

You can have her for the rest of your life

Should she set foot in my home, your neck will stop a knife”

MY LOVE, I HAVE BOUGHT A TRANSISTOR RADIO

When you go to Ravine, dear reader

Or pass by the place

Please find my love Cheptoo, and tell her these

If she doesn’t a phone, that is,

Oh you are asking how you fill find her?

They live in a mud walled house before the stream

Or ask a renowned drunkard in the area

They’ll lead to her father, there you’ll find her

Now that you know where to find her

Please tell her I’ve bought a new transistor radio

And two bi speakers, 

So that she can tune in to her favourite station

Also, my small brother finished school

And left me his mattress, its more comfortable now

Tell her she won’t complain of back pains when she visits

Tell her, this is important, that my uncle promised me a job

Not a fancy one, but in the great city of Nairobi

I will a security guard, with my own uniform

Tell her I will come for her and take her with me

So that she can know what it means to miss mursik

And eat thin transparent chapati by the road side

Please don’t get jealous, please deliver this message

She’s is my light during the day and even the night

Tell her I think of her like Kiprono thinks of gold medal

Tell her I dream of her like Raila dreams of presidency

Tell her I will cling to her like Mugabe to presidency

Tell her I miss her and she must visit me soonest

Or else I find someone else, like I have done sometimes

Tell her none have been comparable to her, of course

THE LAST OF BRANDY

When the world’s misery usurps my mind

And if a glance around me, walls I find

I promise I will rush the liquor store

And buy brandy just as I’ve done before

Should my love ever doubt my undying love

Even when it seems it just descended from above

Then, without a second thought, I shall buy brandy

For stupor shall make my dejection handy

Should I ever achiever the biggest milestone

After numerous forays into the hours of dawn

I shall have no choice but to pop brandy

And make merry as a kid would to candy

In times of happiness and unimaginable sorrow

Of uncertainties and nothing to hope for

Each of those moments I’ll take a sip

Of my beloved brandy, it guarantees a peaceful sleep

TELL JEPLETING TO STOP SEEING THAT BASTARD

Tell Jepleting to stop seeing that bastard
He is not worthy to make me a granddad
Tell her about women who drive cars
Tell Jepleting about women who are the stars
And rule the night with an iron fist
Tell her slowly, this I insist

What do they discuss with a chang’aa addict
A class seven dropout and a failed athlete
Lalang’ told me how she’s smiles with him
When he told her he wanted to take her downstream
What do they discuss if not about babies I’ll raise?
Tell her clearly, let her senses arise

And that bastard too, Jepleting might be stubborn
Tell him I’ll come for his balls at dawn
Before he deposits filthy things in my daughter
Tell him to look for daughters of chang’aa addicts thereafter
Tell that bastard I’ll gorge his eyes out
Tell him when he’s sober, at dawn before he’s out and about

UTAWEZA?

Fair maid posed, utaweza?
Complexing a simplicity.....

Got I feeling....

Like am about to take off to the moon unaided
Like am trying to dispute the law of gravity

Like am about to find the cure for ebola
Or better yet raise the dead from their graves

Like am about to come up with a mathematical formaulae
to explain how people fall in love

Like am trying to break down the Da Vinci code
Like am just about to think of inventing a new planet within earth

Like am harbouring intentions of hitting on Malia and Sasha
Or pee on the gates of White House

Keep calm and let me manufucture heaven right here
Am no God but For YOU imma be one

DEAR YOU

I think about you to a point I don't miss you 
Yours is one of the very few precious memories 
My little gem that defines my worth 
You take me places, most of which I rarely know 
Save for the want to be where you take me 
-it's exactly where I want to be 
Where the stars cease shining, dimmed by your smile 
Where the oceans touch 
And that's where I find the most of peace
Manage somehow a sleep of peace
You are my muse, dearie
Am glad you are 

SOLITARY NIGHTS

As a solitary life beckons its blissful sorrows

The unwinding charts between hatred and love

And looking forward to such empty tomorrows

The dread of reckoning the contents of fate above

With pungent and repulsive thoughts I have

Yet with hope of finding and falling for someone

To whom fate has designed for me to crave

In every of the seconds of day and of night, every turn

To long that she longs as I that I am her man

DON’T LEAVE WITH SILENCE

When Hussein’s advances usurps my throne

And one chilly dawn

When married men haven’t the morning glory

And you find thus that we be just a story

Don’t leave in silence my love.

Shout at the top of your voice

So that the neighbor know you had no choice

But to leave me and my crooked penis

Shout that everything in my house is amiss

Shout but don’t kill me with your silence

Don’t leave without telling me why

For I will be tempted to look around and beseech the sky

Don’t make me search that which exists no more

Don’t leave without letting me know

Just don’t leave with silence

Tell me everything that bothers you

Before you finally start anew

I might have a chance to defend my love

Or find it fit to leave for the one above

Leave, but not in silence 

Yet She'll She Is Okay

He could trace despair in the gleam of her face

Her voice gave much away

How she reaped pain where she sowed to gain

Yet, she’ll say she is okay

She sits silently alone, trying to undo the known

Her sweet smile a rainbow

Amid tears she thought wouldn’t fall in years

It should have snapped-cupid’s arrow

It takes vigor and courage to walk off the stage

A story scripted to match seven heavens

The inadequacy of verses; garden filled with roses

How so! When earth is filled with heathens

The Future Of The Past

And it’s not now,

Neither could it be yesterday

Its somewhere

Between tomorrow and infinity

A Glimpse of Hope

From afar a glimpse of hope

Holding steadfast, like a knot on a rope

A dopey grin and a glint in the eye

A perfect disguise of the about to die

A sigh escapes with a wheeze

Bringing forth a doppelganger in the breeze

Breathtaking and choking all the same

Imperfection laid bare in the name

From afar echoes of laughter recede

Its motion the darkness vainly impedes

A lonely soul locked in an embrace

A phantom creatures’ humane gaze

You and I could never be

Yours and mine weren’t ever meant to be

Hearts had similar incompatible destinies

Mine acts worse than thousand piccaninnies’

From the beginning I hoped you’d see

Against advice I fell head over heels for you

Looking for my worth now among the ruins

Among a myriad of should have beens

Pity engulfs me, but I hope to get through

No one knew the truth better than me

How I went home every evening hating me

I knew one day, not by luck, you’d see

You and I could never be