Category: Love

Dad, death, Life, Love, Prose

OÙ T’ES PAPA? – A DECADE OF LOOKING FOR YOU AND FINDING MYSELF

The Divine Bandit

“Knock, knock-knockin’ on heaven’s door”, before the Devil is done greasing his gates.

2237h, February 16th, 2026. Would it even be appropriate if I wrote this homage any earlier than a few hours to my personal and your anniversary’s deadline? This is despite writing it in my mind for these last 6 months or so. I have imagined sentences and lost them, I have recalled memories and kept them. Tonight, I recreate the past and immortalize you.

Hi Dad, Wakia Awa,

Time really does make good use of its wings and dashing feet doesn’t it? Passing faster than my grey hairs can pepper my mind as well as conversation. I was just updating you yesterday about the family was I not? It’s hard to imagine the 5 year salute has now doubled for the sum of years you have been away. I apologize for being so long gone. That half decade arrived like the flu but left a memory gap for which the CDC is yet to find a vaccine. All I possibly remember is that J&J became famous during the Covid pandemic but when Big Bad Boy Diddy huffed and puffed, the reasons were no longer as academic. That probably gave you a chuckle didn’t it? If not, I don’t claim to be the natural stand up comedian that you were.

Now that we are past the chipping of the ice or as I call it aligning my thoughts using filler drivel, allow me to get to the realness as you liked it. I have known you all my life as one never to waste words unless they made others smile or exuded well thought out ideas or responses. Something that a noisy child like me could never understand till I grew older. The quieter I grew, the more questions that arose especially from dear mum. I don’t believe she will ever reconcile that I am the same person and that in my change I have found my rest. In my solitude, I create and release the cacophony of ideas clashing and banging in my head. I get to rest when the internal noise dies down, even if for just a day.

Today, that noise threatened to overwhelm me. Here I was, anxious over a new project, excited to write about you later in the day and then mid way through the morning, I learn that a dear friend of 20 years left this plane to join yours over a year ago. I couldn’t figure out which emotion to feel, which feeling to express. On one side, I had lived long enough since you departed to talk to you or of you with a smile on my face. On the other, the idea of you also meant the reality of my friend’s exit. In the end I chose to compartmentalize, I owe you today. I apologize in advance because this note is also coated with grief deferred. I will cry tomorrow.

My first memory of you is probably not real but the amalgamation of years seeing that photo of you holding me while seated on the stones that would become our home to date. To be truthful, the memory begins not with you but your leopard print hat. I don’t even know whether it fits to be called a hat or where it had originated. All I know is that I was obsessed with stealing it off your head and wearing it. It covered my entire face and half my body. It also smelled like you and Sportsman. Though in retrospect, I thought of the combined scent as just you. The other half of that memory is me tripping over those same stones as I was prone to always falling over. It could be the same memory or a similar one as falling over was so regular that I also sat on a hot cooking stove or jiko at one point. This is besides the point but I also remember the last time I truly fell, in a ditch while jogging in the first week of high school. Soon after I would learn dance and grace, even though to date I still say my toes curl towards the ground because of how long I’d been trying to grab at it.

“Most of what I know I’ve learned from falling, from placing the brighter side of my hands against the earth
and pressing until vertical. The ground has taught me more about flight than the sky ever could.”
― Rudy Francisco, I’ll Fly Away

From hereon the memories flow haphazard, complete and in pieces. For some reason, just like all African dads, you were to be feared. I played along and I think you always knew this. Especially how the entire family seemed taken aback when I would decide to keep prodding at your stomach and asking why it was round and still firm. I was almost a pre-teen while doing this so being a child was not my excuse or yours to errrm stomach it. Dearest mother was the disciplinarian, sparing no cane at school or at home. But again, just like most African homes, the least feared. If a cousin said they’d seen you at the shopping centre, a day’s work would be completed by all hands in the 10 minutes it took you to cycle home. If the front gate banged shut announcing your arrival, the chickens would be forced to roost and the dogs chained for the night acting like they’d eaten their dinner a few hours earlier. It is thus quite interesting that 1 of the 2 times you actually caned/whipped me or us (the hardened boys) had to do with not feeding our “pet” rabbits on time. I was slowly understanding that you could never stomach seeing an animal abused. This was why we had the lesson lashed quickly that whether it was pets of our own acquisition as the rabbits were, they would receive the same attention and care once they arrived in your homestead.

The 2nd time you would whip me with what I very well remember was a bicycle rubber strap was truly so well deserved that I almost thanked you when it was done. I was disappointed in my own decision making but also mostly in my creation. What incidence is this you ask? To those alive in Kenya in the 1990s, you remember a show titled Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman. Now her love interest Sully, whom we called Selly all our lives because there was no Google to prove us wrong, was known for possessing a native American’s tomahawk. Genius me decided that one of the old office seats in the store full of cobwebs and past use items was going to sacrifice a leg so my battle axe could gain an arm. This might seem crazy but I blame the fact that I’d already received a home made spear to the head before then. Boys! After a day’s toiling, my resulting weapon could neither fly in circles or stick to its intended target. My disappointment hurt than the beating but at least the lesson that nothing was ever truly useless stuck.

Fast forward to a few years later and I would soon learn that men are boys and boys become men through practice than the passage of time. You loved attending the ASK shows, bringing in various pamphlets on new age farming practices (Supa Money Maker pump comes to mind), all manner of new gadgets and gizmos and on this occasion you had brought a football or as we called it ball ya pumsi. Now, we had already broken enough windows with our home made sponge and polythene footballs playing one touch right in front of the kitchen, so it was a 100% risk to bring a real football into a compound with 3 boys, their cousins and family friends. Little did I know that on this day I would be suffering a similar fate to that of the long forgotten (ok, not by mum) window panes. You found us playing football at around 6 pm, darkness was creeping in but one could still make out the white bits of the football. A loose ball found itself at your feet and with the legs that had played football for ages when young and ridden a bicyle for decades, you unleashed a Granit Xhaka like shot for the goal post (the house wall and the water tank), only it didn’t find its intended target but my stomach. As I fell over, you turned into my big brother in seconds (our age gap is 40), quickly rubbing my stomach, declaring the game over in hushed tones and saying we should get inside without raising any suspicion. All this to escape the ire of dearest mother. As all this transpired, I realized you expected no tears from me and that kukausha was about to become my new reality. Men!

I cannot speak of you without bringing up your type of education and wrestling (WWF not WWE). Every Tuesday when the car battery powering the black and white Greatwall TV would have enough power, you’d steal me from the study room so I could explain what the current storylines were since the previous week. Mum thought you were pulling me from studies but I was learning new things through different mediums. On the Tuesdays, KBC would decide to disapppoint me, I would sit and listen to programs like Face to Face, In Search of an Answer and Professional View as you snored the day away on “Dad’s seat”. Also let’s just face it, I was doing no studying when in the study room as I’d never found anything worth revising for in primary school. My absence probably gave my siblings much needed silence to actually do serious work. As I came to learn about your past, especially your career, I started understanding why you viewed life as the teacher. From accompanying surveyors as a kanda ya moko to learning the trade through observation and questioning till you acquired your own instruments and licences becoming Mukabi Surveyor to many from Kinale to Gatamaiyu, from Ndeiya to Thikimu. Most of your lessons came unspoken, unwhipped, just you saying, watch me.

In the article about you in February 2017 I mentioned the phone call you made when I was 24 and convalescing from clinical depression. I do not know whether you even understood what the ailment was but you did not need to. I had a job but one day I woke up to an Mpesa message from you of Ksh 8,000. Considering I had once made you look for me for an entire day, (legitimately because I thought it was fun since I still had your money ready to send back) including through my siblings, after you wrongly sent Kshs 20,000 instead of Kshs 2,000 when I was in campus, I called you and asked the reason for the cash. I tried explaining I did not need money and the medical was covered by the company’s medical insurance. In very few words, you said that you knew that. You said I needn’t worry no matter how old I got, you would always have my back. Hearing ndukamakio nî thî îno (Don’t let this world worry you) coming from you hit like a shot at new life. A high that I carry to this day especially in these recent years. I have needed you and even when away you have remained available and accessible in my veins, my blood, my nurture and my memories of you.

As I bid you farewell for now, I find myself wanting to tell you more stories of how you made me and who you made me become. Several people have found me too rational in situations that demand full blown anger, asking how do I manage to do that. On this through you and your sons, I learned to never start a fight I am not willing to see to the end. Most situations are simpler or non essential when you take a step back and a full breath. I also learned that family was the line. When a high school going bully would attack me on my way to school and smash my books into the ground, you turned up at his home, sharp panga in hand to have a stern talk with his parents. When I changed primary schools, I would learn that the reason no one wanted to even have the newbie fight with me was because no one was going to start a fight with Dave’s brother. They had already learned this lesson first hand when he’d changed schools earlier. And when older, grown adult bullies decided to waylay me and some other new initiates on the way home, your eldest son, sharp warning in tow delivered a similar warning as you had in another homestead 3 years prior. Through you and them I learned to conserve my energy, to deliberately direct it only where it served a true purpose that I believed in.

Awa, I miss you. Your rough hard-worn palms whose cold touch as you lay gone from this life finally broke me on that fateful morning. I have never told anyone this but I lost you twice and then some few more times. To date I have never known whether it was lucid denial, but I would still get confused whether you were still alive on certain mornings years after you were gone. A few months after you passed on, I had a dream, an event spanning a whole 2 years but in one night. In the dream, you never left, you had survived what had taken you away in reality. We lived another 2 years together then I woke up, lost you all over again and kept losing you every morning after when I had to remind myself of reality. The reality in which you no longer existed.

Thank you for the lessons, thank you for having my back, and thank you for making me, me. Sending some greetings for Alex and Wanjiku who travelled before you. Some further greetings to your own dad, Njoroge Mahinda whom you always made fun of as using Njogero Mahindi as his signature. I can’t forget how it tickled me to the point of tears the first time I heard you say this. Once more, you were the comedian and I your willing and receptive audience. Jusqu’a la fin.

Koma thayû Baba

death, Deep and overstood, Jesus Christ, Life, Love, Njeri

SEASONAL EXISTENTIALISM

The Divine Bandit

I. Before the Fall

Before the stars scorched lines in the sky, before my fated breath was drawn.
Free of shackles and no chained soul, wearing no weight and my will wasn’t torn.
My voice hadn’t called nor answered to a name uncast, my cries of pain hadn’t pierced the boundless deep.
None of my fears had time to thrive, love hadn’t lied and no weary hearts dared to weep.
I was but a whisper wrapped in weightless night, the womb of nothing, dark in the dawn.
No twisted time pressed its mark, I claimed no grave as no seed was sown.
No unsure fleeting steps taken, no marked footprints of regret.
Hope had not been poisoned, no past to mourn or a need to fret.
Yet within the darkness it stirred, the silence split as the stillness cracked.
A force unseen like a tide untamed, broke the void as reality attacked.
Peace stolen from the hands of mercy, from perfect sleep was pulled this form.
Through shattered shade the soul was hurled, to suffer life and brave the storm.

II. The Curse of Flesh

Beneath the burning, breathless sun, flesh grows frail, yet forced to stand.
Hearts hollow and will fractured, the destined design of an unseen hand.
Bones betray the body, conspiring with the vain mind as the hunger grows.
Deception kills love and hope, sorrow teaches what only the shadow knows.
But the blood keeps beating, sunken souls still devouring all that thrives.
On their backs, the weight of wounds and years, the weight of all that still survives.
Dreams turn to dust, like whispered wishes dissolving in the rain.
The morning mocks the evening sirens but midnight drowns all in pain.
We stumble and our steps fail, knowing quite well none may turn from fate’s decree.
Lips move in prayer and inner eyes open, liberated and imprisoned by what they cannot foresee.
Life becomes a series of bated brittle breaths, a film about echoes laced with loss.
A worse for wear wait to never rest, painful goodbyes till the paths may cross.

III. Return to the Void

Limbs will lie one last time as the lights fade, the lips locked and wordless.
The stars will cease in a flicker and the sky will come crashing down voiceless.
The dust will take back all the names it knew, bones will break then float away.
The pale past will lie in the grave, the wind will wipe all of time in a day.
No one will grieve, the unfolding end won’t be halted like a failing tide.
No sun will burn, the moon will mourn the forging fire no longer hitting its side.
The weight will wane as wounds close, the breath will bow to silence sweet.
Clocks will crumble and the curse will collapse, all steps erased beneath our feet.
The darkness will drink in deeply, then silence will stretch over once more.
Time will twist to a tamed repose, fortune will flee from the distant shore.
The voices will disappear, no name will remain to be called loved or cursed.
As the void yawns, the end will hum taking it back as it was first.

13th June 2025

Deep and overstood, HIMYM, Life, Love, Lust

I PUT A SPELL ON ♥

The Divine Bandit

See, I don’t want a luh… luh… love that whispers lies between soft kisses.
Nor one that starts with poetic vibes but ends with tone deaf silence.
The sun came and set on every bright promise, and I am still standing in the dark.
Because I refuse to chase illusions that vanish with the dawn.
I don’t want to use far-fetched faith to build love an altar, I want love that is its own proof of existence.
I’m tired of working hard to satisfy love that fades before I can hold it.
I don’t pen this with the naivety of a hard-won hopeful heart.
I don’t even try to rhyme, because love dances in your eyes for a second but lacks a permanent rhythm.

No, I don’t want a love that leaves my brain empty and a heart that’s fake full.
Because madness is loving something that would never have your back.
I don’t have to count the stanzas in this ode to love’s eternal hell.
Because we have arrived at roads that are crossing and the train is not pausing.
This is not a poem, it’s just a eulogy of feelings.
Scarred like a young Simba yearning for guidance from Mufasa.
I came to learn that happy endings are only for children’s movies.
Even as I offered my jacked arms to save the almost drowned lover that arose.
In the end it was an almost choreographed loss.
Bringing with it the realization that I’d always reached for something that was never really there.

See, I wanted a love whose language embodied our sensual lingua franca.
Thought I could make true affection more local than international romance in Casablanca.
But now I know love is only fluent in goodbyes.
I once thought it was love when it drugged me to hearing colours, dragged me to feeling nervous.
Now I know it’s just a shaken withdrawal, stirring hopeful hallucinations of something I never had.
This kind of love created nostalgia within seconds of its passing.
Now it’s just a beaten loop of mistakes I keep replaying.
I thought love was a present whose gifts are seen in the future.
Now the future is just a graveyard of what-ifs and never-was.
The emotions overlapped and the melee inside love’s octagon only ended in heartache.
Her shadow parallel to mine, I watched her, knowing quite well we would never meet again.

This writing is just me talking, I’ve grown tired of conversations.
The thematic synopsis aimed at you because you said love was real.
When you held my hand and stole more than moments.
But you see, I am a different kind of person now, colder even.
I once carried the flag for love, but blind belief is just another word for deception.
Like an overplayed song, I got tired of the sampled melody on further reflection.
Now love is just static, white noise, a sound I’d rather not hear.
Our love was the painting that looked its best because it was incomplete.
Now I see it was never art, just scribbles on a ruined canvas.
The knots I felt in my stomach? They were just warning signs I ignored.
Tying me to a destined death on hills of red flags left unexplored.
We added colour to the life we created, but it still faded.
I tried to hold on, but love bled through my fingers, unaided.

See, choosing your happiness over mine is not a smart objective.
It is a losing game, a prize that love never lets you keep.
These verses are barely from my thoughts.
Each word here is a scar, and I am yet to run out of pain.
We thought we were writing from the wisdom and experience of getting burned.
All that time we were strumming a requiem to a teenager’s dream on broken strings.
Our journals didn’t hold the same ideas, the writing didn’t rhyme and neither did we.
My invalid dreams, now dead and buried.
In fact, they are no longer dreams, just faded echoes.
I traverse this unloved life as a ghost of who I was.
From a writer, a dreamer, a lover, to currently counting the furrows on my brow.
Now I’m a cynic, a realist, and in the dance of love, I seem to break a heart with every blow.

You were meant to be my last word, my last note, not my last mistake.
Now each day, I rewrite my story, and love is no longer in the plot.
Every moment we had is just a photograph I’ve shift-deleted.
The moon listens, but she no longer gets space to speak.
Love was once my confession, like a sin unforgiven , it’s now my regret.
Living while loving was once interchangeable, now it’s a contradiction.
When I soar above, I do it alone, no longer chasing stars.
When I put down the last notable word from my pen, it will not be the end.
Because love never leaves but lingers in the empty spaces it leaves behind.
My mind is a maze, but I no longer want to be found.
My mind may amaze, but I choose solitude over a jigsawed heart.
I’d rather get lost in my own thoughts, finding safety in the echoes of silence.
Words created the illusion, promises built the farce, while cruel lies tore love apart.
My words may seem to be never-ending.
But love? Love is done pretending.

10th February 2025

#IAmKenyan, Deep and overstood, Kenya, Life, Love, War

Open poem to the PORK

The Divine Bandit

Mr President, I’m not a revolutionary, I’m a poet.

I shall try my best to not have my words sound like bars that could be perceived as enemy lines.
I’m afraid that I’ll raise a storm that could brew a kickstart to knowledge at lightning speeds.
Mr President, I’m certain I would not skim any parts of the historical scams or telltale signs.
I would delve deeper till I rooted out what was fertilizing corrupted seeds.
But remember Mr President, I am just a poet.
I titled my poem open because my verses will be holding such a conversation.
My fears though they ring true will be nullified by the dreams of a generation.
Mr President, for clarification purposes, I don’t write poems, they write me.
I feel a nation’s migraine building up and threatening to explode if I don’t document the aura of this age.
Slowly, my anxiety builds up as my restless thoughts clamour for the right to be.
My pen gets smarter than the sword and the blood of the slain inks this damp page.
Mr President, I’m sad and mad, that means my tears keep mixing anger and grief and I’m starting to accept this recipe for depression.
I’m sobbing for a nation Mr President, because I’m hoping my tears at this altar can bargain their way to a red carpet where acceptable justice prevails.
Mr President, open hands welcomed full streets during campaigns, peaceful demonstrations were served closed fists, bullets and batons of oppression.
We the people, we came in peace, came to voice our minds but ended up picking brains and taking young dreamers to early graves.
I’m not a revolutionary, I’m a poet, Mr President.
Just a son of the Kenyan soil, a law abiding resident.


Mr President I’m not a criminal, I’m a poet.

I used to write verses about love before I couldn’t afford one on loans.
I used to write about baddies Mr President not bad deals and bad bills.
I grew up to watch the game played by civil masters, the careful selection of pawns.
The number of moves countered, when those laying down can’t stand up to confirm the kills.
Mr President, a placard is worth a papercut not a trip to the emergency room, a voice is worth a meeting of minds not a bullet to the head.
I’m not a criminal Mr President, just a poet trying to articulate the life of the dead.
As a poet Mr President, I deal in reason in my rhymes, smuggle smarts into select conversation, and forge new styles to the way I steal status quo that’s past its time from closed minds.
I whisper my emotions into my letters, wrap my words with my true feelings and throw my meaning to my audience as the scene rewinds.
I hear the cries of the unnamed, tear this curtain for them so they can have a peaceful sleep.
They died for the shamed, those with futures uncertain, they are soaring through an eventful trip.
I’m just a Millenial poet Mr President, one who is unable to unsee the horror yet not hear the apology for the betrayal in our cities.
I’m just trying to get some shut eye, and as a way to pass away my time through my recent insomnia, I find myself counting scorned deities.
I’m writing this in long pauses Mr President, thinking back on how many years parents keep burying their children in this nation.
Each single time and regime, when the people raise a questioning hand, the corporals end up punishing their offspring.
A digital movement, something that could have been debated without confrontation.
Before the next bell tolls, maybe you could make a point of picking up on the first ring.



Mr President I’m not alive, I’m a dead poet.

I’m not sure how I got here really.
Maybe it was that poem I wrote when red-eyed, or that Ex with a passionate grudge or maybe my DIY noose finally worked and that’s why I am floating.
Any of them could be perceived as deadly by the right audience on the wrong side of history
Or I could have starved to death, I think artistes and Kenyans, especially Kenyans do that.
I don’t know where I am Mr President, it’s a new place for a poet.
It’s dark and peaceful. Everything I probably always wanted.
You know? When you took away my purpose.
When everything I created in destructive conditions was taxed till the government was content.
When I moved back home so you could have several homes.
When my social media post not meant for views got me in trouble for reporting the current news.
When that tick-tock ended up being my clock winding down on me without my consent.
When I marched to the end of the line and they cut mine.
I don’t know where I am Mr President.  I didn’t want to end up here.
I thought you’d listen. I created the most informative poster. You’d probably not have been proud, but I was.
Now I can’t hear my comrades.
I’m calling out to them, they said the water would just itch. Is that why I can’t scratch away this lonely feeling?
I carried that flag and water bottle for the teargas like the poster said right? It must have worked, I’m not coughing.
But… but I am alone Mr President. Mr President? Mr President? Mr President? I guess this is the end of our conversation Mr President. If you can still hear me.
I only need to know: Where am I? What happened?Did I make a change Mr President?
I was not just a poet Mr President.
I was a Kenyan.

Deep and overstood, Life, Love, The Teenage Years

A FIGURATIVE COUNTDOWN

The Divine Bandit

14 verses, spinning numbered musical tales at the tail end.
14 classes, making pals with pens yet timed digits forgot to hit send.
14th day, double the Sabbath adding my soul to the earthly tide.
14, first time having dreams of the silicon green on the Swiss side.

13, pompously aged puberty arriving with a cut of weighted gospels.
13th Friday, finding winning darts at the bar of unlucky spells.
13 baptisms later, spirits calm down in drunken volumes.
That teen, shedding cocoons from adulterated vacuums.

12th night, peering over the fence trying to fix withdrawal shakes.
12 disciples, fishing for bread at the cost of having to eat cakes.
12 hours, sleeping through sunshine as others have the day.
12 labours, giving birth to a godforsaken part to play.

11 players, still finding hearts in pitch to career injuries.
11th hour, arriving in mere seconds yet stoned into centuries.
11 betrayals, hanging happiness to win at being penny-wise.
11 atoms, explosive emotions prompting salty vocals to rise.

10 years, sweating through the tears in the universal fabric.
10 decks, crumbling as cards fall when winds blow the trick.
10 commands, squeezing a game out of a broken system.
10 neon lights, green-lighting an avenue ending in the red mayhem.

9 stitches, laughing up skins clamouring to save a life in pretense.
9 snitches, sharpen knives to shorten lives by elongating a sentence.
9 muses, creating a multiverse of poetic pains and growth gains.
9 months, destroying a cosmos of all the reigns and strains.

8 breaths, oxygenating painful awareness into existential lungs.
8 pieces, sailing shredded hearts towards the cannon bangs.
8 corners, stoppage time but life keeps throwing hits.
8 bites, building up a meal of passion or blowing us to bits.

7 knocks, breaking down doors after divine window shopping.
7 seas, raising a tsunami just to save the world from drowning.
7th son, finding luck in less familiar good-byes after so long.
7 sins, trumpeting deadly notes creating a triple gun salute song.

6th month, births gemini twins of anxiety and depression.
6 cubes, rolling to live or die without having left an impression.
6th sense, predicting a struggle with society’s extremes.
6 feet, troubled minds finding a resting place for dreams.

5 tastes, yet worldly turns leave earthly tongues bitter.
5 petals, flowers falling through cracks dims the glitter.
5 elements, throwing periodic tantrums for a seat at the table.
5 scales, a musical staircase where croaking is the final label.

4 chambers, revolving living iron while calling the bloody shots.
4th quarter, a full moon leads to the body if you follow the dots.
For starters, run away from home and break the 4th wall.
For status, time your farewell signature by leaping at last call.

3, the trinity meant to keep lithium away from our poles.
3 dimensions, we still cannot find space for our souls.
3 geniuses, starring in an unexpected trip of astronomical holy wars.
3 temptations, triggering denials that lead to deadly scores.

2 halves, marital ambitions for thoughts in opposing hemispheres.
2nd chances, parole system working on life sentence gears.
Two-faced, demons with sweet voices leaving dents as a joke.
2, the duality of meanings since the poet’s words spoke.

1, unit of a unified self becoming one once one unites the previous ones.
1 father, jealous and suffering from the success of devious sons.
1st person, me, myself and I can’t stress the tense in my past.
1st position, strongly leading in a competition to be last.

Dad, Life, Love

5 YEAR SALUTE

The Divine Bandit

I furrow my brow a lot. Mostly as an involuntary reaction to filter out the glare of human “stupidity”, incompetence, ignorance and prejudice. And also, the sun. 😅

I’m light sensitive you see. I have every type of “chromatic” in my glasses. Even my stunnaz/shadez/goggles (80s, 90s kids 🤭) are prescription. You can also be sure for reason number one. I have used it in the mirror too. I am quite self critical.

I didn’t really ever notice it that much till my dad passed away. 5 years today. The photo chosen to be used for his obituary was one where he was doing exactly that. Sure, the sun was in his eyes. However, he could also have been doing it because someone had forced him to wear a tie that day. Probably one of my sisters or all of them. It was hard to get this man to agree to something. I wonder who else I know with the same need to see logic before agreeing to something. Cue mirror again.

The moment I saw that photo on the family group as it was being chosen for the newspaper, it finally hit me why it looked so familiar. I had seen it in my own photos before. Photos as old as when I was just a toddler. You see, my dad didn’t really take many photos of himself. With his old camera and then newer shinier black Kodak camera, he took most of our photos when a studio was not available. Getting him to pose for one was another story altogether. And the few photos I had from before had never captured this moment. Since that day I started a quest to find as many photos from the family albums where he is doing that. They are not many but I found some more.
In fact by watching all my siblings. I realized they all do it. Even the ones who don’t wear spectacles. With time I even see it in his grandkids. Especially in the boy named after him. He usually does it when he is hell-bent on not doing what the mum is saying. Coincidence? Methinks not. Sure enough most humans probably do it. But it is the uniqueness of the lines that form on their faces that makes my heart skip a beat. The lines that remind me of you.

Today I celebrate you. As you celebrated all of us and our achievements. You probably wrote our CVs out to people you met as you spoke proudly of your children. I have met people years later who only knew me all the way to the personality core, just from your words.

It is why today’s words will not be sad as that poem from years back. It’s why I can manage a fair amount of jokes as I write you this tribute. I remember the number of times you had me guffawing at the jokes about politicians, wrestlers and most frowned upon by dear mother, religion. And so, today amid the tears that we can’t dry or deny, I get to smile. I get to know that one emotion can be expressed as two. I also get to see that furrowing our brow is more than just a reaction or a way to judge. It is a way to take a stance. A way to strive forward through hardships. A way to turn up even when we might not feel like it.

A few quick updates.

Your 2 elder sons have since decided to wear caps as much you did because your warnings on baldness fell on deaf ears. 🏃🏿‍♂️🏃🏿‍♂️😂
The other one (mirror moment) won’t shave his hair because he is caught in your spirit of the 60s. He also didn’t heed your warning on early grey hair.
There’s 2 more grandkids. You would have loved to meet them.
Your family has grown so much we take the family photo in panorama.
It sure would have been a lovely excuse for you to avoid more photos. 😁😁❤️❤️

We still miss you in our midst.
We miss your toughness. We miss your kindness.
We miss your glares. We miss your cares.
I miss the furrows in your brow that said: “This is how I got you this far.”

Koma thayû baba.

Kenya, Life, Love

Love in the time of Corona

The Divine Bandit

Have you ever visited the Nairobi National Park, Amani?
On an open top van surrounded by nature and its eyes, with no civilization in sight, as you push away daydreams of the man-eaters of Tsavo?
To stand where your forefathers stood as they prayed for your destiny?
I want that one more time.
I want to be lost on a street in Delhi, to feel the energy before the lights turn green and a hundred tuk tuks breeze by.
I want another meal in Douala, to get my muscles infused with plantains washed down with a soda that is too large.
I want another roadtrip and then another.
I want the warmth of a wooden fire in Meru, cooled by the breeze coming from the river.
One more night of spoken word at stages past and future.
I want to stand on balconies and share ideas with strangers who become friends when the sun is up.

Walk on the Eletric avenue again.
Climb the Longonot.
Ride the Sagana river.
Dance like the age of the discos.

I want to go out and make as many new experiences as I can.
But most of all I want to survive. I want to live my dreams, see what becomes of the man.
Give me that chance. One more time.
That’s why I won’t allow that virus out there to get my mind from me, let alone the last of me.

AH, Deep and overstood, Life, Love

I TRIED

The Divine Bandit

If I make friends with the shrouded paths at an early age.
May satin be my garment and roses make pillows for my head.
May the dawn’s sunlight glitter on the river.
As the acoustics whisper their farewell via a song of love.

I turn for one last look at the mirror and realize I never saw the right reflection.
It’s the things you don’t win that wrap your mind the most.
And no manner of antidotes will get me by.
Expired drugs can get you high or Higher.

There is no universe in which I win.
There is no galaxy in which I shine.
Darkness has covered me like a new commandment.
And that is why it breaks me.

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AH, Deep and overstood, Life, Love, Politricks, War

THE ABYSS

The Divine Bandit

In the abyss we snuggle with our demons then send them out for coffee in the morning.
In the abyss we need no serenity.
Because you accept what is and what isn’t. Then throw change on the difference.

In the abyss, there is no reality or dreams. Just calming nightmares.
In the abyss, we strangle hope with our heart chords.

In the abyss, we never open our eyes.
In the abyss we don’t look for the light.
For only in the darkness does our skin glow.
In the abyss there are no reflections.
Just deflections of positive thoughts.

In the abyss there is no heartbreak.
Just the slow cranky hum of rusty pacemakers.
In the abyss there are no strings to hold us back.
In the abyss, the limit is every human.

In the abyss we write but never read.
For in the nuclear storm, we will be red all over.
In the abyss, we already survived WWIII.

In the abyss, we didn’t die, because we were never alive.

AH, Deep and overstood, Love

The purity in pain

The Divine Bandit

Love is pain and pain is love.
The dreams of your affections make the nightmares of your reality.
Tears that won’t drop burn the hottest.
They travel down your spirit and singe your singing soul.
Buzzing through the air are the tacks holding the pieces of your heart.
Because you made your “ifs” into “whens” and God laughed.
The masses take another snort of the opium.
Forgetting grace still outweighs faith.
A crooked smile is all you can manage for now.
Happiness remains a journey and not a goal.

Memories remain the only comfort we have.
Hand forced into accepting the fake disparity.
The hottest cuts burn the deepest.
Only this time you can’t drop and roll.
Cupid switched his arrow for a lawn dart.
Doubled the hurt and here is; love halved.
You carried the load, swallowed my effort and still no equilibrium.
Because I’d been on my knees seven times, this is the eighth.
Your last act, exit the stage and take a bow.
We win nothing today for the future has taken it all.

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I used to dance to the beat your hips wove.
But sad feet have the same rhythm as if they were guilty.
Words no longer change this hard time to the softest
Your lips remain the elixir that made me whole.
The sunshine has refused to play its part.
Our dreams can no longer be photographed.
Our family was to be nuclear, I was the plutonium.
Now in this foetal position, all I need is a swathe.
Mutual means I have half the mind to allow.
I cannot answer it, but only make the call.