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.
Category: The Teenage Years
Untitled 01:45h 19/12/2015
I: God
Take me back to a time.
When being good was as easy as breathing.
And my mama’s words resonated in me.
When her bidding was stronger than a belief.
Proud to be called clean, faithful, a follower of rules.
Take me back to Sunday school.
When I believed in forgiveness.
In King David after the transgressions.
Saul would become Paul.
And the past would be forgiven.
Early mornings, when I’d remove my socks and shoes.
To be equal to the other village kids.
When my lullaby was the thoughts of heaven.
And not finances, planning on how to break even.
Take me back to being what they called a junior youth.
Looking forward to a life of serving not mastering.
Living for Him not aspiring to attain.
Take me back to the Bible not the blogs.
To learning rather than just reading.
II: Love
Take me back to the fairy tales.
To dreams grand and of sunsets.
When love was a gift and not an achievement.
And a source of never-ending happiness.
Not a path to probable pain.
Take me back to when today mattered.
To when the future was always bright.
Not a reflection of past mistakes.
Take me back to Celine.
To Luther Vandross and ᗅᗺᗷᗅ.
To staying alive and celebration time.
A fulfillment of the life that would be mine.
Take me back to hand sculpted gifts.
To names carved on trees and doodles on my books.
When the thought far outweighed the cost.
And the character way better than looks.
Take me back to primary school.
When affection made my heart skip not beat faster.
When I’d be transfixed in moments not lost in the next.
When what I felt was said and not lost in text.
Take me back to just being divine.
Before I let in the bandit and stole more hearts than one.
It’s been a while since I went out of line.
Lost the chance to enjoy the moment and ran after the fun.
III: Author
Take me back to senseless writing.
To holding a pen and trying my best at cursive.
To when the ink was the blood from whence poured my soul.
And truth riddled every sentence.
Take me back to basic lexicon.
When being deep was not the goal but a happy coincidence.
To when morphemes and synonyms did not matter.
And rhymes came out as staccato as a stutter.
Take me back to real poetry.
When my life leaked with every phrase.
My thoughts and fantasies saturated every page.
This gift was not even recognised as one.
Take me back to grammatical errors.
To a period way before the nazi era.
So I can write away my troubles.
Let the paper fade away my pain.
Take me back to Wordsworth and Frost.
Before I end up on the road least taken like Poe.
Lost in my melancholic notes.
Of the writer I could have been but never became.
Take me back to Shakespeare.
From thence I can find my path again.
Still a poet by any other right or how I write.
Immortalized in my own song of La “Wino”.
IV: Life
Take me back to singing and dancing.
To India Arie and Maxwell on a sunny afternoon.
To ill-fitting earphones and cassette tapes.
To bitter lemons without a tequila shot.
Take me back to addition and subtraction.
Not regression and plans for my progression.
To learning how to draw, no matter how badly.
Rather than designing a dream house in every reverie.
Take me back to freedom.
To aspiring to be President.
Proudly sitting at the head of the class.
Rather than murmuring at the back row.
Take me back to undefined genius.
Rejoicing in completion rather than competition.
To figuring things out not judging them.
To creating and not just utilising.
Take me back to long walks not quick rides.
To sun basking and making images from the clouds.
When I’d revel in heavenly splendour.
Not lost in thoughts of what tomorrow will bring.
Take me back to open spaces not closed walls.
To old friends not new acquaintances.
When I’d play in the rain rather than in its after-scent.
Enjoy every living minute, make it a lifetime moment.
Take me back, just take me back.
My dying notes
Looking for healing…huff and puff..
Smooching this feeling…rough and tough.
Ruby ruby ruby red lips was what got him about Stacy’s mum.
He liked that she was still preoccupied with 1985.
And as he pulled off in his station wagon.
Alice just watched from her bedroom window.
He waved at Frankie by the YMCA.
Wondering whether he’d ever come back before the clocks stopped spinning.
All was yellow, autumn was creeping in and he knew it was no longer just his life.
He’d met a girl. Thought she was grand till he found out her love was just a lie.
And now as his heart was going under.
He’d pretend that the airplanes in the night sky were fireflies.
Lighting the perfect path to what she reminds him.
Someday he’ll be the hero who can save all.
But today he’ll just go somewhere only they know.
Soak up the sun just like animals do.
Smiling at these twisted turns of fate.
His small words now just a whisper.
Life just got too complicated for the skater boy.
Lost Art, Incomplete posts – A step back into history
I am a hoarder. Of plastic containers from Chicken Inn and those from the Juice and Smoothie corner at Sarit’s food court. But worst or rather best of all, I am a hoarder of books, writing pads etc. This is how as I cleaned my bedroom from an OCD hit, I found some long lost poems I wrote in another lifetime, some a bit too erotic, others incomplete and others just plain old boring.
For the next few days, I shall post one of the poems I found and try bring a new ending to the incomplete ones. Take the journey with me. Before I tasted beer, when I was an IT geek and most importantly, when I was an idealist. Untainted by the harsh realities of love and life. The tag will be YoungCrow.
I WILL BE SILENT
There are two faces to any coin,
Silence fits perfectly in.
Sometimes it signifies the indifference one possesses,
Other times its love and care in large doses.
There are those who keep mum over bad events,
Others are silent when thinking of loved ones.
Silence might be anger blown through narrow vents,
Buts it’s also through silence that one learns.
Affection might be expressed through silence,
But quiet people might be thinking of violence.
I listen to good music without uttering a word,
But still react the same way to shocking news.
It’s not a matter of whether something is good or bad,
Rather it depends on different people’s views.
A beautiful car leaves my mouth gaping,
Yet a grisly accident has me instantly dumb.
Extreme pain lacks the expected groaning,
A heart break makes my lips become numb.
When I write all you expect is silence,
But to love you I don’t need a license.
Right now I’m lying silently on my bed,
I can almost hear the friction between pen and paper.
I can hear all the words in my head,
But I need my peace, I’ll say them later.
Later will be when I see you next,
Right now it’s a dumb system keeping us apart.
It’s not ink but my love that makes you part of this text,
You are the only one who warms my heart.
When you are silent, I get to say how I feel,
And when I’m quiet, it helps me listen.
You give me directions for climbing this hill,
At the peak I see you and my eyes moisten.
I can’t believe this is the third poem on one person,
The speed at which I’m writing is unbelievable.
I’m silently afraid of my heart being torn,
But I will keep walking as long as our love is viable.
I hold my breath and wait for that sunny morn,
When your kiss will make me see double.
Your silence now means you need your beauty sleep,
And who am I to interfere with that?
Something tells me you’ll always be mine to keep.
And hence for now, I will be silent.
NOBODY BETTER
I write to express how I feel
Other times it helps me to heal
Lovely emotions make me kneel
And hate tempts me to kill
Regardless of what I want to say
Poems seem to lead it away
My real feelings never see the light of day
And for all that my heart has to pay
I feel that writing does not cater
For all that I know, does matter.
People don’t know how what I’m about
Hence they tend to throw my love out
I can’t believe that it’s me they always doubt
So I have to control myself not to shout
Even though my affection I don’t always flaunt
At least a speck of care I always mount
My heartbreaks are so many that I’ve lost count
And wonder if my life, they will always haunt
May be one day they’ll flow like water
But I’m sure that it’ll be much later.
For now all I have to do is wait
And walk around with a confident, straight gait
There’s nothing I can do to increase the rate
Of finding my true and beloved mate
The day will come when I know my fate
How I hope it will not be too late
I wish your love would drop on me in its full weight
So that I can finally stand at my full height
Let’s hold hands and look at each other
From you I can’t stand no further
Let our love shine like polished leather
For there’s no one else I’d rather
I hope that I’m not being a bother
It’s just knowledge about you I’m trying to gather
Putting this down makes me feel like I’m degrading you
But if you let me, I can tell you what is in my heart
I only did this because I felt it was overdue
Hence it was tearing my inside apart
I hope I have said what I feel to the letter
For as you look at me, I know there’s nobody better.
THE BALL IS IN YOUR COURT
I need to explain that this piece is not fully my original work. I translated it from pidgin from a very old tattered book when I was in high school. I found said book in a dark musty corner of the Alliance High School Junior/Grieve Library. I edited it and also changed words to get a rhyme scheme. I have spent years Googling some of its sentences hoping to find the original piece. But finally I have given up on it having a soft-copy version. So for now I will give credits to anonymous. It has been a long time coming for this piece to be sent out to the world. Words are like seeds, and from them, knowledge grows at whose foot wisdom sits to restart the process all over again.
My darling love, my little love
My dumpling, my sweet cake
My sweetheart, I go for you
Like how flies go for sugar
As I put my pen on paper
And my nib starts to fly
I very well remember
The first day you caught my eye
You had just come off your car
A bus was to your right
A car swept by your left ear
And you stood up, stiff with fright
Don’t scorn my little letter love
I know my writing is poor
My training not good, but what
I can’t spell, I will draw
See how I draw the two faces
They look at each other
One is you and one is me
Choose any one you’d rather
This is not a cockroach’s foot
It’s a finger with a ring
It means I want to marry you
And this line is a piece of string
Take and put it around your finger
On your wedding hand
Make sure you get the right size
Then give to this man
The man is now I, Smooth Spice
Keep swelling till I see you next
Accept my young heart while I close
With love and lots of good thoughts
Music alone shall live
All things shall perish from.
Under the sky.
(Music alone shall live.) x 3
Never shall die.
The above was a voice practice verse that we used to do when I was in the mixed Alliance and Alliance Girls school choir. I know it’s hard to imagine I ever sang. Actually I still do. However, with a very raspy voice, thanks to years of screaming at rock concerts, football matches and of course the accompanying cold Milele (that’s Kenya’s greatest beer – Tusker – for those who might get lost early on in this post.)
I listen to very many genres of music. I have a favourite in at least each one that I know of. However growing up, this was not always the case. I grew up in the MCM and Channel O era. They say if she does not know of this, she’s too young for you but hey, girls my age are married or having kids 😀 . This meant the choice of genres of music was not that much and we did not have that fast internet we now pride ourselves in nor the easily available torrents and music DVDs. So do not judge the fact that I had a crush on Aaliyah, Mariah Carey (used to call her Maria then not Maryah), Britney Spears and Janet Jackson. I really did not have that many singers to choose from. However, in a weird way, my greatest crush was always one, the Late Lisa “left eye” Lopes. I have a thing for tomboy-ish girls like Keri Hilson, the old Rihanna etc. WHY AM I TALKING ABOUT THIS??
It is no wonder that R n B was most predominantly my genre in my primary school life. I knew of the existence of Hip Hop but growing up in a household where the word kiss was almost taboo, how were you going to be singing along to Ice Cube, Dre, Mack Dre, Xzibit and Lost Boyz? You would probably spontaneously combust and end up in a heap of cussing ashes. (Yes I love writing curse that way). By the time I was joining high school, the Godfather of Genge (Nonini) , the best there ever was (E-Sir), Mr Lenny, Mr Googz, Vinny Banton and of course Nameless were becoming part of my life. We had the girls too. Wahu, Amani and I remember one Melissa de Blok. She was awfully cute. She still is. 🙂 Local Kenyan music became a big part of me and my patriotism made me shun foreign music. There were older groups before that but I was too young to have known their music like Limit X. And can someone remind me who sang that “Niongeleshe” song?
I especially hated rock music by then which I deemed noise. That was up until the beat dropped on the chorus to “It’s my life” by one Jon Bon Jovi. I am not good rather not great with rules and here was a chorus I could relate to. And thus my love for rock was born. In came Matchbox Twenty, Creed, Blink 182, The Corrs, The Calling, Maroon Five etc. I still hated Hip Hop. It was not as poetic as I found rock to be. Someone should have pointed me in the right direction.
This was to change so fast. I was barely out of high school when I encountered a Jay Z Album followed by a Nas one, A Common one and Talib Kweli’s “Beautiful Struggle” afterwards. I could barely believe how much I had missed all these years. All genres were dropped as I got accustomed to Hip Hop. I was listening to everything. From local to international Hip Hop. Even French Hip Hop. I started writing poems with punch-lines and I could hear the beat in my head. Its fiery lightning buzzing in my ears.
I am that guy that goes physically and internally crazy when parts of a certain song come up. I have had other songs that make me clench my fists and almost scream as the beat drops since Jon’s old rock song. I don’t know how many of these are anyone’s favourite but I will list them just as well.
- Imagine Dragon’s Radioactive the first verse part where they make a breathing in sound.
- Maroon 5’s Harder to breathe. The first drum set just before the song starts.
- Macklemore’s Can’t hold us . The first 4 lines that go like: “
Return of the Mack, get up!
What it is, what it does, what it is, what it isn’t.
Looking for a better way to get up out of bed
Instead of getting on the Internet and checking a new hit”
- The Script’s If you could see me now at these lines:
Take that rage, put it on a page
Take the page to the stage
Blow the roof off the place
- Creed’s Lullaby
- Nas’ Hate me now as the beat drops at the start of the song.
- The last line in Jay Z’s What more can I say?
- Swedish House Mafia’s Don’t you worry child. The whole song because of the fact as the group was splitting up. I felt like this was an ode to their fans. Telling them not to worry as they left the world music scene.
- Avicii’s Wake me up when the beat drops after these lines:
I didn’t know I was lost
I didn’t know (didn’t know, didn’t know)
Of course, after all is said and done, the most current, blood-heating, bone-chilling, heart-bursting, dopamine-gushing, insanity roof-breaking song remains Idina Menzel’s Chorus from Let it go in Frozen immediately after these words:
My power flurries through the air into the ground.
My soul is spiraling in frozen fractals all around
And one thought crystallizes like an icy blast
I’m never going back; the past is in the past!
For goodness sake there’s the word “fractals” in the song!!! I had to Google the word when I heard the song for the first time.
I have been in this world for over quarter of a century. I have listened to as much music as I can. From the best of Bob Marley to the Waterworld of Handel and the New Age of Enya. I have gone insane listening to Mozart, playing an invisible violin to Lindsey Stirling’s Crystallize. I am a child of the world. I exist in colour, in words, in art and most importantly in sound. They do not speak of the earthly bodies in heaven, these dust to dust bodies. There is no talk of paintings or murals there too. But they talk of harps, trumpets, singing etc. One thing is for sure. Music alone shall live.
I seen a rainbow yesterday
But too many storms have come and gone
Leavin’ a trace of not one God-given ray
Is it because my life is ten shades of gray
I pray all ten fade away
Seldom praise Him for the sunny days
And like His promise is true
Only my faith can undo
The many chances I blew
To bring my life to anew
Clear blue and unconditional skies
Have dried the tears from my eyes
No more lonely cries – Lisa Lopes/ TLC
OF SO CALLED LIFE
Shakespeare compared life to a stage,
Yet by deep thinking it’s like a page,
A blank it is before you are born,
Then comes the moment that you put on life’s gown,
Though you hold the pen and decide what to write,
The Almighty God fills your pen with ink,
The past is always full of things you did not do right,
But leave it as it is for you used indelible ink.
Think of the present and write the best you can,
Use the best handwriting till your life is done,
Work hard so as to brighten your book,
Let it be attractive to those who look,
There is always the entry of another person,
That person adds another handwriting,
It might seem cumbersome to have one page to write on,
But hold on for what is between you is binding.
The future always appears unexpected,
It’s not once that you find it dented,
It’s as if somebody decided to crumple your page,
Everywhere you turn you find a thorny hedge,
Take life slowly for every hedge has a rose,
Life sometimes stinks but you can always hold your nose,
Better a dull life on this ground,
Than fiery fire instead of a crown.
IN THE SINKING MOATS (This is the first poem I wrote at age 14 in 2002 A.D)
Don’t tell me I’m late
For this little plea
Much I’ve attempted
No way could I dispel it.
I didn’t compel it
But like a thunderbolt,
It struck me.
What am I supposed to do?
Cry; I do feel like but “No”.
Give it up?
Then I won’t be as they say.
A man of substance
Yes I did try.
But ‘twas locked in my heart.
None can tear it asunder.
To evict the love I have.
I set myself on a plinth.
Unmovable I am going to be.
They say love don’t cost a thing.
It may be a platitude.
But in all forms of etiquette,
Mine may cost something.
Then like a soaring lofty cloud
Fill my realm of fantasy
And still my heart won’t rest.
The Divine Bandit™ 