My Dog Too Has Died

Old friend!
My dog too has died
and mama’s compound
has been tidied by a hired
hand, a filcher of my pride
there’s absence of the
familiar barks, now
instead, an eerie silence
A familial forsake

Old friend!
My dog too has died

And
the home trees now waste their
shades, their efforts
lost to dark days
so they stand naked in April
and mourn seasons lost
i too, i too am fated to die
with compassions


And
her thoughts stride afar and
back to her little world they
return with echoes of little ones
playing, reassuring
and this is,
her utmost joy denied

And
the villain, the thief of joy
rebel of kowtow
a boy once loved, is
tucked away in tow
with the wretches of the earth
enveloped and lost
in unbecoming dreams
and a tender heart in limbo




"To the spirit of Sergei, the birchtree poet, a tortured soul" © lak'wab asis 2011 All rights reserved

Beloved

This monkey-sun's rays
Play upon your beauty
But can never crown
How my heart revs,
Now a virginal blush
On that cheek so brown
Suddenly I am a cub, taken back to when
Paws on chin and heart in mouth
I was told of a nightingale
And I held in her an infantile
Mystique,
And now you're here with a
light and a song


I would take you there
But Nyet, I'm a drunk
You, a royal in your own right
So wake me if sobriety finds me
And I will bequeath you
A paradise
A field of peace and serenity
Where muses are held
Inside spheres of
the morning dews

Let me,
Teach you the ways of meadows
Show you the black jacks
So you may learn to shirk
As they grab at your sundress
Meanwhile enchant me with your
Smile,
And let's laugh at our frivolity

I will hold out the smell of
The majestic Marigold
So you may never forget the
Smell of a virgin sky,
Sight of a maize field in
granduer, where the red queleas
Make love outside their nests
Under the mid morning sun © lak'wab asis 2011 All rights reserved

cup of life (To a Dear Friend)

from the same cup we’ve shared
carousing,
so also have we
the pains the glee
sorrows and revelry,
hunger or sate
(of mind and stomach)
seen love heard hate
but from this a cup
a journey is shared © lak'wab asis 2011 All rights reserved

dance of lights

long after families are roost
here, still perched I am
a dark raven
the black child
a hermit king
lacking in regal

every night brings me
to this very roof-top
to watch lights dance
dance of the loners
music of the lights
in a black night

Masterfully played as if by
Invisible Hand


the windows bright
others flicker on
others off
each with secrets only
known to their owners
.master.


even the night breeze
stops to listen to the lights
.enchanted.


car tops make giant
pianoforte of parking
beneathe me
armed alarms thro'
windshields.
.rows.
a blue here a red there
an alternating
regular blink
a tempo
loud and clear

'above all

stars
lights of lights
dance a song
unparalled final dance
a celestial wonder
in infinite ballroom
.choreography.
impeccable, spiritual

and for once I'm
a hermit no more
we're all on the sidelines, subjects
spectators
equal.
equal,
all Equal
to the moment we join the ranks © lak'wab asis 2011 All rights reserved

Harvest

There's a nation
A city in content
They vet for a master of
Ceremony, chief whip
They sat Dr. Phil down
And gave him a pep talk
That made him weep
So they patted him down
And sent him on his way
Put him on a pill though
Prozac, focalin
norpamin
impunity
debauchery
They laughed and warned
That their ideas may
Impregnate thoughts

They Welcome You
to Gotham State of Mind

A strait-jacket army
Parade in the square
Chanting and marching
Marching
Chanting
Chanting; nursery rhymes
Circumcision songs
Dirges
War songs
holy hymns
Beat box
Sing songs
Christmas carols
Forward left
Left right
Chant
Chant
The lords prayer
Incantations
Revolution!
March
March
March. Somewhere
Nowhere.
Babel. Somewhere
Nowhere.

© lak'wab asis 2011
All rights reserved

Chase With Nostalgia

If you are a child of the 80’s you definitely must have in your miserable life heard of the name James Hadley Chase. Man, thanks to Google I got enlightened that this was actually a pseudoname for British writer Renee Brabazon Raymond (and I always thought he was American).
It is in human nature that forbidden fruits are the sweetest. Now, James Hadley Chase was prohibited (this information, true or not, always accompanied the books courtesy of the lender). Can you believe that?! I did. Anyway, so Mr. Moi’s administration allegedly decided that these thriller books were the porn of violence and, well, just plain porn; thusly prohibited joining the ranks of serious and political works of the likes of Karl Marx et al in the contraband corner of the shelves of that time. I really can’t blame them, these books might be the reason I grew up a screw up.

My extended family is, well, 'extensive', hence the grand ensemble of cousins in my life. Every child at a certain age worships their older siblings, and even as I was the only dude in our house I always had the company of the big boys among these extended relations. These were my gods. They were cool gods.
Back to Hadley Chase. What do you expect from titles like; The Dead Stay Dumb, I’ll Get You For This, Lay Her Among The Lillies, The Marijuana Mob, I hold The Four Aces, The Sucker Punch, Mission To Venice, A Lotus For Miss Quon, An Ace Up My Sleeve, Consider Yourself Dead, Knock, Knock, Who’s There?
The italized titles are actually those I recall reading and I refrain from researching their synopses because the nostalgia might just kill me.
I’m not even going to talk about what they put on they covers man! You could judge these bad ass books by their covers; raw violence (apparently reflecting the violent nature of the era of most of their story setting), half-naked vixens in garters and occasionally looking bad-assy with guns (and skirts) drawn. My cousins always made me read them in their ‘cubes’ to minimize the risk of being found with such literature and what fun it was! I could actually wake up early to go have my session before the owners found time to demand their read-time. And FIY, I would arm myself with this knowledge to go brag to kids in school with my newly learnt vocabs like all the motherfucker-laden adjectives, and all the bloody cuss-words of the time. I still believe I was the coolest kid given the stares and O mouths I would get as I displayed my newly-acquired foreign badassery.
Those were the times people took paper-backs seriously. We had our Chases (ironically, later in life I would tone down my taste to The Hardy Boys bullcrap. I blame it on adolescent hormones) the secretaries had their Mills and Boon or whatever mushy pop romance. People in matatus slouched their torsos, necks craned down to some beat up novel on their laps. I would insult your intellect by comparing it to our present tweeting, facebooking,and what not, I know you get the picture. Yeah, people actually read books, real books (with paper pages that flipped and rustled).
Well, I ceased being a fan of popular literature long ago, preferring instead serious and nourishing literature, but lest I forget where I come from.
I don’t know if I’m cool anymore (actually I don’t give a whistling fuck anymore) but I might probably still be a fuck up, so the biscuit probably goes to James Motherfucking Hadley Chase.

Arjas' Undergarments; a story of fetish

Undergarments
BY Arja Salanfranca

Bra, panties,
You’re in my fantasy
Garters, stockings, it’s really quite
Shocking
Negligee, teddy I am quite ready
Silk, satin, let’s make it happen
Whips? Mask?
Maybe we’re going too fast.


Undergarments’ is a poem clothed in cheekiness. It seems to subtly ask, how far you can take your kink. It addresses a serious issue in a comical way, albe

it not lightly. She takes you on a journey of longing and ecstasy till that point where moral boundaries and personal values are breached. The theme of sexuality is a theme that has been addressed quite dynamically by most African writers. To many, sexual fetishes have been a cultural import and particularly, paraphillic tendencies are viewed as quite strange and taboo in most African cultures. In 'particular' because sex is natural which means a fetish may exist anywhere but will vary cross-culturally. It reminds me of ‘Acholi Love’ by Taban Lo Liyong’ published in the Transition where he explores African sexuality vis a vis western viewpoint of love and sex. It is a comical read to say the least. That's a write for another day, here Arja's piece is visually provocative, language used casually suggestive and in a ‘cliché’ tone and has a rather simple and friendly flow. The poet is definitely non-obfuscate in her use of language and allusions; anyone is able to get with ease what she’s passing across.
A good friend in-boxed this piece and it quite put a cheer in me and within five minutes I wanted to acquaint myself who this Arja was. I must say google spell-checked me ‘Salafranca’ quite a number of times. I still can’t pronounce the name without putting an ‘n’ before the ‘f’. Anyway, this SA writer and poet was born in Spain in 1971 and has written fiction, poetry, essays, journals and anthologies. I definitely want to get my hands on many of her works, especially her poetry collection. This is not the last you are meeting her on this blog so watch this space.

Imani Woomera's delicious lover

Hero

-Imani Woomera

He was born in Puerto Rico
Style strait sweet loco
He has a way with word
I call him most delicious
lover
while other words slip from
my tongue like azucar
I have to be careful to take
Him in small doses
Not to overdose on
Sweetness so potent
He is fly
Like birds in V formation
Heading south seeking sun
As Amazonian passeros
Passing over wilderness
Wild
He makes me open as
Pacific ocean
I was born to swim these
Waters
He tantalizes my senses
With latino tongue
Making even mundane
Words sound sexy like
Candado
Seriously it means padlock
I walk in trance locked on
Him
Palms interlaced
He is too smooth
I sip off him during
Droughts of freshness
He tastes like tomorrow
His eyes envelop tears
I watch them drip silently
Pain does not translate into
Vocabulary
Even for the best of poets
Some things can not be
said
Like what it feels like when
someone you love takes
their own life
You live today to save
what remains from being
lost forever
Your life becomes their
legacy
And EP for eternal memory
A vinyl
This is real
This right here.
Is real.





Imani here succeeds to intoxicate you with sensual words. Be careful ‘not to overdose on/ sweetness so potent’. With no evident concrete rhyme, this poem has superb flow that seems to materialize from no where as you go from the first word to the next. She is deeply enthralled (yet unwilling for a complete surrender) by this mystique, heart breaker of a Latino man. He wields a certain effect over her, she confesses that ‘he makes me open like the pacific ocean’ followed by non-less a confessional line of acceptance.
She has incorporated powerful imagery that seems to harmonize idea and the flow in this poem resulting in the most sensually tantalizing feel. The allusions; imperious.
There’s however no escaping the complete melancholic turn-around towards the end that the poet impeccably timed and executed as subtly as if she was gunning for a silent stun effect. Her lover has a deeper meaning to the persona as she finds condolement and solace in her lover. He gives her hope in the face of adversity, to strive forward with life.
‘…I sip off him during
Droughts of freshness
He tastes like tomorrow
His eyes envelop tears….’

Powerful. Just powerful. When someone deals with two intense themes like love and death/suicide/loss then this is exactly what you get even though it feels like the theme of death came as an afterthought and I just can’t place my paw on that.
I will not immortalize Taban Lo Liyong's two pence-take that East Africa is ‘a literary desert’, she may not be in residence but Imani definitely belongs here and we’re proud of that. Keep churning that creative mill Imani, tuko na imani kwako.

Charles Mugoshi's Tree's

The Trees

BY Mungoshi Charles

In their nakedness
The winter trees laugh
At our inability
To shed clothes
Of our past seasons



The imagery is provoking. It is amazing how Mungoshi achieves what he has in five short lines. Mungoshi is known to address two main themes in his works; significance of life and a fascination with time. I believe this work of art addresses both themes quite effortlessly and it does so in characteristically what critiques describe as ‘nihilistic’ Mugoshi treatment of themes. The language used aggravates the readers’ corporeal sense in a reflective feel (‘in their nakedness/ the winter trees laugh’). It makes a mockery of our humanity and the susceptibility to our own humanity. It is very suggestive, it’s as if saying that trees know a secret that we don’t yet it is natural that way, like it was meant to be that way. The reader is left asking whether we can learn from these winter trees.
I reiterate that this poet has achieved a lot in this poem and can prove quite hard to completely work through it to a proper conclusion.
Not bad for someone whose mother told ‘I’d wish you’d burn your library’, apparently most parents this part of the hemisphere don’t consider writing as a career choice for their children. In an interview, the Zimbabwean confesses that loneliness growing up probably led him to being a career writer. His short poems have been compared to those of the English bard, Thomas Hardy who also provoked reflection on meaning and value of life.

Insurrection

Don’t go out in the rain!
My mama used to scold,
Lest you catch pneumonia
Or something worse

I went out anyway
And my behind got tanned
And dared not again

That was then
Now I am grown
The pain went away
A rattan now I dare!

Lets’ wild out in the rain friend!
And
Alas! We do not catch chest
© lak'wab asis 2011 All rights reserved

Funeral

The same orange sun rising
One happy dirge some sing

Unseen’

The ebbing of breath
The coming of death

Unnatural this mourning
Unusual, but why this morning

It is witty
‘Tis irony

© lak'wab asis 2011
All rights reserved

Pain

Calm like image of meadows
Calm, calm

Lolling in pain, seat of anguish
Seethe, seethe,
Seethe inside

Treacherous,
If you let it seep
Seep,
Seep outside

Clenched, avowed in heart
Puff
Puff,
Swell
And pulse

Each sigh
and beat
and pus
Refined each day
Like icky wine
To be drunk in silence.

© lak'wab asis 2011
All rights reserved

Incarcerated Lessons

He never went to class
But spelt OCS, OB and AK,

He RAN like Athletics Kenya
His, a sprint life,

Severed by a bullet
His grammar, judges' sentence,

Arithmetic of strokes and crosses
Calendar math on cell walls,

Sum of painful lessons learnt
Minus a mothers’ healing salve,

Like a problem, life’s solved
He remembered the dumpsite lessons

His realness checked,he excelled
Inside windowless classes
© lak'wab asis 2011 All rights reserved

Coveals Of Doped Youth

I stare at fate in the face
A poise as if we’re in-laws

I am free to dare unshackle myself
To seek a know, quench a voracious child

So I bend over coke like a supplicant
I have done worse with altar wine

In me I met a flightless dove
Ascending the stair-less wind

Trespassing heaven and hell
Levitated in bliss and downright misery

My dove is no dragon among pets
Happy regrets of knowledge sought

Sadly, this gleeful voyage's is no sojourn
To a flightless dove.

© lak'wab asis 2011
All rights reserved

White Sun

Waking up, I dreamt, in a log house in Alaska
Up in the mountains, and this morning I
Walked outside and took it all in like a
New born.
Felt the blacks of my heels sink into the whites
I couldn’t ask myself how or why
I was here
Towards the edge of the pine trees I wandered
Sniffed and embraced the flaky air around me
I wanted to feel the sharp ends of the
Ice-armed leaves,
And I nettled ‘em needles with
The tips of my fingers
And watched their reaction
stain the snow below
The dream startled me so I swore
‘If I come across a deer
I’ll tell him of my travels
And my beautiful home of the sun
And the never ending spring,
And dare to only go back to the log house
if the sun’s no more,
or lie in the wretched snow till I am no more.

© lak'wab asis 2011
All rights reserved

Disclaimer: I, with intent, commit the uncommon sin of having carnal knowledge of my own verse. No apologies though, my friends have visited upon me anguish over this piece and I was left wondering if satire as a weapon should be brutal and acrimonious to light the bulb of the reader, simple or censorious.
I avoid being too obfuscate, although (I tend to find myself abstract most times) I often find myself in this trap. In pursuance of intellectual honesty, I believe addressing a theme like that in a personal way shouldn't be compromised by misdirection or misinterpretation.
This verse has gone through a lot of metamorphoses and I would presume it still growing; even the title has gone from ‘a stroll among the whites’, ‘sunny stroll among the snow’ to ‘white sun’ which of course I have no idea why I finally settled for. More dynamic however, is the interesting reactions I have gotten from friends.
I am just mortified by how us, Africans, tend to suffer from “afro-continental low self-esteem” where folks are drowning fleeing their own home. I’m not implying that some may not be validated by the suffering and utter poverty they face back home, but we cannot deny that majority are chasing that “occidental rainbow” that we all know is more or less an illusion.
I risk sounding like some 1960’s activist writer but one way or another lets face the ugly truth. Even the Western world know that this is the century for Africa and we should be proud of ourselves, I can't imagine surviving without my sun. Cultural hegemony has always been there within and amongst us even before the missionaries came with their guns and bibles and new socio-economic and political systems. In the words of Eric D. Beinhocker, The Origin of Wealth “In a world where resources are finite at any given moment, there are competitive pressures to cooperate. Over time, societies that are better able to organize themselves will socially, economically and militarily dominate societies that are less successful…..”
That explains why I will refrain from bitching on and on about a perfectly social phenomenon. How tiresome to go down a well trodden path of crying foul and not realizing that mental slavery is internal, perpetrated by external catalysts. Emancipation lies within.

Death by Pen

This poem will not be written
Till someone gets killed

May be by it.

It is definitely a write by
But it could be a drive by

I love the sleep bys
And periodically the live bys

But this is definitely
A write by. © lak'wab asis 2011 All rights reserved

Eight-Four-Go Fuck Yourself (8-4-4)

My girlfriend(s) tell me I’m romantic
Now, I don’t go quoting Blake, Keats
And certainly not William
(All of them just plain dead)

My teacher(s) tell me I’m no intellectual
Now I will not go quoting Freud, Pavlov
And certainly not Karl
(All of them just brain dead)
© lak'wab asis 2011 All rights reserved

Mindfuck.

Villain ideas flirt in my head, classic
I’m like Tom the feline
in love,
Dangerous.

These miniskirted manifestos
Harlot shamelessly in my head,
Indiscriminately giving heads

Law’d, it’s like I’m married to hoes
Someone shat their nuptial vows
And it’s fucking with my mind

It’s long since I’ve been treated nicely
I don’t know, may be even a lantern-lit dinner
You know, plus the clichés
A lik’le wine and rhumba

Just do it right, even if just this night
The missionaries did me and in fact gave
The foxes an idea and us crabs,
No crappin’, that was proper boning

Bone of contention here is not whether
we love each other Senor' politician, but
I’ma soon get my gun coz am tired of your
five-year mindfuck.

© lak'wab asis 2011
All rights reserved

Truths and Lies

When paranoia glides in
breaching all the fences
Beneath your being.
In the shadows,
Glare of the sun too much
for the unmasked.
Cocktails of
Truths and Lies,
To quench the thirst

When coded pain
finally crush beneath
To feed a hungry soul.
In the shadows,
Blindingly looking for light
almost like a de’javu
Saturation of
Truths and Lies,
To quench the thirst

© lak'wab asis 2011
All rights reserved