Later Nights – Thoughts from a Sleepless Mind (1)

Even with the doors to my room and my cousin’s room shut and while my laptop, Old Faithful, is purring heavily, I can hear the shuffling of feet from the floor above and a baby crying from the house next door. Neither last long. I assume the persons making them fall into a contented sleep. …

Nani

Habari ya nani? After a longish pause, Nani ako sawa. Karibu niulize ‘Nani ni nani?’ Nani. The immediately indefinable someone. That someone: a girlfriend, a boyfriend, the subject of some spicy gossip, that person whom we are talking about in a particular context, the centre of our words. Nani. I often find it polite to …

And sometimes

she hopes that he will say no, so that she can revel in the warm muck of self-pity a little longer, blameless that it is not her fault after all, and delight in her lazy delusions of inadequacy. And sometimes, I want her to say yes, and she does, and I feel satisfied with myself, …

Coconut

  In the depth of cynical heart, Where a pulse lies still yet alive, Surrounded by shrivelled shell is a want eternal. Tempered by time, polished you might say, its lustre is subdued, unshouting and unblinding. Perfect light, illuminating, Coolly bracing. But, only behind the walls that heaven might not tear down, nor man. Might, …

Sighing for Her From the Distance

I think… Maybe… But I could be wrong… that in the cold of regret, over what I do not know, in the crystallized silence that plagues the worrier, she found a calm and a peace she could not explain. Subdued by the gently vibrating turmoil that slowly shatters her resolve not close in on herself, …

Alafu Sasa?

You told me how handsome you think I am, how you like the way my fingers curl around the glass, how my lips curl lightly around the straw. Ulisema vile macho yangu ni sexy and the way I smelled so good. I had to smell myself when I went to the gents’ to….. relieve myself, …

Hello, Uncertainty

I feel like I have been waiting for something to happen, and it already has. What, I do not know. A weight seems to prickle at my conscience, like that of unknown or unknowing sins. An unsettling peace hangs lightly over me, steeped in a crackling silence, like the tension between a warring couple putting …

Music and Silence

If music is sound and came from silence, then silence is potentially greater than sound. – Keith Jarrett  

Stillness in the flow, sitting gray beneath a blinding sun, Unsettled by a turgid silence, Laughter hangs delicately on chapped lips Like dew drops poetry-poised On a white morning. Angst gives way to a mottled nothingness, Pock-marked with holes through which one can see The red heart coloured blue by rainbows.  

Crawlies

Spiders on the toilet floor chasing me as I try to pee, splashing hot orange juice on my pants. Flies asleep on my bed, lazing until the lights go out, when they can buzz, keeping me awake. And the roaches have left. I have not seen them in a while. I do not miss them, …