So near I have come

So near I have come

Yet so far I now am

Fruitless seeds

Dead before they were planted

Though alive when them, they received.

Our many efforts

Like treated water flowing into the drains

Like water falling on the back of a duck

Remain my story

To either bear or tell

Clear indications I can see

Clear speechless acts

I can understand and expect

But difficult to let go

What is not working, your dream.

I lighted this darkness

Even with the faintest light

I sounded its bells in the market

Yet no one bought them

My dead seeds remain in the soil

On the heated tarmac and desert

Where no water is

But the winds

Away their nutrients blow

To distill the only oases, our survival

Rendering us infertile, our land

Oh that this vine will grow

Its wine to smear our chest

Our appetite to cure and men to make

Oh that we’ll not be

Like this land this desolation, our story.

Sunday morning

As majority will awake into churches in haste

On the crowded streets

Others to hawk or sit, their wares aloud

They will preach to the busy street

Their pesewas they will not lack

Those women in falling trousers

Their ankle covered with anklets

In the morning they will rise

Like children from their rest

Crying because they want to return to school

On Sunday morning

They will sell white handkerchiefs

Their groceries or omo tuo

If not at the bar

At home

Fumes like thunder

Thundering fumes

Like one from an old exhaust pipe

Choking dark fumes                                            

Irritating the uncovered eyes

My complains

For peace caused her wrath

My complains

Her displeasure all caused

My intentions

Lost

Her intentions

Unknown

Causes like foxes

Wild fires

Will blaze even more

Lightning fumes

Thundering fumes

Darker fumes of an older exhaust

Bleeding my naked eye

Have I to complain or contain

My five friends

Like a tortoise in race a hare

Not in haste to pass the line

Leaving his pearls unreached

But slowly with it

Like a duck in the falling rain

Steadily through the piercing torrents

My impenetrable feathers will me hide

And not get weary or tired of the fall

Like the ostrich I will not be

To hide my head in the ground

When my whole body

Face the shameful and hurting winds

Like the crab my whole body my home

My protection from the up sky

The unfriendly winds

But not man, his sharpened iron and fire

Like the eagle to fly up high

Up the cloudy sky

And forget not the fall, my precious golden eggs

That I will leave out there

Archibald

The sun will burn above

Like one with coals and faggots

But will blow to cool me

Your evening sea winds

As your thoughts through me pass

Touch my soul

Touch my soul and detach not

Sprinkle your moist clouds, not

Once, and depart not.

COWARDS AND HYPOCRITES

Cowards and hypocrites! They shot at us

Even if their lungs will break

Because they've been made a game and prey.

Anywhere they find themselves

A gun, they cannot hold, nor a sword draw

Yet cowards and hypocrites! Their sound to haunt

They smell of this refrain

Even from the distance

Sheer bravado without guidelines

Makes them think they can do

What they have no idea of.

If they can only hold a gun, or draw a sword

Before changing their situation

May we be cowards and hypocrites.