The Fairer Friend (this one is for the ladies)

A Girl’s Night Out can be the most fun a woman has all year. All the worries of family life, work and business, dating, finances are pushed to the distant corners of her mind as the music blasts, hands are thrown in the air, hips sway without a care and the girls let out all the juicy stories that hadn’t gotten an appropriate occasion to tantalize the trusted ears prior. Our girls are fun! This is definitely true. So I ask, why then throughout the rest of the year do women put their trust in the men or man in their life? Why do we see the women who would understand us in a special way and who give us an opportunity to be truly free and ourselves as a threat the rest of the year? What happens to the conviction of “girl power” and “women sticking together”? I don’t mean to imply that men are all monsters or dogs as is often said. We know why we love them after all. We know how it feels to even be in love with them. So it’s not that women should shun the boys. We know we need them (even just for the sole purpose God gave them to us for). What would be wonderful though is just as all around there is pressure to have a man and spend the rest of our lives with them, why not the culture where we can’t live without our girls? Why not appreciate them and trust them? Why have those sometimes-secret suspicions of their intentions? You know those stereotypes; man-snatcher, back-biter, career-hindrance? Can all women really have all these traits?

As a woman I say NO to this secret persistent animosity for my fellow woman. I say NO to clawing any woman seen next to my man and letting him get off scot-free at the same time. I say NO to playground-like shouting matches with the lady who accidentally bumps you with her trolley at the supermarket. Rather, I say YES to sharing sorrows with that friend I know understands the pains women go through. YES to objectively backing a sister with a good idea. And definitely YES to making more girl pals.

Ladies, let us be each other’s rock not each other’s stumbling block. Let us celebrate a woman’s success and not go green with envy or label her as a Jezebel. As a woman, you ought to know that women are more than capable of success without using devious methods to attain it. You have strength that even you don’t understand. We heal from childbirth and from heartbreak. We have to give our kind at least an ounce of credit. And let’s not forget to be the people we would want our fellow women to be: trustworthy, encouraging, loving, comforting and available for us. Stand behind yourself and your sisters for the change you want to see but don’t forget, paraphrasing from the great Michael Jackson’s hit: START WITH THE WOMAN IN THE MIRROR!

 

Have a lovely new day ladies!

Untitled.

(Sometimes we all get to a point where we let life take control of us. We all need to be carefree sometimes. However the consequences of  it may be more than we can handle. I took two months off in the coast. Days spent wave-watching at the beach and finally reading ‘The Alchemist’. I may not have gotten to the point of total focus; but I could face my past, live my present and believe in my future. We all can if we are brave enough. Let go, let God!)

I’m at peace with the world again

At ease with every spot and stain

Free to believe in the gain of fame

Ready to regain my faith in life again

Too soon to call it quits on my beliefs

It’s so true that I can’t escape

From the moments set in stone for me

Sticks & stones will still be thrown at me

 But this worlds will keep me free

That one day I may sit in majesty

Where I’ll no longer be a travesty

On eyes set to discredit me

Dismember and throw blows at me

For today I set out my destiny

To live in love of all who measure up to bout with me

May God always be proud of me.

The Introduction

My names are simple enough, it could be said. My story, however, could be argued isn’t. That right there pretty much introduces you to me and to my world and reflects in my writing.

I love a twist. Hand me something, anything at all, that’s too simple and you won’t get me looking at it twice. ”What’s the point without the challenge?”, I often ponder.

Am a perfectionist and an idealist I admit. The world desperately cries for improvement after all. Mix all the above with my love for adventure and obstinacy against ‘the right way of doing things’ and you have began to understand why I write and how I write.

Fancy words on pretty paper is all well and good! However, it does not compare to the littlest of words simply put; laced with a touch of caring. When words can speak for themselves (as they should do), when there is no doubt to their meaning in the mind of a reader, and when there is perfect harmony in the vision in the mind and even soul of us both; I will have written a work worth seeing the light of day. I write for the art of writing, that its beauty may stand alone; tall, proud, beautiful, modestly confident. That it may live on, never to be a tainted jumble imprisoned as emotion unspoken.

Be re-introduced to who I am, what I do, and who I hope to be.

Three Six Six

Here’s your day. You did wait four years after all…..

February is a significant month for me. I was born, for one. It’s the month that tends to be my pivot for change. It’s the month when my calendar has a few too many reminders and events, not that I mind though. It’s just that it ends up looking like I scribbled all over my calendar or I took note of every time I intended to take a shower. February is a heavy month, it’s no wonder I have acquired the alias ‘Fevrier’ a couple of times in my life.

Despite all this, this has been my most quiet month. Instead of taking my shine-time and using it to create that storm in the cup, change the world a little, I hid. I ran away like the little girl time has stolen away from me. Simply put, pride neglected: I was afraid; afraid that I may actually be good enough, GREAT ENOUGH!

Fear looms here and there; attacking whenever it sees fit. Fear loves those already fearful of itself. It emanates a laugh cultivated at the depth of its being. Fear can cut off your wings and leave you an Emu; spinning your keys round its forefinger when it finishes the job. It paralyzes your left leg at the goal and mutes your strongest note. Fear steals your laugh, your love, your spirit and with it each and every dream.

I can tell you what to do with fear. I can tell you only because occasionally am blessed with the ability to follow good sense and secondly because fear comes from within me (and you); the worst kind of psychopathic stalker.

So what do you do with fear…?
You mute it. You create a bubble in your ear and you only listen to the waves. You close your eyes for a single second; open them to a blur and you take the first step. You take that journey as though someone stole your money. If they lived ten thousand gates away from you, you walk past the first few, you stop for a breather, and you look down the road. It’s a frighteningly long distance, isn’t it? Right there is the make or break. Right then: Run! Run down the boulevard. Beat the wind with every push forward. Now you have the momentum you need. Kick down their gate together with the folly that made them believe they could come into your space, look at you in the eye with a sheepish smile drawn on their face, and mess around with the essence of your being. It’s not what they took; it’s that they dared take it from you.
Just like that, fear’s gone. It wouldn’t mess with you even if it were an 80-foot egocentric power-hungry bird with canines.

February is at its end. It’s a little hard to see it go without having taken a super leap; till this very moment of course. It’s the month most associated with love. I choose to fall deeply and madly. I’ll wake up, say those three words and mean it with all my heart. I’ll look in the mirror and it will be true. The person I see is he whom I truly will always be there for, all I have to do is live as I desire and never apologize for what makes me unique. Problem is; I have to choose. Will I be afraid to love this soul?

Here’s what I say; take what is yours: YOUR LIFE. Live it. You are the only person who has to live WITH it after all. Here’s an extra day. Fear didn’t bother to cater too keenly for it. Its rules varnish and you are free. Risk it, even only up to the next February :-). I can bet you that a year of life pushed to the limit will wipe away worries of years lost and could ripple into many more to be truly proud of. Feel free to hold me accountable for that statement.

This is the 366th!!

Hide Or See

Hide or See
It’s hard to dance with the
Devil on your back
Huruma.Calcutta. Haiti.
Amazonia
Storeys of waste make
unfriendly neighbours in
trash bags so abused
“So blessed with farm
hands” they
philanthropically adduce
But, rain clouds are no help
to us
Cubicle homes with needle
holes seeping the life
Ruin. Disease. What gives
life, takes life.
Anatomies of Legos of
Despair
Here tin. ‘Ere mud. There
fortunate brick.
United. Bellies of air for
them and their soccer-team
kin.
At birth: Maya. She.
Madison. He. Mtoto (wetu)
Mother Earth bears us a
fresh soul;
Hope alone does it feel
Only love does it now know
Touching trust does it to all
man show
Cry! To tell a King is born
Could it be He who the
world awaits once more?
Kindred spirit cries on:
Life give me a thorn, I give
you a rose.
Devil, in this heart you roam
But in silvered glass meek
we stubbornly behold.
Projects. Slum. Ghetto. Kijiji.
Kwa Rais
Election victories and
successions.
Abroad education and
vacations.
Are we all citizens of one
nation?
Impoverishing Wealth and
his brother Enriching
Poverty
Sharing rooms of our home.
My good heart; persists,
believes
Another good heart exists
That knows one more (and
so it flows)
Beauty queens, fraudsters,
Judas and loving SP,
For all self-importance is a
facade born of sin, when
lonely we can see
With one shared warm
touch, the globe hot will
grow.
At the Gates we’ll know
your face
Heart. Soul. Vice. Virtue. If
at all.
We will stand all. One and
the same.
Realize the game of Money
and Fame.
As we still live and breathe,
Leave this Opera!
Take off your mask before
the daunting dusk.
It’s hard to dance with the
Devil on your back
It’s harder still when It’s
within
Putting off your light of
hope in dreams and in fellow man.
Take off the front
We will be a whole
Incomplete.

My stars came falling

Two nights ago,
Three young men knocked
down my door,
For them the end has come,
They say the stars are
coming down.
Your stars are coming down,
As you tip-toe
And sneak around,
You tear your house to the
ground,
Each fallacy hits a star down.
My stars are coming down,
Leaving tears all over town,
They say to the world
around,
That i have been beat down;
For sorrow never lies.
For a broken hearted soul,
Is the dead tone on my
phone,
The misty road
To which’s end I may never
see.
When the stars began to fall,
I trode daily without hope,
For stars were all I knew,
Gold pieces of joy for us to
use or lose;
But as the stars on my
ceiling come down tonight,
I know now that when stars
shine,
They hide my clear sky.
This represents a defining
moment of my 2011. A
poem encouraged by a
vivacious diva, lol. Find out
more at
http://www.nyasaniobiko.wordpress.com

WHOSE TIME?

I know loss. I know death. I know the torment of an un-consulted will.

I don’t really have to think far back to it either. Feels like just the other day. Probably because it was. It was 2011 for me. A year I knew would change my life. But who ever thinks they’ll have a year of pain? A year of remorse? An entire year of repercussions for the years past? A year of loss after loss; followed by loss? FUNNY: I used to joke that 2011 may be my ‘Gutter Year’. Be careful what you wish for. Always knock on wood as my sister would say 

Three weeks back my maternal grandma slipped away. She left all 7 billion of us; just as much as she left the few whose hearts will never be the same without her witty kind of love.

Death happens. We know it at the back of our mind as we try to live forever, like there is no tomorrow, that one day the sand will be on our casket; looking up to the world, giving it our goodbyes, heading to the skies. Or it will be on that of the person we are sitting right beside, we laugh with, we commit to, we cry on their shoulder; he whose words we can’t bear to hear, to whom we truly don’t wish the best, those who killed our dreams without a second thought of compassion and those whose hearts we broke or who broke our own.

Death happens. Always in unexpected detail. It doesn’t indicate time or fashion or emotion. Even with all our science, class, gadgets, social order, religion. A cynical unifying element.

This is pretty debatable but, it is easier to accept death. Death is frequent, no need to quote statistics to know that. Death is universal, ask anyone absolutely anywhere about it. And death is expected. That’s why there’s that suppressed fear that the day is near or even here. In a clearly ironic way, death is comfortable (again highly debatable), cause the rest of the world is going through its inevitability and imperfection too. It makes it okay, though not lovely, to experience death. Loss by death.

When the time has come, not even the obstinacy of the will can stop what is to be. Exactly like death, every experience is inevitable. Believe it! Watching a documentary you stumbled upon that just happens to apply to your current situation, attending a previously declined event that changes your career plans or thoughts on life and love. Every experience as well has this complexly right imperfection. Having a bad hair day or wardrobe mishap the day you finally have your dream encounter with your crush that leaves no choice but to highlight your wonderful personality? Yeah! Every experience that comes to be, was meant to be. Meant to turn out exactly as it results. It’s time has come. It’s time is right.

This blog’s time had come. My weakened wounded will could not stop it. Life has a power so strong that our souls must sometimes just give into its sway. And the beauty that may result from such disaster, now we’ll see. Now we’ll know. May I now begin this journey with this step (feel free to keep up) and reminisce about this moment a thousand miles ahead.

AMEN.

For my beautiful Bonareri, fondly I called you ‘Grandma’ till the very last day, Rest In Peace Love. I pray I have half the spirit you had, for then my dreams are just mine for the taking.