The Madman in the Cathedral

One Sunday morn, glowing bright with sunshine

With the sweet lustre of sapphire skies

Stood forlorn and despondent like an aged nun

Psalm singer second to none

In the bustling cathedral yards

Half covered by a worn out visor cap

His hair was tousled and grizzled

His garments were darned and re-darned

But still threadbare and tasseled

His facial lineaments were gouged

Scraggy and angular in completion

His torso was famished and hollow

His hands and palms were blistered and sore

From a life once constricted to manual burden

Abscesses constantly patched his variegated skin

His spine was painfully arched

Borne of past years of drudgery in hot sunshine

His ankles were still and tough

Like the pastern of an aged ox

His spindly bare feet were cracked underneath

Like a tar road mottled by crannies

Dangling on his emaciated neck

Was an old unique rosary

Holding a tiny creosoted wooden rood

A fetish of lifetime’s reverence

One Sunday morn, glowing bright with sunshine

Stood psalm singer second to none

Earnestly waiting for his mass

To pay his respect to the high God of heavens

This Earth

This earth that stretches boundless

Upon which both weak and mighty feet

Have ceaselessly trod

And mercilessly battled

Laboring and toiling under a curse

Reaping from their sweat

Endearing the pantheon upon bethels

Adoring a mightier God in sanctums,

This earth harbors the final warmth

For man’s very flesh!

When man runs short of breath

Forsaken by those who were dear

And that which was meaningful

Then the earth lovingly yields

And opens her warm bowels:

The true mother universe womb,

Laying him unto rest

There in a homely dell, will lie

Earthly king and page, friend

Or foe dressed I winding sheets,

Humming lilting serenades

As mortal voices grieve

Singing dirges

As tom toms romp

In bustling barbecue yards

There, from dust he came

Unto dust goes he

As the soul races back

To its primordial nought

Higher, higher

Where flambeaus never dwindle!

Where Love has Gone (Kenyan 1992 Civil Clashes)

Tell me where love has gone oh country

Now that the battle lines are drawn

Upon your humble bowels

And treacherous fingers fiercely tremble

Upon your hilts

Like a billow of smoke;

Fraternity wanes and fades

In face of a dolorous maelstrom,

Traceless like a glass full of froth

Tell me where love has gone

Your gregarious ridges now brood

Forlornly enmeshed in a cobweb of fear

The folk seethes in skeins of agony

Hope glares deceitfully like a mirage

Your homeyards are crenellated,

Beleaguered after a centenary of tranquil

Tell me where love has gone

Oh country

Now that your placid nourished gardens

Are snares bearing feuds

Where peace was sowed

And your dense undergrowth

Looms cadaverous, infested

With machistically heinous archers

Ravenously yearning for blood

Tell me where love has gone

Your monuments stand, like sheer

Mockery heaps, artfully laid on pedestals

Subject to polemical lashing

Where polarity reigns amidst throes

Of a sweltering pestilential internecine crisis

Your creeks and rivers are fetid

And sour, masked with a grotesque

Gargoyle face, poisoned by innocent blood

Of kind hands which tilled

And nourished your folks

Tell me where love has gone

Oh country

That your erstwhile warden

Is the guile feral poacher,

That your caverns are dens

Of incorrigible logicians of arson,

That your nights are eerie and forbidding;

Tremulously churning

With a harsh cadence of death

That your taverns are no more

But lairs of the vindictive and vengeful,

On nefarious children of the feuds

Tell me where love has gone.

The Past (To Nelson Mandela)

The past holds my past

The past holds my trust;

Holds my fears

Bred in the centuries of years

The past holds my tears

Lingering without trickling at the sneers

The past holds my hope, ever hoping;

Without stooping into expectations.

The past holds my boldness, ever falling

Without pushing my courage to the nadir

The past holds my fury ever rising

Without eking into a stormy rage

The past holds my frankness ever plentiful

Without rising into undue sincerity

The past holds my patience ever stable;

Like wise to my facial countenance

The past holds my melanin and charm

Never brought to a ruinous harm

The holds my will

Ever staying on its drill

The past holds my trauma

Because I, dark hue, is enigma

The past holds my history

Much greater than any story

Because I am black

Beaming with luck!