Remember This, My Daughter

For a Prompt from Poet's United Thursday Think Tank #42 Love

                                                  [image from google: atbrownies.blogspot.com]

My daughter, do you want me to tell you

How I met your father? How it all begun?

Blow off that smoke first, this hut is stuffy

Not doing good to my already teary eyes

( Daughter complies. I told you romance taglines

Have a way with the heart, huh?)

T’was one Sunday afternoon in the marketplace

My daughter,

When your father saw me

I was dressed in my lorwaa, swaying this way that way

In free Kacheliba wind, trapping breaths of men in my aura

My legs oiled with ghee, my hair burnt with hot broken pot

My neck straight like an arrow, my eyes dimmed with “innocence”

I had heard about your father

He had tore a live leopard into two

And still had the nerve to skin it

Word had it that he was once stepped on by an elephant

And in his manliness, he only winced

Such acts of bravery, my daughter,

Drew me to your father

But for the heck of it, I played the hunted antelope!

But wait till your father stood before me

His tear-a-leopard-bravado all gone

His wince-instead-of-crying all faded

Him standing there, just a man

As if he is before a shrine fiddling with two competing wishes!

Now see him, your father,

Standing before me, breath stuck high up his bronchus

And me, sizing him up, feigning impatience

See me tilt my eyebrows and ask ‘what brings you here?’

See your father fumble with so simple a question

Talking about the latest floods of River Suam

How the sun is burning so, blah blah blah…

Now see me growing impatient

Snapping, simulating anger

Tilt your microscope to my heart

The laugh I give for your father

The love I secretly habour for him

My daughter, but of feigning I didn’t for long

Try as I did ( I told you he tore a leopard?

Not accurate: he tore into my heart too, although in a softer way)

We secretly met in posho mills, on river paths, in the sorghum fields

How blood rushed to my head, how those hands felt warm

How tranquil we felt just the two of us lying on sand at night

How deaf we were to the laugh of hyenas and cowbells of lost bulls

Your father could joke to me that the witch I had gone to

Did a perfect job

And I could joke to him about the “sun is burning so”, blah bah blah

( At this point, he could tug at my necklace and “choke” me)

My daughter, I only loved your father

I swore by the graveside of my grandfather to love him alone

And these breasts you suckled bear me witness

If there is love other than that, my good daughter,

I don’t know

And when your father came for aloto

They gave forty cows, forty goats, four beehives of honey

And four containers of kumiket

Because I was the jewel that I was worth

How beautiful I felt, my daughter

Milking the cow in my homestead

Stealing glances at my man taking sour milk

How beautiful, carrying the seed of my man

In my womb, eating anthills in my homestead

How beautiful I felt if I dared unmarried women

To lift up my lorwaa, to mock a curse

Because I was the wife of so-and-so

And as the years grow, my good daughter

Seeing you grow to be a woman

Your blood rushing just like me

You also feigning impatience

You also deaf to the laugh of hyenas

Remember this, my daughter, you live

In a war zone with flying bullets

With no rules to decorum

It is upon you to exercise judgment

Not to be in the crossfire.

C) Lorot Salem 2011

Lorwaa—a  Short, Sexy Pokot traditional dress.

River Suam- a river in Kacheliba, Pokot North District, Kenya.

Posho Mill- a flour mill.

Aloto- a Pokot marriage negotiation usually done the whole night. The bridewealth is usually negotiated upon the whole night and a consensus reached in the wee hours of the morning or shortly before dawn or morning.

Kumiket- a Pokot traditional liquor made of honey. It is usually drank on special occasions especially during marriage celebrations, when some rites of passage are being conducted et al.

My Business is to Poke My Nose Around

[Image courtesy of google: imagetruckparts.com]

I make it my business

To know your business.

If you paint your house yellow,

Somehow I am entitled

To ask why your colours are loud

To silence our homes in some colour competition

When the aroma of fried beef

Wafts to the nostrils of my famished children

I wonder whatever happened to good neighbourliness

I hear your husband did not sire

That third son of yours:

His nose is as bulby as the Caretaker’s

Of course, I know these things

Heard them from the Househelp

I also know whether you slept on the right

Or left side of the bed

And exactly why you swallowed your

Sleeping pills yesternight

See, I should know these things

I don’t understand why you should be angry

When I ask you a simple question like

Who actually first proposed marriage to who

Because these things occupy my mind

And logically I should seek their answers

When I ask you where you bought that kitenge dress

And how many shillings it cost you

I expect a figure—fifteen thousand perhaps?—Not

Some whimpering of “mind your own business”

Of course you can tell it is my business

And do not give me that withering look

When I ask you whether there is a thing between

You and the gym instructor—

Some of these things I notice need intuition

They are not everyday wares sold in Muthurwa.

C) Lorot Salem 2011

Your Honour…

[Image courtesy of google: insightnews.com] 

Your Honour, my client died long ago

What you see is her apparition, to avenge her death

Look at her: the stooped shoulders, the shadowed eyes

Look at her parched lips

Look at her wafer-thin frame

If it pleases the court, my client is a roving spirit

In this Hall of Justice, merged with my spirit

To give a voice to many other silenced ones

This is a representative suit, there are a legion of us

Your Honour, my good learned friend

Told the court that this suit is frivolous and

A waste of court’s time

My learned friend told this Honourable Court

That my client does not come with clean hands

That my client has no locus standi

I disagree: This suit is in good faith

My client would have better herd goats

Somewhere behind the hills of Kacheliba

With the sorrow of a son killed by a stray police bullet

Than to have come here to “waste court’s time”

My client’s son lies unburied

Probably with a bullet lodged in his skull

Out there in the cold, may be in a decomposing in a pit

He finished Form Four last year

When results came, he had straight A’s

He always spoke of a more just society

Wanted to ignite the world with a little more cheer

With due respect, then, Your Honour

Where is veracity in saying that my client

“does not come with clean hands”?

She has no hands in the first place

What with the amputation of a killed son

The imagery of a hand is like

A joke about death among condemned men

I agree: my client has no “locus standi”

More as her son without a decent burial

She has no merit, right?

Wrong. Inside her breast is a grieving heart

Smoldering in a raging fire of anguish

For a little more justice

For a little more semblance of fairness

For three years, she has been here

For her son

For three years, she has sat in this Honourable Court

Pained by delay, all the time gracious

For justice—whether for good or ill

This is the moment, your Honour,

When this court should dispense justice

To right wrong, to do the unprecedented

To set the record straight, to send a clear message.

C) Lorot Salem 2011

Where is Dedan’s Body?

"It is better to die on our feet than to live on our knees"

                                            --Dedan Kimathi

                                     [Image from thenewblackmagazine.com]

The spirit of the late Marshall Dedan Kimathi

Attacks me in my sleep

Dedan would sit with me in the fireplace

And tell me: 

“Child of Kenya, my spirit has no homestead

When I lived in a body I had no homestead

For my land had been taken away

And now in spirit I hover without perching”

“And these chains, my child, tie me up

Fellow spirits share with my sorrow”

I only shake my head, look at him most forlon

He laughs, grins, adds,

“Strange, though, my child, that the land I fought hard for

Now belongs to the sons of chiefs and bodyguards

While the rest, the sons of mau mau, live by the roadsides”

“Go tell them,” he tells me, “go tell them to bury me in the

way of our people.”

“And lastly, remind them that I need no statues.
They should live by what I died for.

Whitewashed graves don’t cleanse land-grabbers!”

C) Lorot Salem 2011

My Feet This Way That Way

From a prompt The Thursday Think Tank #41 Uniforms and Service by Poets United

                    [Image from skyscrapercity.com]

As we sat on terraces of Nyayo Stadium

Feasting our eyes on the marching Army Band

For some time, we were those quick steps.

As the twenty-one-gun-salute rang the air

Each cannon a carom of hope

Molecules of indecision got shattered

For some time, we were those cranks

We imagined how it felt

The white-gloved hands slashing air

Eyes tilted to one side, the commentator saying:

“Mtukufu Rais, mbele yako ni kikosi cha jeshi cha nevi

Kikiongozwa na Luteni Kanali Lorot”

“Your Excellency, in front of you is the Navy

led by Lieutenant Carnal Lorot”

Then I would imagine me calling the president

Him, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces

To inspect the guard

My trunk will be straight it could form an arc

My flamingo legs made sturdy by this moment

I will stamp my feet this way, that way

The President himself by my side

Two most powerful people in the whole of Kenya

Feet this way, feet that way

My head raised, I care not if it hits the floodlights

Feet this way, that way

Ah, is this a dream?

C) Lorot Salem 2011

Blame it on me

When I satirize your despotism

Of your bloodied hands

Or of your devious heart

Driving blade into throats

Choking conscience in stunted growth

Corrupting men’s hearts with untruths

Employing court poets to crown you

Why should that satire irk you?

Why should your stomach churn

If at all your leadership is unparalleled?

Why should my poems cloud your heart

If indeed they are a “work of a nihilist”?

If my poems are “acidic” and a recipe for “disorder”

Where is acidity in the strewn bodies of massacred victims?

Which disorder do I portend for dim lit eyes of famished souls?

If my poems are “dangerous” and “misplaced”

Pray, are the unmarked graves of your victims any better?

Or as misplaced as hopes hang on tree?

If my poems are “inflammatory” and “likely to stir ethnic tensions”

What will you say of cindered hearts and frothing frustrations?

What will you call the barren clouds defaced?

Blame it on me, then.

Blame me.

You have the platform: issue a declaration, press treason upon me,

Classify my poetry seditious, ban me, if all else fails send thugs to wipe me out

Then call it “random acts of robbers”

Blame it on me, then.

Blame me.

See, in the tunnels of my emotions

Lie a power bigger than what you wield;

It rings into the future, it is the past

When these emotions mix with the blood

Of your victims, they can scale wall of your lies

These are my soldiers, I send them with the barrel of my pen

Once writ, not even killing me reverses their power

Still, you can blame it on me

Blame me.

C) Lorot Salem 2011

Come O, My Brother

(Today, the 21^st day of March is the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. This poem is about this subject.)

Come O, my brother,

Come we sit under the tree of justice

Come we sit under the tree defoliated of prejudices

Come O, my brother

There was once a time, my brother,

Long time past in the age of our grandfathers

When the scorching sun dried this tree

Men never enjoyed this shadow

There was a time, my brother,

When this tree was accursed

Cursed to mediocrity, cursed to low heights

Sad times were those

There was a time, my brother,

When this tree was once uprooted

Severed from the forest

Because it was not “tree enough”

This tree, my brother,

Knows the loneliness without a forest

This tree is a plant of man’s past

This tree is the hope of man

So come O, my brother

Come we sit under this tree of justice

Come we sit under its shadow

Come we let our breaths sync

Why not, brother?

This tree is a mausoleum

Sad lessons are decorated;

T’was watered by blood

These leaves are tomb flowers

If you look hard enough, the bark

Is a paint of deferred dreams

This tree grows in no particular soil

It can pitch its roots in the Atlantic

Or clamp it in Sahara

This tree, my brother, is Time

It is in the lips of Martin Luther

It is in the lips of the Xhosa

So come O, brother

Let us escape the sun

To cool our frazzled nerves

After all, this tree is our bequest.

                                  [Image from dailyhurricane.com]

C) Lorot Salem 2011

Tororot, Please Hear Me

                            Fall seven times, stand up eight. 
                                                  ~Japanese Proverb


Tororot, God of the Rising Sun,
The Maker of River Suam
The Maker of Kacheliba Hill

Tororot, God of Tokyo
The Creator of Honshu
The Creator of Yokohama too

I want to speak to you
For them, for heavy an emotion my heart bears
My eyes are tired with weeping
For Japan

Tororot, the Mighty One,
A dark cloud is hanging over Japan
Just like during Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Petals are folded in mortal fear
The rays of the sun are hidden
Soil-like sorrowful widows-
Are paraded on the lane of misery
Fukushima, a bad dream that eats my mind

Tororot, God of the Rising Sun,
May you bring shine to them once more
May their petals blossom once again
May their soil once again crack with life
May you restore Fukushima

You see, God the Maker of Japan,
Japan is us, we are Japan
It is like a cow if dead
Even the egrets sing dirges
Japan carries our dreams too
As writers and poets, when we are tired
With visiting here, we take our mind's eyes there
We speak to them Japanese and dine tofu with chopsticks
We play sumo and judo with them
Even when we have hardly gone there!

So you see, Tororot, The Mighty One,
I had to speak to you, to beseech you
To hear this, my humble prayer.

Poem in response to a prompt at Poems United Thursday Think Tank #40 on Hope

In solidarity with the people of Japan.


C) Lorot Salem 2011

They

                       [Image from designergenesdevo.wordpress.com]



If, for a moment, they acted God
They will fold sun-rays in their armpits
Dim the moonlight with some Lilliputian star
Freeze all the lakes and oceans,
Send mad wind to blow away the sand-beaches

Makes for good relief, though
That they are not God!

C) Lorot Salem 2011

Mirror In The Eyes...

                                     [Image from womentcb.com ]

I saw you
on telly
the other day
Your face
furrowed with grief
Your lips
clammed in raw emotion
For the I.D.P's,
you said.

Your eyes betrayed you,
though
In them I saw
an ocean of guilt
In them I saw
a reflection of your
Ghost,
unrelenting, unapologetic.

C) Lorot Salem 2011

Unusual Dialogue

                                                                 

                           [ Image from painting.about.com ]

From  a Prompt fromThe Thursday Think Tank # 39 Ghosts at Poets United

Cadaverous phantom

balancing snuff bottle with a stick

giving a throaty sneeze

dressed in a camelskin flat-shoe
walking on my mind.

"Quick," he implores,
"blow that snuff to the edge,
let it spill, let it be free"
unsure, I fidget

the apparition stamps on my mind
echoes hit my cerebrum

                                                                   

whenceupon he quips:

" Lameduck! Could I drive

my nails to your eardrums?"

which he does, I swerve

I remain on the spot

the apparition unfolds to me

laughs at my fright

then, as if on second thoughts,

speaks kindly, tells me:

" I was once you, dunce,
had clipped nails too
minded my own business too
but now, now that is no more
I walk on people's minds

dregs litter them:
broken thoughts,

begrimed aspirations
mucky mishmash"

            
strangely,

the phantom makes out
the door of my mind

leaving me in
a state most confused.


~ Salem Lorot 2011

                                                                     

                        

A Prayer To My Muslim Friends

[Image from newzar.wordpress.com]


Like a Muezzin calling for salat, I speak to you
As honestly as a prayer could be, as real as a minaret could be
I pray for you:
May peace be upon you
May Mikaayl, the Archangel of Mercy, reward you
May Kiraman Katibin, the Honourable Recorders, record your good deeds
May Mu'aqqibat, the Protectors, keep you away from death
May Ridwan, the Angel of Paradise, lead you to Jannah when Allah calls you

May Allah (S.W.T) grant you Sabr, the virtue of patience
May you be kept away from Hasad, the vice of jealousy
May you find righteousness
May you be good to fellow men
May you be in perfect harmony.

Mola Rahimu akuneemeshe
Akutangulie kabla hujaanza safari
Usihangaike rafiki, ukitafuta upate
Akuepushie majanga, lililo najis likukome

Dua hili litakabaliwe na Allah (S.W.T)
Nakuombea uyakinifu, kinywa chako kisitoke laana
Masikio yako yajae himizo, kifuata maadili ya Korani
Uishi sawa na Mtume (S.A.W), kifuata maadili yake
Misahafu kizisoma, na vitabu za dini kuhimiza

May the Almighty God give you grace
May He lead you before you start a journey
May you never struggle, if you search let it be found
May He keep you from ill, let what is a vice never find you

May Allah (S.W.T) receive this petition
I pray for your propriety, let your tongue never speak curses
May your ears be filled with encouragement, to follow what Qur'an says
May the teachings of Prophet Muhamad ( Peace be upon him) exalt you
To read the religious books


C) Lorot Salem 2011

Raging Inferno

[Image from photoshopessentials.com]



Shut betwixt my bone-marrow

Is a conflagration of cauterized thoughts

Ideas intransigent, enkindled by Purpose

They need no extinguishers, these ruminations

For they are in their state, they have a mind

They can turn to ash, they can reduce to embers

But ironically bake and crystallize, then burst into flames

This inferno is blind, blind to time and space

It knows no fatigue, it is incandescent yet cool

It defines me, it has a soul and lives

It can’t die because it is disinterred

These searing thoughts burn me up

Consume me with love and loathe alike

To cinder prejudice and mock tyrannies

To bake ash of the underprivileged and build fireworks

My soul is ablaze, I am a ball of fire

I am spiraling, spinning at the centre of Reason

Burning effigies of Illogicities

Question is not whether the flame burns

But who it won’t spare in the smolder.

C) Lorot Salem 2011