Who Am I, You Ask?

“The question “Tell me about yourself” is one of the most difficult questions I can answer. I have the playful bit within me and the sombre one. I would desist from telling you what I do for a living or the high ideals. So in defining me, I will tell you about the attachment I have to carefully spun words or the creased look I saw yesterday at the bus-stage. The challenge I have is to solemnize the marriage between those seemingly contradictory personalities. Or may be to stick to the whims of my soul.”

-Lorot Son of the Hills (18/11/2011 4.26 p.m )


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Image supplied by Poets United

Who am I, you ask?

I am the comma in your sentence—

A pause in your thoughts

To be processed in your moment of reflection

I am that germ of idea that clings on your mind

Pleading to you to follow the higher cause

I am your breath floating in the air

The breath that is muted in silence

Of the refugee in a camp, the shackled prisoner

Of thoughts censored, the ebbing voice of a child

Who inherits the debts of the world at infancy,

The silent whisper of disinherited woman

Kicked out of the matrimonial home

I am an “Old Soul” trapped in a young body

My soul dwells with its kindred, feasting on

The Wisdom revealed by them

I am a pilgrim upon these sacred hills

From this vantage position looking at mankind

To write their memoirs for they don’t have the time

I am a flood of ideas sweeping across nations

I might not be able to fulfil them all

So I scatter them around human souls

I am a pastoralist boy learning the ways of the city

Many times I miss the goats and the cows

I miss the smell of cow-dung, I miss sitting in a smoky hut

I am the words you don’t find in books

They are the wisdom of the streets

Like how to duck in blind alleys or how to skip muddy puddles

I am that irritating sound of a man biting pepper

Increasing your appetite in eating this life’s knowledge

I am the psalmist, the quiet psalmist with the broken harp

Singing to this world, singing hope to this world

I am the recollections of life

(That song was a hit back in the days, that was in 1940!)

I am the drumbeat sounding from far villages

Dum dum, I sound, the ignored crier with an important message

I am the elephant, I am the hare, I am both

I am the ogre in your fable; I am the silly warthog in your narrative

I am that confusing legal provision from your attorney

I hide my meaning in notwithstandings and whereases and wheretofores

I am the angry howl of a conductor, the funny bumper sticker

I am the jutting neck muscle of an angry protester

With a placard turned up-side-down

Who am I, you ask?

I am a whole two decades of a sojourner

I taste this life with a teaspoon

I leave mugs to my seniors

I am that nudging thought buried deep inside you

I am the torn page in your book

Pilgrim, how do you tear a book?

I am the hardtalk of Atwoli, the soothing sermon of Joel Osteen,

The engaging tone of a sports commentator, the funny comment of a street cobbler,

The honesty of a mama mboga, the firebrand voice of a condemned man,

The cry of an IDP, the soaring hope of a refugee;

I am a simple soul in a fleeting world, churning out poetry

I am you, I am the universe, I am me—Lorot Son of the Hills.

Shared with Poets United in The Thursday Think Tank # 57 You and Yourself (I...)

I had fun with this. Thanks Poets United.