Thursday 31 March 2011

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.



Wednesday 30 March 2011

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




Thursday 24 March 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


Monday 21 March 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 21st 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

Friday 18 March 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

Wednesday 16 March 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

Friday 11 March 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

                                                                     
                        

Thursday 10 March 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

Tuesday 8 March 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

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