Fire from the Sky by Stanley Mungai (best memoirs of all time .txt) 📖

African Poetry

THE POEMS

FIRE FROM THE SKY

The once snaking gurgling monster

Time-defying, ever-flowing oldster

Is licked near-clean by the quiet drought

Her diminution wrought distraught

Lain betwixt her hunger stricken arboreal hosts

Emaciated, unattractively scaring akin ghosts

Crawling slowly to die somewhere undismayed

Petitions unsaid and intercessory unprayed

The tranquil of the fresh breath of Nyamindi waterway

Is taken by the acrid gusts of aquatic decay

As her remnants lovers slowly but surely fry

In the fierce fast-falling fire from the sky.

A DAY’S END.

I have seen the sunset.

Filling the western sky with orange.

Fiery clouds escorting the sun home.

Dispatching an aura of golden rays.

Bidding farewell the long shadows.

Calling tired farmers back home.

Inviting the host of the heavens.

I have seen rubies in the sky.

Appearing one after another.

An invisible hand somewhere.

Along the horizon unseen.

Switching them on to light the earth.

Twinkle diamonds twinkle

Red, blue, green twinkle.

I have seen a beaming face.

Peeping at me from the dark horizon.

Then shyly sailing high.

Racing against the wispy clouds.

To join the radiance of her daughters.

Smiling all the way to the constellations.

Blazing beauties of the night.

THE VILLAGE.

Cock-a-doodle doo.

Pigs snorting and grunt.

Bleat baa the sheep.

Hidden in the trees squeak the squirrels.

Gobble gobble gobbling turkeys.

Low oxen moo the cows.

Hohi-a-hohhle hi

Bray donkeys so similar.

Rolling on the red dust.

The village.

A swallow-tailed bee-eater.

Calling and singing.

A green barbet, dark brown head.

Answers the call.

A red-capped lark, black bill.

Entertains the morning.

An emerald-spotted wood dove.

Seated lonely somewhere.

Coos to the extravaganza.

The village.

FAIRY CHARMING DAISY

Fairy charming daisy

Streaming in from the east

Fairy charming daisy

Where do you live in the east?

I guess you came from the pixies

Those who dwell in the village of the beauties

Who dance in the night

And feast in the morning light

Under the babbling brooks

Reading love stories from fairy books.

Hey! You are now doing your bewitching smile?

Fairy charming daisy

How beautifully you smile.

Fairy charming daisy

I love you so!

You smile well because

You have been born so to do

And brought forth to please the sun

But hold up your face

And I will kiss you true.

WE LOST IT.

My great grandfathers wore dreadlocks

Yet stood firm, proud as peacocks

Patrolling their territory paddocks

Today they are a source of mocks

A representation of sheer evil

In the world we foolishly call civil

Like an attempt on a biscuit by a weevil

We lost it.

Our great forefathers drank milk

And then over the mountains take a hike

Had absolute no need for a bike

Treated all men with respect alike

We are taking concoction for drink

May never cease to suffer sick

Rounded and diabetic as tick

We lost it.

They went to schools to learn practice

Learnt virtue and shunned away vice

To obey all the elders without a voice

Then there was little necessity for police

We are learning to sit all day in office

To treat subordinates with blowing malice

Learning theory, understanding without choice

We depend on book, written advice

Alphabets unlike words know no justice

Scratching as mice full of lice

We lost it.

ENTICE ME.

Entice me to follow you.

To have the same school of thoughts.

You can define God in a name.

Entice me to believe that.

You can hold him in your understanding.

Confine him in your ideologies.

Entice me my dear.

Music genres can contain him.

The one that holds the universe.

A zillion light-years wide.

In the palm of his hand.

Hair styles can define his worship.

And he has meted out the heavens in a span.

Comprehended the dust in a measure.

Come on and entice me.

Let me believe you for a second.

That he can be comprehended in a dance.

Who weighs the mountains in a scale.

And the hills in a balance.

Laid the foundations on the earth.

Increase your efforts my dear.

You never know for sure.

I might just be convinced.

BIASED LOVE.

Doesn’t knock in your heart

Just comes in with a start

But in hers it does knock

Unwelcomed, sent off and heavy lock

Locked out without a second thought

And in your life painfully caught

To love and not loved back

To find love and to lack

Golden bitter cup of suffering

Crushed, but bravely bearing

Almighty lord above

Shake me up a little to remove

The heavy yoke of biased love.

I CALL IT NOISE

The music disappeared

Into the blues

Those soothing notes

The elixir to the soul

Devoured by a wordy hullabaloo

The one that draws a rabble

In place of dancers

The maniacal drumming

A rhymy confusion

The one they call music

And I call it noise;

Unnecessary noise.

EULOGY FOR OUR GIRLS

I see a flash

A sight to behold

The work of an immortal sculptor

Walking straight in elegant pride

Worth of a princess of the sun

Firmly transfixed in her twelve

Moving into the emptiness of an invalid society

Her innocence screaming

In an unchallenged clarity

And only twelve moons

The framework of her modeling salivates

Wolves in men

Who’s been exposed to the virus

Emerging from the bushland of their desires

To seek their vengeance in a fanatical hatred

And poor me the princess

With the sex lunacy roaming the streets,

Sanity of abstinence is the greatest challenge.

Swung from poverty to adolescence

A pendulum of fates

Hunger at home for the family

And her homestead a moonscape of desolation

The two hundred shillings does the trick

She trades out her innocence

And virginity too; a girls pride

And alongside the legal tender

Comes the virus

The minute monster

Savoring a society of huge minds.

There is the tuberculosis

In a hospital ward

Full of undug graves and shrines unnamed.

Drawn into the vacuum of her fate

Eyes wide open in dismal finality

The princess

Lie in freeze frame of death

A pyramid of events

Moulded out of her last several terrible seconds

Lamentation for the society

A dull eulogy for our girls.

A JOKE

A joke is a mock

Merry though black as coke

Stupid yet doesn’t provoke

Through your ribs it’ll poke

Down the spine a firm shock

Last, in the throat it’ll dock

A joke is a lock

A swift heavy rock

On your neck a sweet yoke

Nearly makes you choke

Though not as smoke

A touch of gentle stroke

As sure you can’t revoke

A joke is just a joke.

AT THE COUNTRYSIDE.

I got blow-out on my hair

Am at the countryside

A mixture of emotions

Envy, admiration, hatred

And jeering too.

I got sunglasses on my face

That gives me

The unwelcomed company

Of confused glances

At the countryside.

I got a necklace around my neck

Glittering with life

Never puts it down even at sleep

It is not “manly”

At the countryside.

BEFORE I SLEEP.

Under the cover of blankets

My eyes close up

Opening my mind to a misty world

With shadowy outlines welling up

From the bottomless depths

Of foggy long times

Shaping the mosaic of my imagination

Into corresponding dreams

Standing guard

At the outpost to my consciousness

Just before I sleep.

CHURCH DEMON

Sent away from the church

To keep her hipsters away

And that almost transparent dress

That terminates

Several inches above the knees

Told that she was,

A stumbling block to the sheep

Soiling the mind of the male congregation

The pastor still in the brackets

Denying the chosen ones

The power of the Holy Spirit

And the Spirit of God was moving

Above the surface of the waters

When Adam and Eve were very naked.

Told she stirred the Spirit of desire

The spaghetti dress

Starting too early and ending too late

Cooking immorality in the society

Hungry men, say lustful

Evil minded

Yet they claim the Spirit reigns

Overcome by their selfish nature

A willing Spirit

But a weak flesh

They blame it on the church lady

And I have never seen

A bull rape-and-murder

And never seen also

A dressed freshian cow

And they call her church demon.

CONFESSION.

Oh my! I am so selfish

Do I have to confess this?

Of course

Oh no

Then I confess.

They came asking

That I may at least come closer

I couldn’t

Am soooo selfish

I thought they would take away

What doesn’t belong to me

Mine and yet not mine.

I confess

That I have a sticky hand

Not that I take

But because I just can’t give…….

Now, wait a minute

Am I supposed to be confessing to you?

While you know who the owner is?

Of what am afraid to give.

Tell me,

Do I have to give my love to anybody?

When it belongs to you?

Mine and yet not mine

Oh!

I confess that I am confessing.

I MUST NOT

Preserve the culture I will

But not overlook the spear

Planted at the entrance to my hut

Nor will I the owner

In bed with my wife

My daughter’s joy will not be taken

By the cut of an ancient knife

Should I sell out?

An incumbent generation

To an out-of-time tradition?

I must not.

I REFUSE.

Steady will I fly like a kite

And say that with all my might

Like an eagle in flight

I refuse to accept my plight

Decline to disappear from the sight

Won’t give up my light

I refuse to go down into the night

I refuse to give up without a fight.

I TOLD THEM.

Didn’t I mean it?

Or wasn’t I serious just a bit

When I warned of the gruesome pit

Ahead and soon they would hit

Was I performing a funny skit?

The day they refused to admit

That joining would bring no benefit

Just pain and no profit

The best option was to quit

But they wanted to wait

And see as they are used as bait

I can do nothing now but sit

Because I told them.

They are now quiet

Full of reckoning and regret

Wishing they listened I bet

That to stop a fired bullet

You must require a metal jacket;

Before you meet a pickpocket

Your wallet is not stolen yet

My words they needed not interpret

Either that they did not get

Or they simply chose to forget

When I blew a warning trumpet

I know that am not a prophet

Just a pen-and-paper poet

But I told them.

ILLEGAL GATEPASS

Before my tender lungs

Have known an inflow of breath

Or my eyes seen

The beauty of the daylight

Before I have come to know

The Taste of Colostrum

And before my new skin received

The caressing warmth of the sun,

Mama,

You have handed me

An illegal gate pass

Past the birth canal

Shattered my candid destiny

The president of the land

Flushed out your liberation

From the bondage of poverty

And fangs of disease.

IT