I love you not as one can love a bar of chocolate
Or a mango juice or a banana fruit or a mushroom
Or as one can love roasted groundnuts in a plate
I love you as one can love an exotic dream
In which the dreamer is in a wedding costume
And his bride is fair of face and is in full bloom

I love you not as one can love a moon-lit sky
Or a tall tree, or a blue sea or a star in the night
Or as one can love a grasshopper, a termite or a butterfly
I love you as one can love a yellow ray of sunlight
When the morning, like ripe tomato, bursts in the horizon
And the foot-steps of the last night are long gone

I love you not as one can love a song of a bird in the nest
Or the whizzing of a wind or the buzzing of a bee that flits
Or as one can love the whistling of a tree in the forest
I love you as one can love the sound of ghosts and spirits
Who live in the waters of the sea or dwells in the cemetery
And is heard rising and falling at night in a puzzle of mystery

I love you not as one can love the aroma of fresh coffee
Or the smell of raw soil or rotten leaves damped in a pit
Or as one can love the fragrance of a rose or a lilac tree
I love you as one can love the smell of a lover’s armpit
The erotic texture and the feel of its bushy hair
The moist and its rivulets of sweat when she is bare

I love you not as one can love a genius work of art
Or a sight of a magnificent city sprawled in the sun
Or as one can love a new pair of shoes, shorts or shirt
I love you as one can love an old tattered photo
In which one is a child playing in a puddle of mud
With an aura of innocence, honesty and godliness

This morning I woke up
With a sense of loss
I found silence holding the four corners of my room
And a mystery
A sort of muse
Playing in between light and darkness
Between wall and empty spaces

I slipped down from my narrow bed
Quickly ransacked my suitcase for your photos
I couldn’t find any
Scrawled down my phone
With nervous fingers
I didn’t see one; my cheeks flashed white

Looking at the mirror on the wall
A sad curve formed at the corner of my mouth
My forehead became pale just like a dull day
The evidence of hunger
For a loved one back home

Now seated at the table
I sketch your body on a piece of paper
An imagination of the woman that I love
An expression within me
Of whom I know you have been to me

I pencil your foaming lips, your flashing
Teeth, circles twin hillocks on your chest
Your deep sensuous navel
I repeatedly scratch on the pupils of your eyes
Making them dilated, adds more pencil
On the cheeks to make them dazzling and flaming

Shades the hair to make it glossy
Cleaves your forehead with two wrinkles
(You can’t be young forever)
Gives a dark shade to your nose
A light colour to your chin
Then the neck of a swan to stabilize your head

I sit back to examine the finished work
My body twitches
I move my lips down
To kiss it
Suddenly I hear a loud sigh from a distant
A silent longing
A lusty act from a lover
With the utterance “l miss you, oh my dear love”

I saw a rose flower at the hedgerow
Withering, leaves stuck together
Like skinny limbs of a human being
Flaccid and of pallid complexion

Bedraggled in the rainy weather
The rose had become coldly lifeless
I became so sad and felt like crying
Thinking that at one time in its life

It was open to hilarious joy and happiness
With richness of colour, life and vitality
Carried on its body the symbol of LOVE
And swains picked it for their beloveds

Now it was wilting, life juicing out of it
A sick person who eventually would die
Tears gathered at the corner of my eye
I wanted to sob and grieve for the dead

Suddenly a small bee came flitting in
Hovered for a while above the flower
Its hum a dirge, a solemn expression
Of the bereavement, the inevitable loss

It couldn’t get the nectar from the fading leaves
A Sordid mass of dark green, tasteless wetness
The bee flew away in disappointment, as if
From a carcass, a near-decomposed corpse

Bitter tears rolled down from my eyes
I sobbed silently for the loss, for the fact that
Every beautiful thing, at one time, must
Decay and die, vanish completely from the earth

Who will then ever know we were here?
That we once joyfully and exuberantly existed?
Who will recall the beauty of our colours?
Explain how we were a source of life and love?

When my body withers down
And I breathe no more, O Lord
Give me wings to fly
To the mystery of purgatory
And in the purifying waters
Of the sea, O Lord
Let me wash to cleanse my soul
Give me lesser punishment, O Lord
Not a dismantling of the soul
The severe beating of the body, O lord
But a gentle slap on the face
A little pinch on the cheek, O Lord
On my way to Olympus
Carry me gently all the way, O Lord
Up the rocky hills
Down the dark valleys
Let me reach your abode, O Lord
Where silence looms
Where I can rest in peace.

Sometimes I get so amazed when I watch the night
The way stars drop in on the dark bowl of the sky
And the moon clad in its burnished silver-streaked white
Peeps and hides behind sheep of clouds like a spy

I look at this one sheet of black—a mass of darkness
I find it a mystery that suffuses me with fear and horror
From its dark hollow space, its endless sea of emptiness
Could easily spring out a demon, an imp or a giant ogre

Or something simply wicked, malevolent and evil
That could devour me, consume or take away my soul
So I always peep thru the window to be sure no such devil
Spills into the room in its formidable amorphous prowl

I find it hard to imagine how the night comes to be:
The ominous silence that keeps vigil in every mini space
The opaque black that blinds eyes so that they don’t see
Its black furs and grey paints that make an intricate maze

The night is like a churning sea, an agitating ocean
I always see it spilling through the window on the wall
Submerging me in my bedroom in its furious motion
Suffocating and choking me up, leaving dead my soul

I get scared to imagine that someone, out of ill intention
Might one night get access to the giant clock of the universe
Then hold the gadget from moving, against Deity’s creation
Shall we live in darkness forever?--what hell shall be for us!

When I die, my fair kin
Don’t burn my body
Don’t bury it either
Leave it to rot on the ground

Only put a little flower on it
But not the fragrant rose
For I might smell it and be happy
And wish to live again

When I breathe no more
My kind siblings
Sing me a song from the hymnal
But don’t choose number thirteen

For it might chant my ears
And warm my cold heart
Be reminiscent of joyful days
Making me wish to live again

When I kick the bucket
And stark becomes my body
Read me a little line from the bible
But don’t read the psalms

For you know I am a sinner
And have done little to mankind
And would want to do something for charities
Therefore wishing to live again

When I die, my fair world
Don’t cremate my body
Don’t, with hoes, inter me either
Leave it to waste on the ground.

Hanging in this burning emptiness of retribution, between
Death and the final dwelling--in this condition of existence--
I move stealthily like a cat, perpetually on the balls of his
Feet; with the cat’s impression, indifferent aloofness,
My face drooped; in my eyes no light at all. I cry,
                                                    “I want affliction and fire!”

The soiled hamlet from whence I have come, voices rise
To cry for the pain and torture that my soul bore here
Aware that my spirit is not fully independent of the stains of
Mundane effects of wrong-doing, its consequences; neither
Sufficiently evil to be fated for abyss; but keeps on strengthening
                                                                     Itself in sanctity here

Having no purifications--neither sacrament of baptism, nor
of penance--my venial sins weigh heavy on my soul
I cry for pain, fire, to suffer for the rewards of the divine abode--
A Garden of delights. I ask to be relieved of my
Earthly baggage; for the pain of joy to be completed, to feel
blissful mystery of Him

I find myself in that condition of mind and feelings
When reality gives place to reverie and merges with
The shadowy visions of the first stages of purgatorius ignis
I’ve carried, on clammy hands, venial sins, to be purged
Of them, being only momentary pain, then soon be on my
                                                          Way to Olympus

Here it comes, like a clap of thunder, or like a magic spell
Light one moment and darkness the next—a big fire!
Burning brightly, spreading everywhere. I scream, “burn me!”
I hear those assembled in the hamlet from whence I have
Come, singing, raising their sacrifices up for my sake--
To be purified.

If I ever offended you
Discuss it with me, dear love
Don’t keep it in the heart for too long
Let me know of the mistake
I have made, dear love
That makes you pale, mute
If I once shouted at you
And you were flustered, dear love
It is because I cared, or so I thought
Let us talk with open minds
Of the flaws, the pitfalls
And mend the broken fences
Bring to an end this silence
And hear your voice again, dear love
As it always came to me.

There is silence in the mead, deep and sweet
Perfumed by sprawling blooms of chrysanthemums
The soft twilight lie fermenting on the green lush

Peace and fulfillment drape over clumps of shrubs
And the wooden paling and ripening guava trees
Veil in the aura and beauty of an orange sunset

The growing maize plants and finger millet
Kiss the thick jacket, embrace the warm slacks
Sorghum salute amicably as I scuffle across

Dots of vultures decorate the washed-blue welkin
Floating lazily through the air; the sky is clear
The moon is now rising, pale, but almost round.

If I die, don’t cry
Because I would become a rose flower
Grow in your flower garden
And exude fragrance
You will pick me during Christmas
Display me during birthdays
Smell me during wedding ceremonies
I will be part of you
So, if I die, don’t cry

If I die, don’t be grieved
Because I would become a bumpkin leaf
Grow in your vegetable garden
Pick me for supper in the evenings
Cook me in the kitchen at nights
I will be at the dining table with you
So, if I die, don’t be grieved

If I die, don’t moan
Because I will become rain
Fall down from the sky
Gather me by the gutters
And wash kitchen utensils with me
I will be in your kitchen
So, if I die, don’t moan

If I die, don’t scream
Because I will become a tree
Grow in the corner of our homestead
Cut me occasionally for firewood
Keep a heap of me in your kitchen
Make fire and cook ugali with me
I will be part of the household
So, if I die, don’t scream