A Dream of Love, Reality of War & Memories of a Street in Libya.

Dear mother,
We are all here, Swaleh, Fuad
Death and I,
Of our own will we stay.
Everything here is momentous-
Friendships firm up overnight over a shared joke,
Daring the desert dust, watching idly smoke -
Idly Life and callous death casually cast lots for us.
And, mum, am in love!

I saw her in a dream- a Libya of open minds!
Of tender hearts, long cast their rinds,
No liege nor royal , no rajah nor vassal
Just us, many men, women and all...
Like the Delta, mile upon mile-
Back bent in a humbled curtsy;
Egypt kissing the sea
Egypt swallowing the Nile!
Just like that.

Oh, but I saw her in an apartment on a hill,
When Misrata came back to us last week.
Right upon the last blast, in the gloom of falling dust -
Foot-soldier in victory drill.
There I was; and she:
fairer than the desert moon
Shinning shyly on the ridge's peak ,
Fairer- than the nightlights of Tripoli.
And my heart will be crashed totally
If it wasn't me she smiled at!

We saved them, mum, from Gadhafi's men.
She must've seen me!
No doubt there.
She like me too, I think.

That's what I think
Everytime a shell comes crashing, or a bullet
Comes tearing; then death among us dances
Squeezing life out, kneading hard without let
Then, mostly then, do we most miss home,
But I, mum, just your water bottle.

For the home street has nothing for me
Whitewashed, sand-lit with neat idleness…
Littered with my bothers,
Swaleh, Fuad and I…
At home but lost, too small:
Like the smallest kiosks
Along the busiest street
In the biggest city!
Who am I in Tripoli?
Where hides hope? Where lies love…?
One can't even die quick!

My dreams, mum, have gone stale
No one needs them.
Someone else always knows better
Someone older always has the platter.
In my home street, I’ve felt even small
Like the lightest dust
On the tiniest tin
On the lowest shelf
Of your shop, mum.
Consequently inconsequent!
Essentially inessential!
I have felt like nothing
Lost in a pile of… nothing!
I have felt… feelingless!

So I won't be home yet!
I will keep my head low and duck fast,
If we must all die, I will die last!
I crouch here in dirt, so you can sit at ease
Allah grant us victory, then I will come in one piece.
But not yet.

Just a little longer, mum.
With every minute Ideas gather, the future coalesces:
From the narrowest hole to the highest crest,
The tamest dune to the wildest tempest-
At sea, on land sighs hope:
Facebook- the new face of friendship!
Twitter- calling all to fellowship!
A voice! A tune! A low rumbling call-
Piped in underground tunnels;
We listen: revelation! Revolution!
Voices south, voices north
Young dreams voiced forth…
Tunisian, Egyptian, Lybian
Music brewing, boiling in hidden pots
The sound of a common cry
Crying a summon to all
A clarion call
Decrying a common foe
Crying but calling to war-
Suddenly, I am strong!

I shall prance with aplomb
The young forgotten bomb!
Left to right ; back and forth
Death or life, water or dust, peace or debris.
I'll think of her, I will miss your water bottle
In the gathering dusk, tobacco smoke and the dawn after;
Hope and nerves.
We shall sit-
Swaleh, Fuad, Death and I
Quietly looking out for a route home-
An honourable route or none at all.

Your son,
Mahmoud 'Bouaziz'

PS. I have since taken my Tunisian hero's name
I have kept my family name, in case I come to fame.
Spare me no pity, just the water bottle, mum.

40 minutes in Abbotabad

Osama Dead as it were
Would be a worthy wait;
Not for that August of ninety-eight -
Of blood and dust on the Nairobi sun;
not for that peaceless day in Dar.
No, dear.
For the 9/11 of 2000-and-one:
The three thousand dead
And a fortress' firmity derided
a soft heart bled
a giant's pride piqued...

The rest of us have been worth naught
because one bearded dad must get caught!

'40 minutes in Abbotabad' is a date screaming
'remember me with all your American remembrance!'
a remembrance that forgets the waste
of two horrible gulf wars-
a history of manufacturing whores-
dipping for Destructive Weapons, dipping
Dipping for solid but drawing liquids- rigging-
drawing out oil and blood- oozing, flowing,dripping!
Four seasons of plunder and a resounding retreat.
Snap Sadam's head and hurray! The rest are beat!
Maybe that's good taste when you are from the west.
Any how, remember!

A remembrance that forgets eleven years:
Of miles of talk without a milestone,
Of blind fury fueling the not-so-smart bombing
Of Bits of bone borne in body bags for American funeral
But no bandages for wounded Afghani lifestyle
Bleeding at home to survive if they will
On scant food and thriving opium…
40 minutes in Abbotabad explains
nothing.

Nothing,
But the ugliness of a beast,
Scaled and calloused, with a callous habit,
Big, disruptive, lost to its absent wit,
Truly big- drunk on its own bigness.
Nothing, but the nightmare of the hooked talon:
a single tilt, and the landscape bleeds!
Afghanistan is the fish you disemboweled in public
Poked, turned, ripped... but never tasted.
It is the ghostly past you will now abandon;
It is your latest slave-whore
While you refocus your insatiable lusts,
While your perverted appetite re-adjusts.

40 minutes in Abbotabad is a great noise-
resounding yet will not hear itself;
A success- that will not celebrate itself,
A tragic parody of Entebbe-
Those 90 minutes of love.
Whom did you save
in Abbotabad?
In the eleven years?
Are they too buried at sea, Perhaps?

Fire in The Belly (To Make Fire From Ice)

A sandy irritation in the throat,
A startling question that billows out of nothing
Into every space in the mind,
Maybe;
Like a prosthetic reminder of your leglessness,
At the moment you want to jump;
Like a leak through your parlor roof;
Like the abhorrent taste of salt
accidentally spooned into your tea;
Maybe.
that.

You squint at life, "Who am I?"
The answer unfolds -
A realisation in staggering resolution
An explosion in 3D digital clarity,
Right by your ear, in your eye perfectly clear:
It is your absolute placelessness
- the tagless item in a well-labeled lot,
It is a revelation: you are tolerated; loved not.
- they sidestep you too easily-
Like a bleak kiosk on the roadside;
a blurry point on a long road
to the next important town.
They notice you to avoid you-
- an unwanted ungainly bush
on the telescopic path to the sight of prized game.
Their eyes bore holes through your inessentiality
To points, to people, to places beyond you
That matter more. And phew!
You seamlessly merge with social darkness.

And like a cruel spur, the cold breath of seclusion
Becomes ice trapped in rock
Cracks the rock and calls to freedom,
Traps faint light in its prism
Absorbs, brews a portent charge-
Then, of itself,
Explodes in a white hot beam;
Becomes a screaming firebrand born of nonentities,
ignited in nondescript spaces,
Fanned by piled breath held too long,
Becomes a Self-Stoking engine
To burn insignias into the hard skin of history
To imprint in every memory
A truth hitherto unknown.

An Uprising: Poetry of Protest: The Matatu Nation

An Uprising: Poetry of Protest: The Matatu Nation

The Matatu Nation

A 24 hr Discotheque
The matatu is -
Smelling old but looking new
A moving venue
The meeting of night's nudity
And the day's hasty dress-up
everyday:

A continuous blast vibrating every diaphragm
Every passenger's ear drum
Unwilling? Uninterested? Unawake? Unconscious?
Like it or not, in fact, blast you!
Video on wide plasma splaying the morning dimness
With high-hemmed skirt-dance, low-necked boob-tops
Highly offensive on scratchy CD and low dpi.
But no one speaks. No one thinks.

Twenty-four hour-old sweat
Versus four-hundred-bob-a-can cologne.
The meet-a-deadline urgency in a trouser suit
Meets with the half-sleepy half-dressed determination,
'I need an e-pill fast!'

Although Nonini is singing 'Si Lazima Tu Do'
Alcohol-found bravado's alive in the back seat
Disco-sourced romance
Climaxes in a careless kiss,
Unabated madness
Escalates into a fondling bout,
Unabashed, openly fooling about.

The stale stench of a chain-smoked night
clings onto bright coloured, velvety upholstery.
At the mercy of a broom, looking up from the floor-
Cigarette butts. A lone shoe.
Twenty bob coin. Pre-puke sputum.

Unspoken curses
Un-regretted recklessness
Private business done in public space
The merging of stench and perfume,
Riot and calm in limited room
Gold and scum- and none fighting none-
Fuse in flawless humanity,
The condition of a long road
Just the way God meant it
Perfect in stench as in hope
The matatu nation is one.

The Other Nations

Outside the matatu nation
Is a short poem.
A staggering drunk grabs for support
Misses a post to find a woman's front
Spruced for the office.

Two loud smacks-
One for fury, one for effect.
You awake suddenly!
You find the path home
Anticipating the regular mugger
He's probably caught in an early morning snooze
Or had his fill already- so you wish
And doze off as you walk off.

Two jarring blows.
One to wake you up, one to knock you out.
Outside the matatu nation
Is a bitch.

I have been Teached

though my suffering is emminent,
The tenor and tune of it is evident,
Do not choke or spill your food-
Or waste a tear, (as if you could)-
It is not by you my troubles are eased,
My tenacity's been born and raised
On the fertile garden of your indifference.
Keep your care, I've been teached,
Mark my word and keep reference.

I refuse to fit into this fixture
These terms to terminologise my plight.
Am I bound to victimhood by nature?
Must I forever be too good to fight?
Is this my brand, my fate ?
Would the world end if I bared my teeth,
Dispatched heavenwards my tormentors forthwith?
Even when I have been teached?

I shall not be victimised-
By my sword shall fall him
Whose turn it is to be victim.
I shall not be traumatised-
When I get to direct this gory drama
I will cast another for this trauma.
For I've been teached.

So, bar your doors and windows
When you turn in for who knows…?
Turn low that TV set and listen out
After your neighbour, I'll be about
This isn't blood clotted and darkened-
Isn't my arm in sling broken- and
I can stand: I am not weakened;
I have been teached

Countryman

And you are Lord who?
Sir, excuse me, sir
And you are lord who?
Where were you born
Colonially?
With pagans or the enlightened,
the primitive or the progressive?
Where lies your chattels, sir?
With the peasantry or the landed gentry?
Do you scavenge with the poor
Or dine with the who is who?
How walks thee countryman
In your own country?
with haughty aristocratic swagger,
Or a withered stooped stagger?

Me?
Well, I was born in the land Disney
Lords walk right out of history
Send their sons and say’
‘Shooting men is game, Cholmodeley.’
With a hunting rifle to cock
A native trespasser to knock
Off crown land.
These far-seas colonies.
Take care where you walk, sir!

Sir!
I am the peasantry,
I swim in poverty
in misery I bathe
I carry my poverty like a badge
Am cursed by the wrath
Of they who guaranteed my birth
Every forest Hero who
Was shot or hanged since 52
Who refused his home and wife
Or was left to rot as if
He were rat: not a man so brave
In the hills of Ngong in 75,
Or was gunned down
in a street in sixty nine
To remain the name of a main
street in a city of ghosts
and monuments of those lost
in the forgotten struggles we quote
in today’s peace that was yesterday bought.

In my country, Sir,
gazing away and far
Kimathi stands in a city street,
Where leather boots and bare feet
Tread in their unequal beat.
He gazes and loses his breath
He wonders of all the wealth
He saw in 52
He wonders how so free
We pretend to be
From the cape to Cairo, Misri

He stands on a pedestal now
but lies in grave we don’t know
He stands aloft but sits like a wreath
Dead and gone
A stone but a stone.
Seen but unknown
He stands like signpost
In our memories lost
Remembered but forgotten again

Sir, you who knows now as before
What did Kimathi die for?
To be born again in stone?
So he can die again in shame
Crack by crack
Of scandal after scandal
Scam and ensuing debacle
Why?
To gather dust and paint the past?
To render a stamp of greatness
On a city of the heartless?
To rise in stature a rock
In a land of soulless flock?

Sir, for the love of heroes
We have none,
We have killed all those
Who were young
And ambitious for us
who came and were leaders
who lead but were followers
of justice and peace
and all that was nice-
we killed.
We killed Munyankei
The daring son of Sadera
Who young and wise
spoke out when he saw vice
spoke not for praise- for us.

Sir, now that he’s dead
Shall we imprison his soul in alabaster?
Shall we hide our shame in plaster?
And pass him and not see him?
Or name him a street as a whim?
Or kill him again in forgetting his dream?
Or just...and
You are lord who?