Tree lore: 'Why trees are ever standing'

 Hush the swish in your leaves

Tender twig, halt your play

Young trees, slow your sway

Listen to us old wood!

"it wasn't always this cool,

The sun didn't always just shine-

It burned oh! It scorched so!

We withered and wilted and shriveled:

Great Oak and his family cracked

Cedar- all tall and hard-barked,

Bristlecone pine and any other pine

All browned away and dried;

We knelt, lowered our sapped branches

Stretched our weary stalks and just about died.

It was a sad time such-

Cut up and shipped away,

The best of us-

Demeaned and baked into charcoal,

Or lumbered into timber- that vast tomb...

Oh, and cousin Sandal Wood, butchered for perfume!

We lost our graceful poise.

The rains ceased, rivers shrunk

What a season!

Then came along a girl, she of the green heart-

Born of the enemy but turned friend indeed!

Her love green as sap, Her word was her deed.

For every broken twig, she dropped her head

If a tree fell in Karura, she shed

Tears and cried, 'No! 

Desecrate no more!

Our heritage: green beauty of earth!'

The rest is history:

-the rise of the trees, the era of green

Which you, young tree now see-

Bountiful leaves on beautiful boughs,

The earth's safe again,

The state of our nation strong!

This legacy we remember her by

-Wangari wa Maathai-

A girl born of flesh but sprouted green-

Mother of trees!

Forest queen!

Diva in green!

Forever!"

 (As told by a 100 year old Cedar tree in 2092)

My Past

Death, thou art loosed!

My head is full

Of sounds of a shovel

Of sands shoved

Of rocks moved

Of ground punched

To sink a necessary grave-

Unnecessarily too often

Too close to the last

In too dry a ceremony.

The people I’ve buried

Graves I have filled

In song-less haste

In war’s pointless waste

Death is born.

I grope in the past

And my past is lonely and vast

Furnished with misery

Well washed with tears and worry

Ventilated by gusts of terror –

my past is packed to the ceiling with

memory upon memory

loss upon loss

too often in this war-

Stacked atop each as if

they were trophies.

My past is a place

famished then abandoned

By friends and the sun and the wind.

My past is this place I can’t leave

This home I return to

This prison that shadows me

No matter the borders I cross,

This windowless trap

This smothering grip,

This past so vast

Acres and acres of evil in my mind

Poisoning where I walk

What I think, who I meet-

poisoning.

My past is a memory

the smell of blood of kin

stinging pain of singed skin

the sound of a flaring flame

of a flame crack

the harrowing fall of my life.

 With my hands I remember

burying

people I had encountered

bodies I had entered

The hearts I had warmed

In the season of love bloomed,

Lips I’d tasted; the bonds now tested

By death broken, I buried.

I remember

That I have lost to soulless sands

To silent earth

To rocks that clatter,

then roll and settle

to graves that cover

my friends whose fatal

End is an endless bother

 that I couldn’t shrug at all -

this memory so lonely and vast

Is a grave that covers me

For since then, I've been dead

Though I walk-

Thought I walk.

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.