THE SUBJECT OF MY DESIRE.

The subject of my desire,

Sought in strain, and turned out to be in vain.

Met abject souls put through sufferation and pain

Labelled the hero but soon subjected to disdain

Blemished as traitor with our conjuncture put to blame

The subject of my desire,

Entangled self in a humongous web, home of tarantula

Subjected to see-saw of emotions and feelings, shadowed my medulla

Heart left absent of a deserving desire or companion, became a vesicula

Alas! You appeared to fill it, nothing short of miraculous.

The subject of my desire,

Got off to a rough start, but is that not the right way?

It wasn't easy for you to focus, your mind they almost succeeded to sway.

Now I can hold you tight, look in your eyes and say.

I'm glad you put up a fight, stood strong and didn't stray.

The subject of my desire,

To happiness you've been my via.

In spirits you've raised me higher.

You saved me from loves wire.

There is no better gratitude that I can sire.

BITTER TRUTH: Pt.2

He heard something, a constant buzz, one whose source he could not make out. So he struggled, his eyelids were heavy but he did not relent. As his eyelids finally gave up a slight slit of opening, the bright white light forced them shut even tighter. He immediately knew the source of the buzz, it was from the one meter long fluorescent tube lighting up the room. He swallowed, and felt a sharp pain in his throat. Where was he? All of a sudden he was now aware of the physical pain throughout his body. He could not feel his left hand, his jaw and throat were sore. The throbbing pain in his left knee was excruciating. He did not seem to recall any event that might have led to his current predicament. He gently slipped back to unconsciousness. Still, where was he?

The next time he was awoken by a warm wet cloth swiping at his eyelids. He tried and successfully was able to open his eyes, but the white light was piercing, forcing him to shut them again and open them slowly adjusting to the light. A lady dressed in white was attending to him. Immediately Tom realised that he was in hospital. However, as hard as he tried, he could not seem to remember what had happened to him. He could not tell what time it was and even worse what day. He struggled to lift his head from the bed but the pain was too much. Giving up on rising, he thought he could ask the lady in white what happened and why he was in hospital. As he tried to speak the pain in his throat got worse and all he could manage was more of a croak. “You are a very lucky man, just relax and the pain will all go away, it’s nothing serious.” He could not believe what this lady was saying. Nothing serious yet he could not feel his left hand nor differentiate where from his body the sharp stubs of pain came from? He let go from the struggle and almost simultaneously slipped back into unconsciousness.

She walked into the hospital infuriated. She did not know the exact ward, she paced around looking very uncertain. Since there seemed to be no nurse around she figured she would have to find the room on her own. From the lift she knocked lightly on the first door on her right. Waiting for no response she twisted the door knob and opened the door just enough to peep inside. An elderly man with the legs suspended mid air, a fracture patient, wrong room. She turned to the opposite door, room 219. This time she went straight for the door knob and opened the door, an elderly lady sat up in bed and called out, “Maggie?” Jackie apologised and left the room. She was now feeling frustrated but still went ahead with the search.

In his hospital room, Tom had awoken and was studying the room in silence. He was only able to slightly turn his head to the left. From there he was able to see most of the room, which was actually almost empty except for the small side-drawer by his bed side. The walls he realised were quite untidy. There was no television or anything of the kind. He tried to turn his head to the right as he took note of the worrying lack of equipment in the room but a sharp pain in his neck could not allow him. A little too much pain for ‘it’s nothing serious’ he thought. However, he could somehow feel that the bed was against the wall on that side. He realised that there was no way he could even call for help incase he needed to. He was now getting worried as to what kind of low-life hospital he was in. Suddenly as if to make his fear come true his torturous left leg started shaking. It spread to the whole body. He could not breathe with ease. Trying to ignore the pain in his throat he struggled to shout and managed only a croak. He was now not breathing, his whole body shaking violently. The world seemed to stop spinning as he continued to try and call out for help. He was breathless and giving up when he saw a lady peep into the room and rush back outside. The lights deemed in his eyes as he noticed the lady run back into the room. He tried as if to reach out for his last hope, maybe his saviour. He blacked out.

She moved aside as doctors rushed into the ward room lead by some nurses. The man was still shaking violently as the nurses struggled to pin him down. “Get something into his mouth, he shouldn’t bite his tongue, it’s a seizure.” Instructed an elderly doctor. The team of medics managed to successfully pin Tom down. Jackie was ushered out of the room by a nurse as the medical attention on Tom seemed to go a notch higher. As she stood outside the door, she was still in shock quite unable to take in what she had just witnessed. Her heart was racing, she was not sure of what she had just witnessed. She felt nauseated, she had just witnessed a man almost die, or will he? She turned around, stared blankly at the door for a moment and walked away not really sure where she was headed.

Finally she was able to locate the room she had intended to visit in the first place. When she saw Mercy and the look on her face all the fury that had somehow been subdued by what she had witnessed earlier arose. “Ooh Mercy! Mikey did this? Look at you.” Mercy was too distraught to talk. Even if she wanted to, it was doubtful the wounds on her face and the cracked lip would allow her. It was sad, the only thing close to normal about her face was the tears that rolled down her cheeks. The nurse explained to Jackie Mercy’s condition and that it was not necessary she stays at the hospital any further. With the money her colleagues at the salon and herself had contributed she cleared the bills and acquired the prescribed painkillers and ointment. On their way downstairs she remembered the incidents from earlier on and thought it wise to just check on the poor man.

She was trying to give Mercy a rendition of what she could remember from the ordeal as they walked towards the man’s room. Almost two hours had passed and on entering the room the man was laying there peacefully, it was as if nothing had happened to him. He was unconscious, Mercy not knowing the man and quite taken by her own pain remained by the door. Jackie walked to the man’s bedside and looked at him in his peaceful slumber. It was unbelievable the calm that he was in now, earlier his face was distorted by pain and fear, maybe the fear of death. Now his fine features were well visible, a smooth face, maybe a little too smooth for a man Jackie thought. Whatever he had been through, the man did not have even a single scratch on his face. A nurse walked in and recognised Jackie straight away from earlier. “He sure is a lucky man, very lucky to have had you around to raise the alarm. A minute later and it would have been a miracle to have him here. It was a serious case of a panic attack, all his systems were shutting down, he had our doctors surprised.” The nurse insisted that Jackie leave her number, “If someone saved your life the same way you would want to thank them in person, I would name my child after you if I were the one.” Jackie noticed the small bump in the nurse’s stomach.

Mercy and Jackie left the hospital and headed to the bus stop to catch a matatu to town so that they connect with another to Huruma where Mercy resided. Jackie had already decided they were going to collect some things and go back to her place in Mathare. Mercy was her friend and colleague and she was not going to let her wait for death by the hands of an inconsiderate and ungrateful sponge that Mike was. She loathed men even more.

To be continued…     

BITTER TRUTH

It had been quite a long time since the two met. He had visited with his expectations riding high. As he entered into his sleek black BMW 318i he could not help but curse again and again. He held his car door open for a while, one leg inside the car while his right leg still outside, he looked at the window on the third floor with a scorn on his face. He snapped back to his senses when he realised his 7000 shillings black Italian leather shoe was in a little poodle of dirty water. He cursed some more and almost banged his car door before realising this and smoothly shutting it as he sunk in his seat, adjusted the steering wheel, put on some music, checked himself in the rear-view mirror and smoothly eased his way onto the road and drove off. It had been a disappointing visit, but at the moment he had more pressing matters to attend to. He lightly nodded his head to Musa Juma’s music as thoughts of a car wash and cleaning his shoes or maybe even getting a new pair took over. He stopped at the junction joining the Thika Superhighway, looked at the man in the Toyota Vitz next to him and disgustedly shook his head as he joined the highway and sped off towards the city centre, the smooth modern road coupled with his perfectly maintained engine making it more of a glide.

Back at the third floor apartment, Jackie was left standing by the window cursing at Tom inwardly, with some sense of dislike for herself too. When he drove off she turned from the window and wiped tears from her eyes. It was a two bedroom apartment with sky blue walls. She was in the room that served as her sitting room. Two two-seater sofas with a small coffee table and two stools made up what was her furniture. There was a 14 inch television set, an LG DVD player and a Sayona sub-woofer system orderly placed on a T.V trolley. On the wall there was nothing more than a wall clock, a calendar and a large picture of a white palatial home with a well manicured lawn. On the picture it was encrypted, ‘A home is much more than the structure of stone.’ Covering the red cement floor was a checked black and white plastic carpet. The other room, the bedroom, had precisely that, a small 3.5 by 6ft bed. An addition was a wooden rack for hanging clothes. Typical of Mathare, the washroom facilities were shared among the residents of each floor. It was a pathetic life by Tom’s standards and that is why she actually disliked herself for she could not stop herself from feeling a little more love for him due to the fact that he had actually sacrificed his time and pride and visited her in these conditions. There was a knock on the door and she dried her tears, adjusted her kanga and went to answer it, “Mama Muthoni no, that is not the President’s son…” It was her nosy neighbour who was definitely there to inquire about the man in the ‘big’ car.

The two were the conclusive proof of Karl Marx’s analysis of the society. The best example of how in Kenya there is a clear divide in social class. Tom was a high-ender, the have, belonging to the rich, the bourgeoisie. Jackie was a complete contrast, born and brought up on the wrong side of the economic line, the have-not, a true epitome of Marx’s proletariats. Her life story was short and simple. She was born to struggling parents in Mathare, had her not so promising education disrupted in her second year of high school because after the death of her father, she had to join her mother in breadwinning for her five younger siblings. She had tried her hands at everything, from her mother’s vegetable business to tailoring apprenticeship, to a children day care attendant, to what seemingly was the better of them all, hairdressing. It was her hair salon exploits that exposed her and enabled her to atleast move out of her mother’s house into her own. However, the two houses were not more than five hundred meters away from each other. At 22 years of age, she had been through too much life hurdles to ever be surprised. She had not known love for anything or anyone but her family, she did not know how to handle what she was feeling at the moment.

Tom was a young promising lawyer, born to a banker mother and his father was a long serving Court of Appeal justice. The hardest of challenges he had faced in life might as well have been when he had to choose whether to go for a school trip to Egypt with his classmates or join his parents on vacation in London. He was 12 years old, the decision was based on the Pharaoh stories he had read earlier in his life. He attended prestigious private schools right from kindergarten to high school. The only time he had been in a public institution was during his law school days at the University of Nairobi, because his father, an alma mater, like other pioneer legal brains in the country with all due naivety thought the best legal minds only came from that institution. It would be unfair to link his achievements to his parents’ connections only for Tom was also very bright, he had always been a performer. One of his driving factors was that as much as he had no problem spending and enjoying the fruits of his parents’ success, he also did not want to be thought unable to fend for himself. As much as he seemed to always have his way due to the money and the influence from his parents, he was a smart smooth talker who could charm his way to where his hard work and papers could not.

These two had met in circumstances very unlikely. Who would have thought their two separate worlds could be brought together. They had grown to love each other much more than any of them actually expected, each breathing a breath of fresh air in the other’s life. The fact that this new found comfort and love that they shared was under threat was scary to them. None of them knew how to handle the threat and this lead to every attempt towards tackling the problem end up in arguments, just like it had earlier happened. Jackie felt undermined and construed Tom’s gestures as fuelled by sympathy for her background and current situation. On the other hand Tom felt like his genuine offers for assistance were misunderstood to mean that he was trying to buy his way out of every fix. These two were both victims of their backgrounds and societal placement, vices that now challenged what had managed to breach all odds and brought them together…love.

To be continued…

DO FOR LOVE.

I should have seen you was trouble right from the start, taught me so many lessons.

How not to mess with broken hearts, so many questions.

When this begun we was the perfect match, perhaps, we had some problems but we working at it, and now…

the arguments are getting loud.

I want to stay, but I can’t help from walking out just a little way.

Just take my hand and understand, if you could see,

I never planned to be a man it just wasn’t me.

But now am searching for commitment, in other arms.

I want to shelter you from harm, don’t be alarmed.

Your attitude was the cause, you got me stressing.

Soon as I open up the door with your jealous questions.

Like where can I be? You’re killing me with your jealousy.

Now my ambition is to be free.

I can’t breathe, because soon as I leave, it’s like a trap.

I hear you calling me to come back.

I am a sucker for love.

Just when I thought I broke away and am feeling happy,

you try to trap me, say you pregnant and guess who’s the daddy.

Don’t want to fall for it, but in this case what could I do?

So now am back to making promises to you, trying to keep it true.

What if am wrong? A trick to keep me on and on?

Trying to be strong, and in the process keep you going.

I am about to lose my composure, I am getting close…

to packing up and leaving notes, and getting ghosts.

Tell me who knows, a peaceful place where I can go…

to clear up my head am feeling low, losing control.

My heart is saying leave. Oh, what a tangle web we weave…

when we conspire to conceive.

And now you getting calls at the house, guess you’re cheating.

That’s all I need to hear because am leaving…

I am out the door.

Never no more will you see me…

this is the end.

Because now I know you’ve been cheating.

I am a sucker for love.

Now he left you with scars, tears on your pillow and you still stay.

As you sit and pray, hoping the beatings will go away.

It wasn’t always a hit and run relationship.

It used to be love, happiness and companionship.

Remember when I treated you good?

I moved you up to hills, out the ills of the ghetto hood.

Me and you, a happy home.

When it was on, I had a love to call my own.

I should have seen you was trouble but I was lost,

trapped in your eyes.

Preoccupied with getting tossed,

no need to lie.

You had a man and I knew it, you told me,

‘Don’t worry about it we can do it.’

Now am under pressure.

Make a decision because am waiting.

When am alone…

I am on the phone having secret conversations.

Huh! I want to take your misery…

replace it with happiness but I need your faith in me.

I am a sucker for love.

-TUPAC AMARU SHAKUR-