Archive for August 2010 | Monthly archive page
I…I…I can’t
I just can’t seem to find the words to express how I feel.
Silence.
Cool, still silent silence seems the only means through which I can speak…
I know that my father sits among the stars,
If only I could say that aloud…
Brown by Joy_Imani’s workshop
Brown.
Like the earth’s soil.
Not red, or dark like clay,
But brown.
Brown.
Like my short, fat fingers
As they grip this pen
And spew words on the page.
As they cup this mic
And project ideas onto your brain.
Brown.
Dark brown like the colour of that stranger’s face,
That anonymous face that
I will not remember.
No distinct features,
Hardly and character
But surely his face
In itself has a personality,
A story.
Beauty and history in every one of his scars.
That MY brown eyes simply did not look closely enough for.
Brown
Like the supposed-to-be-green leaves
Grown on the tufts of bushes we passed
As we took a road trip last weekend.
Dust-covered and dry
Like the soil they grow in.
Brown.
The colour of malnutritioned children’s hair
With kwashiokor.
Brown.
Like the clour kwashiokor
Makes play in my mind when heard.
Brown.
Like the lovely tint of that lipstick my mother likes to wear.
Understated yet elegant,
Like the colour brown itself.
It goes unnoticed a lot of the time and I don’t understand why…
It’s simple.
And simply beautiful.
And warm.
Brown.
Like the colour of the typical braids
On the typical Nairobi girl’s head
As I walk in town.
Brown.
Brown.
Broooooooown.
Brown?
Brown…
Hmmmm…
Brown.
Not the feeling of nothingness exactly
But not the feeling of anything either.
Brown.
It doesn’t scream
It doesn’t fight
It has no drama.
Perhaps if it were a person
It wouldn’t talk in so much as a whisper
As a very soothing voice.
Brown.
I’m brown.
The colour.
What colour are you?
When the beautiful music of the world
flows out of that speaker
I just get limber.
With my eyes closed
I see the music
Every word
Every note
Every beat
Just sends me dancing on my feet,
You see this hip-hop-lingala-zouk mix
is my soul’s religion,my opium fix
And these rhythmic rhymes
are like the boom-box
that makes my heart go thump-thump-thump
So as my limbs move to the lyrics
and my waist gyrates to the beat
My soul is soaring on this bridge between heaven and earth…MUSIC
© wanjeri gakuru