journey through

I know she’ll come I know she will come that day, she will come in her long flowing dress, her chest standing in full splendour. She will be wearing her glass slippers and her hair will be flowing over her shoulders. She’ll try to mask her smile but it will burst through her perfect teeth and radiate the world. I know she’ll come by the midnight train, a brown suitcase in her hands. Her scent shall make head turns and men whistle but her eyes will be only for me. That day she will walk up to me and I shall fall on her shoulders and weep all the pain and longing away. She that will kiss my sorrow away and teach me to be happy will come when she does. She is the one that said it wasn’t goodbye, she said the wheel of life was moving and she had to chase it, just as I had. She told me when loneliness struck harder than ever before I should take her photo, kiss it and hug it tight. She told me when tears got too heavy and I couldn’t go to sleep I should pick the teddy she bought me...

I feel your pain little ones I feel your pain little ones. Every time you stand out there your stomach growling, your lips chapped, hair unkempt and hands outstretched, every time they send you out to beg for your food, to earn your own living. Just what did you do wrong to deserve this kind of life? Was it your crime that you were born? The strength you’ve been forced to show when your father knocks your mother down the floor, the weight of responsibility on the four year old who has been forced to become and adult because her mother’s too drunk, I feel your pain every time you stretch your hands to that uncaring motorist, when you look with your sad eyes at that woman selling fruits at her stall. Life has taught you to wonder if God is alive, if he cares for you. It has taken all the humanness out of you and turned you into ravaging animals, to overturn dustbins and rubbish cans out in the street while everyone sleeps. The streets have become your home, not because you don...

The power to choose I sat down today and looked at my life and that of others in particular and I came to realize one thing, we are a blessed bunch. We have a wide array of gifts and abilities, some can sing, some can act, some can dance, some can write, others can do all that and more. I sat wondering why people can do whatever it is they do, why is it that not everybody can sing or act like others? I realized that all of us have been blessed in ways so unique we can’t understand sometimes. The gifts are synchronized in a way that they are supposed to bring harmony and the feel of uniqueness into the world. If everybody was an actor, there wouldn’t be anybody to watch their plays, if everybody was a writer, who would sit down to read their works? Gifts inculcate into a person a sense of self-worth and individuality, definitely the work of a beyond genius brain, not some work of evolution. Another and notably the most unique gift given to the human being is the ability to make...

  Messiah why did you drop your cross? The messiahs, princes of deliverance, the pots where every one of you had made their deposits of hope, they reached Calvary, but celebrate not, they shed the crosses at Heathrow and Brussels. They picked swords instead and the messiahs we hoped would bring us peace in their giant heads have just bought us death and destruction. They are fighting tooth and nail, they are nationalizing alongside the owners of the nation, invoking the spirits of Malcolm X and Martin Luther, aren’t there enough spirits to invoke back here? What happened to your cross messiah? What happened to the salvation the gentiles are hoping for? Was it worth it to become stray mongrels just so you could fight among the pure bred? They ask you,” what is it you really are fighting for?” and you scratch your heads. “Our brothers here are being discriminated against; they don’t get equal opportunities so we stand in solidarity. But man, don’t you have enough probl...

Don’t you see you are drowning? The swelling waters, the broken oars and the strong monsoons. The ocean is becoming violent by the minute but your pride and ego are still stronger than sense. Everything is pointing towards the beginning of the end, the sharks are circling the dhow impatiently their massive teeth set in a grim smile but still you refuse to call out, it is all a dream, a very bad dream, but the salty taste in the air reminds you that you are wide awake, in a movie where you are the main and the only character but still, your pride you cannot swallow. Don’t you see you are drowning? You wait to hear ‘camera, set, action” but nobody is shouting out. Life has just got you where it wants but still, your ego would not let you close your eyes, your pride has refused to let your knees bend. Like a man you have been so you will go down, defiant and fighting to the end. You fool, don’t you see a chance to redeem yourself? How much will it take you to whisper if you can...