A Case for A Kenyan Poetry.
Beginning is to begin We.
We begin at the beginning. Any/thing made by a Kenyan is Kenyan. A Kenyan is a human-thing defined by birth and relation as being of Kenya. Kenya is not a country. Kenya is a geographical demarcation (word to Baba Wole Soyinka) whose sole right to exist is determined by whose right to exist is denied. The artist is constantly denied. Being the artist means nothing unless one grounds themselves/their selves (all those voices and egos one harbors) in a/the politic(s) of the people. The people birth the poet (to whom we will no longer refer to as the artist) and the poet is obligated to birth things that speak for the people, to the people, about the people, through the people. The people will be defined as the working-class masses that really do understand what it is to have your existence constantly denied by the system and its machinery. The system (and its resultant machinery) decides who to build, and, who to destroy, eventually, by way of identifying who is most likely to do its works. These works are basically charging good white jesus for a service, and working for the free free when the devil beckons. Working for the devil gratis constitutes what we call the selling of a soul. A soul will be defined as the parts of you that dictate who you are, your multiplicities, your abilities to rationalize, your moral relativisms, your things, your findings, your research, the lies you tell yourself, the truths you hide from the world (you 10 per center you!); YOU. You are your soul. Your soul knows when you are working for the devil and will let you know. You know the machinery of the system because you suffer the waking up, and the little deaths through this overtaxed drudgery we have convinced ourselves must be borne every day. Every day you find yourself alive, it is best that you understand, and decide that your existence must be more than about you; it must be useful to yourself/selves, it must be useful to the immediate community (liminal as communities are — this is a victory; existing in more than one space!), and all people who are not enemies of THE PEOPLE. The people will let you know what ails them — that matatu ride when you occupy the prince/princess seat or when you are co-donda, that quick moshene with your Mama Mboga, that seemingly (and always pointless) pointless negotiation for a better ration pale Zabe, the activity of asking for a ka-ugali saucer… the people are here, and their stories will make you a better poet. The poet is now one with the people and is no longer referred to as The Artist because The Artist works for no one but The Artist, and, the system — they are a lone creature that cannibalizes on the people’s pain, points it back at them mockingly, makes a few shillings, and retreats back to their lair having done an informant’s work. The Poet is now working to redefine who they are, in a manner that helps this country define who we are, this little corporation of ours we call Kenya. Kenya will need a proper conscious redefinition of everything we have held true since snooty governor so-and-so and his red-faced wife landed here for weather, sex, Tusker, tuskers, yes massas, okay massas, and a new beginning for he, his ruddy (euphemism, sneak dissing) wife, and their little tottering totos that have yet to begin a working thing. Thing is, you are now Kenyan. You were made, and continue to, and, and will make Kenya. Kenya is Kenyan if we begin. Beginning is to begin We.
I am, amongst other things.
I am too various to be trusted
I am sometimes King & Pauper
I am sometimes too here, mostly Lone Sojourner
I am sometimes Prophet & Priest
I decree it, then live it — I am Self Fulfilling Prophecy
I am Local
I am the Speech of the Lost & Found —
I hide where you find old IDs and old CDs
And used rubber
My bed is a Graveyard for Cigarettes
I am Kamoya Kimeu on my best & worst days
History is mine, leakey can now be unearthed
The Idren must make flutes of his bones
And play a discordant music
thomas-he-of-the-most-stoopid-name-cholmondeley
Must not rest in peace
Unearth him too
Place his head in a museum, all ten wispy hairs attached to it
I am that, I am that!
I am still calling weed cheeba & pichi & grass
Eediat peegs still watching
I A M anti- the A L P H A B E T
B O I s
Short short wearing attackers of Ayiti — TET ZOZO!
I am all these and coming to more
I am the bringer of darkness to light
I am the Tuareg, never Berber (call US by OUR names
or it’s US vs. U. S.)
I am the pink cloth
I am the blue dye
I am the-let-those-who-want-to-die-die-bruh ism
That’s my religion
I am the life is real life all the time man schism
I am watching them dance alone to Makeba —
Consented voyeurism in public type
I am what is to come
I am the unwritten play one has worked on for 5 years
I am that dance with words — foreign and my own
I wish I didn’t sometimes dream in engleesh
I wish the voices in my head all spoke Tigania all the time
I wish
Then I AM
