Toward a More Perfect Union - Poems by JKS Makokha
- By JKS Makokha
- Published September 5, 2009
- Poetry
-
Rating:
JKS Makokha
JKS Makokha is a Kenyan writer living in Berlin, Germany. He is the author of Reading M.G. Vassanji: A Contextual Approach to Asian African Fiction (2009) and co-editor of a new volume on African literary criticism, Negotiating Afropolitanism: Essays on Borders and Spaces in Contemporary African Literature and Folklore (2010) with Jennifer Wawrzinek. Makokha teaches courses in African and South Asian literatures at the Institut fur Englische Philologie at the Freie Universitat Berlin.
View all Entries by JKS Makokha
I. The Footpaths of Thought
They wind narrowly but with such grace;
these pathways our evening thoughts retrace,
when we, after work, abandon, somehow
the daily weight of worldly affairs
to savour some measure of mental rest.
When in crowdy evening company
of commuting city strangers,
many are those exclusive moments
you and i, in communion with our selves,
opt for, time-passing solo walks within,
along familiar footpaths of thought.
Each time when in solitude we meander
on these pathways within our mind
searching for spaces of sun-down serenity,
we retreat to the quiet park of inward privacy.
We retreat far away from the public reach:
away from the ways of asphalt and cement,
where man, machine, women ever in unison vent,
as each steps, tirelessly, on toes or tires of each.
II. TJRC and Other Recent Thoughts
We shall adequately browse
on the lush plateau of genuine contrition
when truth is all we tell at the TJR commission.
We shall with this truth stimulate perhaps arouse
the pulsating passions of silent patriotism.
When we through such truth confess the creed of our nationalism,
redeemed will be the dimming dreams of our unborn offspring,
as new hopes across the land will once more in bounty spring,
bouncing in leap and bound like twin calves of a succulent-breasted giraffe
browsing the topmost tender leaves of the evergreen tree of Life.
III. Confession of a Kenyan
Give me low-cost liquor, intoxicate me
Give me a bumper bribe, sleaze me,
Give me grimy gossip, slander me,
Give me much of such misdemeanours, interdict me.
But
Don’t give me newly blunted stainless steel machetes
Or vernacular radio broadcasts of blinded hate;
Don’t give me also homemade bow and/or arrows.
Such are gifts never again to be accepted or/and allowed.
IV. Truth and Lies – Where Do They Lie?
On a patch of grey in our brain
Truth and the spouse laze
Separated, of course, by a thin line.
Scout with your real eyes
Through the dense reeds of thought,
this philosophy is all you will sight.
V. The Misuse of Handcuffs
(Heartbeats)
(Tension)
“Squat!”
“What?”
“Squat!”
“But…!?”
“What?”
“Squat?”
(Jingles)
(Silence)
VI. Toward a More Perfect Union
We, the people, record in the annals of regret
That in the year of our Lord early 2008
The ears of corn, wheat and millet
Dried in the blood drenched valleys.
Here, had the business of difference once bloomed
Hear, have the rifts of distrust now mushroomed.
(c) JKS Makokha
They wind narrowly but with such grace;
these pathways our evening thoughts retrace,
when we, after work, abandon, somehow
the daily weight of worldly affairs
to savour some measure of mental rest.
When in crowdy evening company
of commuting city strangers,
many are those exclusive moments
you and i, in communion with our selves,
opt for, time-passing solo walks within,
along familiar footpaths of thought.
Each time when in solitude we meander
on these pathways within our mind
searching for spaces of sun-down serenity,
we retreat to the quiet park of inward privacy.
We retreat far away from the public reach:
away from the ways of asphalt and cement,
where man, machine, women ever in unison vent,
as each steps, tirelessly, on toes or tires of each.
II. TJRC and Other Recent Thoughts
We shall adequately browse
on the lush plateau of genuine contrition
when truth is all we tell at the TJR commission.
We shall with this truth stimulate perhaps arouse
the pulsating passions of silent patriotism.
When we through such truth confess the creed of our nationalism,
redeemed will be the dimming dreams of our unborn offspring,
as new hopes across the land will once more in bounty spring,
bouncing in leap and bound like twin calves of a succulent-breasted giraffe
browsing the topmost tender leaves of the evergreen tree of Life.
III. Confession of a Kenyan
Give me low-cost liquor, intoxicate me
Give me a bumper bribe, sleaze me,
Give me grimy gossip, slander me,
Give me much of such misdemeanours, interdict me.
But
Don’t give me newly blunted stainless steel machetes
Or vernacular radio broadcasts of blinded hate;
Don’t give me also homemade bow and/or arrows.
Such are gifts never again to be accepted or/and allowed.
IV. Truth and Lies – Where Do They Lie?
On a patch of grey in our brain
Truth and the spouse laze
Separated, of course, by a thin line.
Scout with your real eyes
Through the dense reeds of thought,
this philosophy is all you will sight.
V. The Misuse of Handcuffs
(Heartbeats)
(Tension)
“Squat!”
“What?”
“Squat!”
“But…!?”
“What?”
“Squat?”
(Jingles)
(Silence)
VI. Toward a More Perfect Union
We, the people, record in the annals of regret
That in the year of our Lord early 2008
The ears of corn, wheat and millet
Dried in the blood drenched valleys.
Here, had the business of difference once bloomed
Hear, have the rifts of distrust now mushroomed.
(c) JKS Makokha