A collection of poetry and reflections by African Writer Mary Kimani
Archive for Poems of War
July 23, 2007 at 2:18 pm · Filed under Poems of War
Cease assisting,
let me die in peace.
Don’t you know?
in some cases,
death is preferable to life,
preferable to pain
preferable to anguish
preferable to hope.
Hope is like an open sore
open and vulnerable to the elements.
each additional injury
making it sore and sensitive.
And in the midst of this unceasing rain,
Drenching us cold,
Soaking our mud walled rooms,
Trickling through the pock marched roof
What do you want me do to or say
Will you still demand of me
Strength and courage
Am I not allowed to weep?
And cry
And groan and moan?
Am I not allowed to weep?
July 23, 2007 at 2:15 pm · Filed under Poems of War
Refugee camp
I imagined many things…
But not this-
Not misery raining from the sky
not homes long overgrown
not miles of farmland abandoned
un-harvested produce- rotting
not acres of humanity
acres of miserable
pitiful humanity
soaking in the rain.
June 26, 2007 at 3:41 pm · Filed under Poems of War
Atrophy
In the mulch around the budding trees, insects crawl about.
Snakes, salamanders and frogs
slithering and jumping about everywhere.
The waters are dirty. There are no fish in the sea.
We live small dirty lives,
damp,miserable,cold lives,
full of crawling things
that slitter in the underbrush.
The nights are getting longer and darker the sun shines no more.
Weeds have overgrown the farms,
fungus thrives on every spot,
eating out the very life of us
little by little.
Yeasts and other scavengers
have found residence in and on our skin.
It is as if the very heart of us is poisoned,
covered by a morass and accumulation of dirty fungi
and putrid, dying flesh.
The trees around us are bent by the weight of
the ugly emotions in the atmosphere,
I look at you and see my ugliness mirrored there.
Published in He Didn’t Die Easy; The Search for Hope Amid Poverty, War and Genocide
June 26, 2007 at 3:37 pm · Filed under Poems of War
Grey clouds glide by darkly tonight,
a dark ominous moon shines from on high,
its cream and reddish rays fall to the ground,
disturbing our peace.
This night will not so easily pass.
It will be a long and endless night,
in yours and my mind.
The air around us heaves with wrongness,
someone’s insane laugher resounds through the evening,
like the echo of unruly flood water
rushing down the eroded gulleys
that form steep waterfalls in our minds.
Shadows and darkness abound
we cannot flee-
What is this our hands have crafted?
What plant is this we have put to the ground?
We send out our children to meet the ogres
meet the devouring creatures we have nurtured,
and the acts we have perpetrated…
have become their atrocious inheritance.
Published in He Didn’t Die Easy; The Search for Hope Amid Poverty, war and Genocide
March 8, 2007 at 8:29 pm · Filed under Poems of War
The stairwell goes nowhere.
It cascades endlessly into emptiness—
Hopes lie dashed somewhere at the end of this
infinity.
The flowers bloom,
but there is no scent.
Bees do not come here.
The apparent look of life
hides the death that encroaches day after day.
There is a weeping sound in the wind:
you won’t hear it,
but I do.
It is the familiar sound of wailing minds.
I pause, listen, and weep.
There is little else to do.
We have been dying a long time,
and though the bodies no longer litter the streets,
the dying has not stopped.
We die a little every day,
peering down the stairwell that goes nowhere,
reaching in vain
for the hopes that lie dashed
somewhere at the end of this infinity.
Poem by Mary Kimani, published in He Didn’t Die Easy
March 2, 2007 at 3:32 pm · Filed under Poems of War
The valley is steeped,
green grass as far as the eye can see…
And it covers a mass grave.
I know not the others
But I know a child lies there,
A child I put to death.
Carved him out with a knife
Into pieces.
I did not look to his face
Afraid to acknowledge what I had done in my heart
But it has not helped.
That green valley is in my mind
I carry it everywhere I go
The mass grave is in my mind
The bones are in my mind
The dead bodies are buried in my conscience,
I cannot flee
I cannot flee.
Unpublished poem by Mary Kimani, dated August 20, 2004
March 2, 2007 at 3:16 pm · Filed under Poems of War
When the poem began
We were walking on the streets,
You and I,
Hand in hand-
When the poem began
We were laughing,
You and I,
Hand in hand,
When the poem began.
And we traveled on
You and I,
Blissfully unaware,
Of all the things that the world saw as different-
Between you and I,
When the poem began.
But as the poem progressed,
We dared to look at each other
And alas,
We began to see,
All the things that we had never bothered to see
Those things that were different
Between you and I.
So as the poem progressed
We saw difficulties we had never seen before
And we became afraid,
And we began to fight,
reasonably at first,
Then nastier and nastier,
Until anyone who had seen us as friends,
Could recognise us no more-
The poem is coming to an end
And as we looked into each other’s eyes
We couldn’t help but wonder
What had gone wrong.
Now we stand
Each on his own
And I am afraid to ask
If we can let the poem begin anew.
March 1, 2007 at 6:43 pm · Filed under Poems of War
Pain holds me prisoner
The dungeon deep, cold and moss grown.
Each day, the plays for me
Memories from the war.
I stare constantly at vistas
Filled with wailing mothers
And non existent fathers.
And my soil filled hands
Give testimony
To the numbers we have buried.
Pain hold me prisoner.
His dungeon deep, cold and moss grown.
An unpublished poem by Mary Kimani, dated June 30, 2002
February 28, 2007 at 7:28 pm · Filed under Poems of War
Gnarled tree,
Pockmarked and studded
Thousands of fungal outgrowths.
She sits.
And prays.
It marks the central pole of a prayer hut
The kind you never find in the western world
But this is not it.
This is Africa.
She sits
And prays.
Paraffin lamp flickers
Shadows cast around the hut walls
Like gargoyles
Staring at the woman
She prays…
Eyes wide open
Transfixed
By thousands of fungal outgrowths…
Revulsion
Wells up inside her
Heart mottled and pockmarked
Shame resides here
Parastic,
Leaching life,
Faith
Hope..
She prays..
Seeking relief
Finding none
God lives here no more
Only humans…
Ah humans…
Prayers unheard,
Agony abounds
There is no way to undo the hurt
No way to erase the pain
No way to unmake the made
No way to unrape the raped.
And so shame
Grows
Like a fungal outgrowth on this tree…
Life a fungal outgrowth on this heart.
- unpublished poem by Mary Kimani, dated, 31 January 2007
February 28, 2007 at 7:11 pm · Filed under Poems of War
I have been so afraid.
I start to write and I panic.
Thoughts come like a torrent, threatening to overwhelm me.
So many questions,
so many images,
so many things I want to say,
shout,
cry out—
But they refuse to come out in neat and tidy order.
And so I leave it, turn the page,
start again a few months down the line,
hoping by then there will be less turmoil,
fewer shadows jumping at me from the recesses of my mind—
But they come all over again,
the ramblings of a troubled mind.
19 March 2002
Published in ; He Didn’t Die Easy; The Search for Hope amid Poverty, War and Genocide.