February 28, 2007 at 7:36 pm · Filed under poems of hope
Meet me.
I am infinity.
In me are depths even I haven’t plumbed.
Let’s take a dive together,
blindness is such a misunderstood gift,
let’s discover the unknown.
we have too much “knowledge”
put limits on the unknowable too quickly.
What I want is to go beyond the physical,
beyond that which comes to men and women too easily,
I want to plumb the depths of your soul,
I want you to dive into mine too.
Discover me.
Too much conflict has been put onto that terrible word- ‘love’,
It contains too much ritual,
a holding and tugging at images of ourselves.
I don’t want to use it,
I want to use other words instead,
words that have not yet been overused.
I prefer to say- know me.
Take courage and dive into the abyss,
there you shall find,
not the meaningless drizzle of ‘love’,
but an ocean of life.
You will find the authentic experience
an enveloping, nurturing and warming togetherness
safe from the narrow confines of “normal” human experience.
That is what I seek,
not a relationship,
not a love tryst
not any of these things we have categorised so well,
but a true meeting of the souls.
an unpublished poem by Mary Kimani, dated October 23 2004.
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- unpublished poem by Mary Kimani, dated, 31 January 2007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.