Freedom

 

Her boobs decided that they no longer need a house.

Because they've got nothing to lose.

They're no longer worried about the loose straps,

that would peep underneath the blouse.

or the one black brazier that reminded them of the famous song, ,  "Where you go I'll go."

Or of Naomi and Ruth.

On a cold morning, they poke at everyone they meet. 

Frozen and itchy.

Sometimes  sensitively painful to remind her that she's about to bleed. 

They have the freedom to swing,

North and South without being caged underneath tight bras.

To the direction of the winds and to the rhythm of her haste..

Independence at last.

©Elizabeth Opiyo

Second Hand Wings

I learnt to fly with second hand wings.

Wings I borrowed from Maruge

A seeker of knowledge who already lived in his future,

But owned wings of a vulture, 

wings capable of flying away from a prison type of culture

Wings determined to grab opportunities with price tags set on the sky and sealed with the clouds for only those who own binoculars.

The type of opportunities with  qualifications designed for someone born on February 31st.

These wings I borrowed from a mysterious Kifudu dancer.

A dancer whose choreographic moves could not conform to the rhythm of an oppressor,

Her movement a social justice extravaganza,

Mekatilili Wa Menza. 

Her wings strongly built to fight and unite, 

To break into mouths and set free each word hushed under the tongue, 

imprisoned and swallowed whole.

Wings so strong and bold they broke the prison doors,

 For she knew that Freedom is not money to be earned. 

These wings I borrowed from the woman of trees.

A revolutionary woman who wore a GREEN BELT with so much pride, 

you could think her closet knew only one color, 

a belt she tied tight around her waist with so much valor.

Wangari Maathai.

These wings you see, 

I borrowed from a grandmother,

A grandmother who bore six children to secure a future,

But the future brought grandchildren left behind,

Hungry for a mother’s touch, they call her mum,

Hungry for education she can't afford

she single handedly tills  the land from sunrise through sunset

For the farm produce is the only form of currency she knows to be school fees.

She ties them tight on her bent back as if nothing can separate them 

 Yet they're two generations apart.

Authentic independence and artificial intelligence

A baby boomer and a Gen-Z if that sounds familiar. 

Her positivity the type that makes you wonder if God

 adds cations to her oxygen every time she breaths.

See I owe very bad debts

The debts I'm expected to pay with interests

Even though the only interest I have,

I use to write poetry

The type of poetry that strangles me at a quarter past midnight

Nagging me to carry it to the stage.

So let me write with courage and rage.

Let my pen numb this pain.

If that’s the only way a poet can be sane.

Or the only currency I can use to settle these debts.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

©Elizabeth Opiyo

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

When a Woman Says She's Cramping

The next time a woman tells you she's cramping, never trivialize her pain. I know that period pains are not normal but it's pain untold. The kind you wish you'd be dead already. Darkness dominates your world and at the far corner of your bedroom is your breath laughing at you, yet you can't touch it. Everyone who has met me in the wake of those pains has seen exactly what a woman resurrected from death looks like.

Here is a poem I wrote during one of those.

When a woman says she's cramping,

Her world is cracking and breaking and aching and bleeding and burning.

Her stomach the center of all the atrocities.

She's seated on the toilet multitasking. Throwing up and asking her pain how much toilet paper should a bleeding woman spend for five days.

Before she calculates, she's crawling on the floor and rolling over in bed.

Every particle that hits her stomach is thrown out,

until nothing is left but her throat to come out.

Allover her tummy are the blisters left by hot water bottles she so expected to relieve the pain.

Insults sound like, 'get a man' 'get a baby'

Exercise, 'oh just cramps! Women problems!

So when a woman says she's cramping,

allow her to frown, to groan and moan for her body is a warzone.

She's won these battles on her own.

Allow her to chase you away she doesn't need you.

Far away from her world if you can't take her uterus away.

Allow her to crave for chocolates and ice cream at midnight and if she doesn't get it,

allow her to scream.

Don't judge the tantrums and the yelling.

Don't touch her she's allergic and fragile.

She might be wishing death upon herself.

Cursing her uterus for the torture,

wondering how heartless is Mother Nature,

And how ruthless is the creator.

Why the overdose of Buscopan, Ibuprofen, Ponstan and even induction would never touch the pain.

So when a woman says she's cramping,

allow her to be, a woman.

A friend

 

Crown Of Thorns

Replaying on the left side of my heart,

Are the words you said to me,

Still sharp like the wicked crown of thorns.

And they've been distracting my arteries from pumping blood.

I tried to push them to the back of my head,

 But realized that they could ring in my ears,

 Every time I knock my toes.

Everyday has been a struggle,

A battle to detach my thoughts from the truth of those words.

A fight to convince myself that I couldn't trust someone so dumb.

A soul search to teach my body how to be numb.

And my  tears how to slow down.

But how can I win the fight,

When every time I look into your eyes,  

Those words point back at me, 

Dangerous and capable of stabbing.

Be Grateful

Before you ask God to take away some hours from the day and add them in the night, think of the insomniacs. Be grateful.

Dear Heart By Elizabeth Opiyo

 

Dear heart,

I know you're bruised. Again.

You feel ugly and lonely

Because the one and only,

is no longer the one.

You can't trace any part of you that once felt beautiful.

Darkness has replaced every part of you that endowed you with light.

And I can feel the pain stabbing and chocking every organ in you that has been strong.

Betrayal is sucking blood from the same veins you've kept loyal. 

While hatred has stolen oxygen from the arteries you've taught love.

You're bleeding and clotting because you don't want to show.

You're sobbing behind the bathroom doors in front of a mirror.

Because the world is not supposed to know.

Because to this world so much strength you owe.

And to your religion, much more.

But I still admire how you are capable of forgiving and healing.

Like a desert saguaro betrayed by the rains yet still holds on to the soil with hopes for another season.

So please introduce me to your god.

Tell him that I need deliverance from a demon of attachment and expectations!

So that dear precious heart,

Before I break you,

I will choose you.

And I'll be able to choose distance over tolerance.

I'll know the exact time to start the race.

And if distance means 100/km per hour,

I'll pace.

Faster than Roger Banister and Usain Bolt.

As if running from Catherine Ndereba and Kipchoge Keino

And I'll keep going,

Like Thomas Sankara with a determination for revolution.

If  I die I die.

Running!

Dear Mouth by Elizabeth Opiyo

Dear mouth,

please be patient enough to swallow the words that the ears feed you.

I hope the choice you make,

to either stay closed or open,

is only for a better cause; 

To heal and to bless. 

To make happy and wise.

To learn and make peace.

Whenever confidence is less

because what you're about to utter makes no sense, 

I hope you find peace in silence.

When a Hitler or a lucifer pays you a surprise visit,

decipher the words to swallow and the ones to spit.

Do not  conspire with them in silence.

So when silence becomes a pestilence, 

Please open up and make some noise 

For your self, and the voiceless. 

And when anger is bitter,

be still to distill the taste stuck on your tongue, 

Not because you are weak,

not because you can't speak,

but because you're confident and kind,

enough to give the mind the time to think and the ear a chance to listen.

Because ego doesn't suit you,

for emotional intelligence is your favorite shed of lipstick.

The Bird Of The Desert By Elizabeth Opiyo

Dear Desert Bird, 

I know you’ve been stuck, and for a while you’ve been fumbling.

For miles and miles you’ve been stumbling, into the terrains and the ravines.

The winds have been sending heavy puffs of dust to block your ways.

Winding and whistling into your ears that there is no way out.

But tonight I thought of you and I am woke to remind you this,

God gave you the strongest wings,

No matter your size, no matter your pace.

The desert is your home of identity, your root, but not your destiny.

It’s the beginning of strength,

The strength that presses you hard down the soil to grow roots deep enough to reach for water,

The strength that holds your wings so firm you’ve never been blown away by the storms.

The journey, the heat and the struggles seem endless, the oasis out of reach,

But your perched skin will soon be restored it will glow.

Cherish that cold freezing morning,

When you wake up with your wings frozen, bones fragile and almost breaking.

Like a grasshopper you’ve been hoping I know.

Never stop hoping.

Until you land on that grass you saw far away in your dreams.

Woman awake By Elizabeth Opiyo

                                                           

Hi guys, you can now watch the video here.                                                                                      

                                                                                                                                   

Transcript[   

I grew up in the arms of a queen,

Who got married off to a man more of a grandfather than a husband at the age of ten.

At the age of thirteen, she was selling tea in the school’s canteen,

Wishing that her eyes would have known what the inside of a classroom looked like,

A wish that only brought about memories from the days she disliked to recall.

Those ugly early lonely mornings in her father’s house,

When she could leave home together with her brothers,

But at a crossroads part ways,

When the boys could take the road leading to school,

But alone, she could take the one leading to the river.

In her world, there wasn’t even the faintest colour of hope,

Even if she dreamt of a future,

When culture would set her free and let her live up to her God given potential,

Days that the society would measure the strength and worth of a woman,

Not by the number of children she could bear,

Or the clothes she could wear,

But the lives she could inspire

She was still reminded that she is not good enough,

Not even her mother ever saw that future.

Walking down the streets of Soweto in the evenings,

She is reminded to rush home,

If her husband ever got home before her,

She’d be buttered.

Taking her back to the olden days in her father’s home,

She was punished harshly for getting home late,

Just before she could explain why

She felt useless,

Because, she was taught to see herself less

Being loved is good, but being heard feels even better,

Holding back her voice was the only choice she had left

As if her voice was one thing that God forgot when making her,

Her ideas not good enough for their ears,

She nursed her fears for years,

As if life was built of walls that gave no way out,

She blamed her own walls for betraying her,

But fed up with kitchen soot,

She broke down the walls and escaped to freedom.

Setting free the woman she had imprisoned for twenty-two years

She moved to the front line realizing that the backseat had had enough of her,

And it felt like she was getting in touch with life for the first time.

So she told me that, if they ask you for milk,

Give them water,

If that’s all you can afford to offer,

But even better, give them milkshake and butter,

Shake their hands and let them find in you that you are a woman,

You can just be more than they asked for,

Show them that men and women alike,

Are equally important.

And it doesn’t mean that as a woman,

You deserve any leadership position just because gender needs to be balanced,

Let your qualities be the reason.

Aketch by Elizabeth Opiyo

Aketch told me that her lips know the bitter taste of poverty,
Like Nelson Mandela knew his way to liberty,
And that’s why she gives to charity.

But I told her that,
You only know what poverty tastes like,
if your mother or your grandmother, sat on stones waiting for jobs that never came.
or tirelessly tilled other people's lands,
while her stomach was always a flat tire
because all the bread she earned she let you have.


If you were washing clothes without soap,
When your friends were watching soap operas,
And the only view you could afford, was the vision of owning a television someday.
You watched your Koroboi go off,
And with incomplete homework you crashed out.

I told her,
that you know what poverty tastes like,
if your old soul still remembers the cold sleepless nights,
when you tried to sign peace treaties with your empty stomach,
but in vain it chose war.
and you gazed into darkness in the middle of the night wondering,
if the small intestines are the Mau Mau fighters,
and the colons are fighting to colonize them,
making you realize that some wars take place within us,
and resilience is how we fight back.



I told Aketch that you only know what poverty tastes like,
if your elder brother dropped out of Primary six
because education could wait,
but the rumbling stomach of his hungry siblings could not.
A problem he was shot on the head trying to fix.
The sound of that bullet sent the ghetto into dead silence,
as if it took their voices away,
or just a moment of silence for a big brother who became a father before he was a child.
The next morning rumors said it was robbery with violence.
The only reason you still see through your schoolwork.

Convinced that the freedom out of your chronic poverty is through education.

*koroboi –paraffin lantern