Hope in Hopeless Crisis

As a dark cloud overwhelmed my thoughts, I started whispering...

Find me a guitar I lament for you my agony,
Find me a microphone I voice my sorrows
Find me a pen I narrate for you a story that rip my heart apart
Find me time I tell you how helpless I feel

Helpless as I listen to the woman cry for her murdered child
Helpless as I watch her weeping in front of her raped daughter
Helpless as I see her finding comfort on her husband’s grave
Helpless as she tells me of her slaughtered son

Helpless as I gaze at her begging to exist
Helpless as I kneel with her begging her kind not to oppress her own
Helpless as I look at her calling on her maker for salvation
Helpless as I contemplate at her seeking hope from the horizon

Find her picking of what is left in the Rift Valley,
Find her re-purify her face in Lake Naivasha
Find her counting losses in tea plantation in Kerico
Find her echo in Nandi Hills calling for Peace….

Find me, helpless wondering if there is more I can do to help…

Last night the moon and I were talking, I found hope in helpess situation

Hope that exist within
Hope that looks beyond human greed
Hope that finds good in human spirit when evil surrounds
Hope that I see in the sky filled with smoke from burnt houses

Hope that I see in the horizon of my imagination
Hope that goes beyond the shadows of yesterday
Hope that over comes yesterday’s hatred
Hope that confronts my memory of conflict

Hope that looks beyond human eyes
Hope that sees present suffering ending
Hope that has faith in today’s youth, in the unborn generation
Hope that destroys selfish oppressors’ plans

Hope in hopeless crisis…

By David Mwambari
USIU 2008

Untitled

The mouth of my pen is dry
The ink is shy and the paper untempting
The tears of the nation have drowned my spirits
The fires and fears have imprisoned most
The bullets ringing in the night ushered in the new year
Screams of pain and death rang through the midnight hour
And As Kenya bleeds, as our motherland burns
The powers that be dance on our heads and emotions
The powers that be call on outside mediators
While the problem lays within the very soul of Kenyans
The fire burns from regimes past and those long forgotten
The pain soars higher than our smoke filled skies
And the children watch on in innocent bewilderment
At the loss of their simple homes
At the helplessness of their crying mothers
and at the mercilessness of their angered fathers
...at the despair of their disillusioned brothers and sisters
they queue in line for entrance into temporary shelters.
Our choice of men how erroneous and regretful
Their hunger for power strangles our very core
Women and children scurry for shelter at any corner
Away from flames that have engulfed a nation of brotherhood
Brothers and sisters poisoned to hate those not of kin
Poisoned in history, past and present.
The newly homeless refugees hold out a hand, for a loaf and cloth
Yet the puppet masters smile into the cameras
Ironically wishing us a prosperous new year
Calling for mass action and peace on earth
Waltzing with the mighty and holy from lands afar
Yet the locals dare not go hunting for basic essentials
For fear of what lays in that looting jungle
Or the indiscriminate bullets that scatter us like rabbits
Some even sing and chant in hope of more glory and fame
Singing of peace and praying for salvation
In stiletto shoes and low-cut halter tops
camera-lights-action, we sing for peace!
And like bees we flock to the nearest shelter in jamuhuri
But safe and secure it must be, unlike mathare
To lend a hand and wait for a shot in the evening news
and maybe a model snap, in the Daily Nation
What is this fire that burns in the heart of our motherland
What is this fear that turns one community against a another
Who planted the seed that blooms an evil weed
That weed that chokes the harvest of our forefathers and mothers?

By Jedida Oneko (Kenyan Poet, Activist, Journalist)