I often remember with a lot of thrill in my spine every time I reflect on the Writings of Miguna Miguna in his book peeling Back the Masks, a certain sub-plot that most of Kenyan students in Canada, America, Britain, Germany or Australia often fail to go through pre-university examinations and then they opt for faculty friendly courses like carpentry and electrical-wire man offered at some polytechnics in this countries. Then these students end up living as informal sector workers in the Diaspora, and hence putting themselves into a cash strapped condition that they don’t easily come back home. This is also the same texture of revelations I have been encountering for the past five months of my regular reading of the literary pages of The Saturday Nation, in which a most of Kenyans write alongside some foreigners, but notably Professor Austin Bukenya as the foreign writer, Bukenya himself being a Ugandan.
The revelations are that the writers who were regularly writing on these pages sometimes ago have gradually waned up, not because of anything but due to their intellectual irrelevance. Mostly caused by a defect of intellectual inferiority. They were the likes of Evans Mwangi; Mwangi was forthrightly coming up with a tribally fine-tuned niche in the name of being Ngugi wa Thiong’o scholar. He had a specialization in writing about Ngugi because Ngugi is his tribesman, they are both Kikuyu’s.He also had substantial writings on Ngugi’s children; Mukoma, Lee, Nducu and Wanjiku wa Ngugi, who are in similar stretch of their father struggling to be established as writers. But all in all, Professor Evans Mwangi has already ended up as an intellectual without consequences.
Another writer in point was one; Dr Tom Odhiambo, who also teaches literature at the University of Nairobi. He had been writing on the same pages but with a strong bent towards Luo Chauvinism and stark Conspiracy against Luhyia veteran literary Critic Professor Chris Wanjala.
The only Kenyan literary activist who has been trying to remain globally vogue in his literary writings on this platform is Dr Godwin Siundu; he often displays Global relevance through his pataphorous approach to literary appreciations and criticism.
But whatsoever the case, professor Bukenya has towered seriously above these Kenyans.Bukenya’s command of English language and literary command has no match on the Kenyan literary market. Bukenya Tackles globalectics of literature as Kenyans struggle with tribalism of their home literature.Ethinicity is the enemy of Kenyan literature and as well an established foe of any other Kenyan professional perspective.
Why Kenyans are threatened with intellectual suffocation when exposed to otherness is because of a few reasons. As cited above ethinicism remains a dominant factor. But also, lack of homogenous public language, absence of ideology in their political history, failure of politics to achieve common nationalism and corruption in the public sector are contributing forces among others.
Your consecutive  look at the literary pages of  the Saturday Nation of the previous three weekends will be an empirical testimony to this position.Bukenya’s stories have surveyed dialectics of English language, aging of African literature , translation and greatness of Uganda orature with a focus on Okot P’ Bitek. And this weekend he has beautifully lime-lighted on Julius Nyerere’s Intellectual tigritude. Nyerere’s as the killer of colonialism but while at the same time he lingered as the staunch lover of Shakespeare.
This is simply a farcical repetition of the previous tragic history, as reflected in the words of Karl Marx in his 18th Brumaire, which made the Ugandan educated Sudanese Poet, Taban Reneket Makititiyong Lo Liyong to look at Kenya’s literary poverty and then take a synechedochal stand to decry that east Africa is a literary desert. He was right, but in a sense he did not mean east Africa per se, he meant Kenya .Kenya at that time had only an English Department at the University of Nairobi. The department was poorly performing in terms of research. It was desperately tethered duplicating of the European classics as its literary overture.
But when the foreign and radical blood came to Kenya, in guest of helping Kenya to overcome the fog in the seasons end from colonial mire to literary and cultural freedom, Native Kenyans were surprisingly never friendly to them at all at all. Some of the intellectuals who had come to Kenya that time were the greats like :Ezekiel Mphalele from south Africa, Okot p’ Bitek from Uganda,Okello Oculii from Uganda,Ayi Kwei Armah from Ghana, Joie De Graft from Ghana, Walter Rodney from Guyana, Austeen Bukenya from Uganda and Taban Lo Liyong from Uganda.
All of these foreigners in Kenya have later on been absolved by time and history  as literary greats.They have proved clear intellectual and literary superlativety  over and above all Kenyans. The point of contrite is that, Kenyans of that era did not give them a chance to share their intellectual resource with the peasants and masses of Kenya. Instead Kenyan bureaucrats began their usual came of intimidation and tribal nagging whenever intellectually outshone.
Austeen Bukenya was condemned into poverty at Machakos girls high school to be an English teacher or a teacher of English without a salary. Liyong and Pitek were perpetually witch-hunted out of University of Nairobi by Ngugi and Wanjala. Rodney and Armah were frustrated until they desperately moved to Tanzania from where they wrote their respective oeuvres. Armah wrote Why are we Blessed, While Rodney wrote the world famous book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Mphalele was frustrated to oblivion, only for him to die mysteriously when on a literary tour in West Africa.
But sadly enough, the Kenyans who were seriously illiterate, in the  likes of : Daniel Moi, Jomo Kenyatta, Ezekiel Barengtunny  and many intellectuals so-so’s shamelessly made themselves to be  chancellors of the Universities .They were chancellors who never went beyond class seven of primary schools in their child hood. They then became bovaristic if not atavistic only to begin writing lame books like Nyayo Philosophy, Suffering without Bitterness, Facing Mount Kenya and other literary trash of the same calibre. It is this intellectual sludge that they again turned to impose as compulsory reading materials on sons and daughters of poor Kenyans.
By
Alexander K. Opicho
Eldoret, Kenya.

Self appreciation-
Poetry is like the soul
The soul being a bird
A Bird singing in it’s field,
Carrying it’s wounded heart
Across a bare land of hope
In search of it’s dreams.
As a blind man,
can hear every note from the bird precisely and accurately.
A deaf man can see all her beautiful vivid colors in her feathers.
Trying to build strength along they way Not to lose faith On each of their hardened journey.
Facing the reality of each their own dreams truth, One on one.
Taking the time,
Looking in their minds mirror,
Giving thanks to their soul’s For the life it has given to them.
Thanking their life for Building a complete fulfilling memory Of accomplishing the greatest of ones deepest sincerities in goals.
-Pure Inner Strength

our kisses were as soft as our hearts & this must be the seed of all that came thereafter,
and all that didn't see light outside my mind.

perhaps our soft hearts led to my current introspection and my disposition when it comes to
pens, papers,
and all that lies
between them in truth,
in confessions by
soft tongues in shaky lips in scattered sheets in paling cheeks and blushing eyes,
in that which lies
between thought and its expression,
between brutal honesty in the heat of an oncoming summer,
in mosquito bites and my sweet blood which attracts this
violence, this heatstroke
sunshine;
it is divine,
like we imagined,

it is hectic like we desired,
it is nonsense and is madness and knows no explanation other than our
awkward silence,
our differences in imagined futures,
our various degrees of love/hate passive-aggressive
actions and feelings and resentments and appreciations;

we both are optimistic but you believe in that which counters my belief and it is
strange and unexpected and before you,
i needed someone,

and after you,
i need to be alone

Haven’t I sung you songs?
Written you into poetry steadily and freely?
Haven’t I brought you along?
And covered you in the night when you felt hearts song?
Haven’t I thought of you when you needed to go run along?
Let you travel on your own
Behind the wheel of a new priced tone?
Wasn’t it Conscientiousness’ effort when I let in?
When you yelled at your children.
And they yelled too?
Wasn’t it a mess learning to live?
But through it all we kept close and hid?
And to you.
Wasn’t it grand how we drank and listened to Disney at night?
Or how we sang karaoke
While others laughed but so what?  What blast we had!
And to you.
Didn’t we bring each other a cup of tea in our time of need?
Leaving you to rest in our nest?
And to you.
Didn’t I pick you up?
Bought, then chose.
The bar I raised.  Then let go.
Just to have you close.
And to you.
What different set of values?
What lie and conviction do you pride on?
I shouldn’t fold – it’s really nothing new..There’s been so many like you.
Appreciation is what’s needed. When all is unforgiving.
It’s the flowers you sent
It’s the call or text
It’s the I’m sorry when I was wrong.
It’s showing when push comes to shove.
And to you.
No talk no banter
No life so what matters?
And to you.
Saying to much in small words
Letting me rise
Only to flatter.
That’s life here in this God forsaken game.
No Earth to give it what its needs
No Time that helped its leaves.
Falling in a grave
Only to rise again.
Because God only provides
In these to you, will never arise.
Copyright 2013 Edward Perez

Disaster is my master
I've seen chaos in mediocre valleys
Murdered by my feet in the dark alleys,
I am a hazard

Cringing by the needles of the ****** addicts
Chicago is my town
With concrete giants towering
And city people behind dark windows cowering

But, stop right there

What is this disaster? I am speaking of
Down hard and fallen
The windy city government failure is only a small token

A token of no appreciations, comprehension, solitary explosions, or time stamp expirations.
So come to this city and see the real masters of deviation and drive by cancellations

You will see these people distant passed the time and places
With empty shoes, empty futures and empty faces
Please talk to the drunkards begging for another shot of gin with all together no more chances

This disaster is in front of you
Simple, solemn, messed up and confused
I beg you, don't walk past them and forget, you could be there too

I just don't want to see you downplayed, hungry or depraved.
Restrained, contained or in constant pain.
And Lord knows this revelation of what you want to be is only left outside under the constant rain

In the moonlight
Spirits of two lovers
Dance
A ghostly dance
The spirit of a senior monk
And a young woman
Dancing hauntingly
Then they kiss
And soon the appreciations
Smokey disappear
It is said that
It happens in autumn.

Every morning she woke up early
When emptiness would invade the court  
But she would break her each sweat
Being crystal clear about her goal

Her every victory and her every loss
Made her improve from who she was  
She had dreams to achieve, races to compete in
She didn’t have time to give up

She recognised her weaknesses  
Determined and earnest  
She toiled alone each day  
She worked hard to be the best  

Slowly, patience seemed to wear out
The results weren’t in haste
Loss after loss gave its taste to her
She accepted it as her fate

She let the thread loose
The fire inside of her seemed to be dim
Things that she cared so much for
Seemed so far away, so slim

She was made of passion
Of a driving sensation
And all she amounts to now
Are long lost appreciations

I may not be able to provoke beauty
in my words.
Nod.
For I'm just a writer with no experience
of any masterpiece.

But for those appreciations, all of you
have given to my works.
Smile.
For each has left butterfly that will always
be inside my chest.

And that is irrevocable.

Go,tell your mom how beautiful she looks,
wearing an apron and chopping a tomato
or simply just adore the way she cooks.
Go,tell a knock-knock joke to your dad
or start a tickle fight with baseless laughter so tight,
but take a picture, while he laughs like a little child
because this magical moment would be the only reason you smiled.
Just sit with your grandparents for a while when they tell you,
all the embarrassing childhood things that you did
go knitting and gardening with your grandma today,
or just paint her nails, while she tells you her young age tales.
Go,tell your siblings how supportive they've been;
maybe in growing up or a career to begin,
maybe by giving a much needed Choco chip ice cream after a breakup or just a shoulder to lean.
Reminisce those beautiful old days with your friends over your go-to chai ki tapri
thank them for always sticking around
may it be
from the first day at school, the endless gossips, the after class fun ,college fests to a legit job interview
Celebrate when your friend's youtube channel hits1k,
appreciate them when they bake a cake for the first time,
listen up while they tell you something very dear,
dance and sing with them while they are ******* euphoric.
just be with them in their thicks and thins and remember how they have been there too.
because amidst the hustle,
our hearts will only be pacified by these little gestures, small appreciations and the feeling of being connected to the people we love,
maybe its about loving and showing love that our hearts will always crave for.
-vanshita gogri

The rational connection of mind to heart, fails;  amidst oppression.
And selfs' own sake will hide away, concede;  deny expression.
As I, now, twisted internal, seeking within, my fill.
For famine of mankinds' virtues, beckons me to my own will.

To draw upon my minds' well waters, reason every discourse thrown,
But are these resolves born true? Is this slant really my own?
Or some opinion, stole in past, from man with noble name,
Or truly this, my own wit? But impressed, are they not the same?

Though  life revealed foe, of friend; the spirits' urge will still attend.
And Hope; unbound, ever present, dwells; unfaltering, fervent to end.
And Faith, oh Faith, clings on, clings on;  amidst war and grief, despair.
Such as a moth to a miniscule light, when the beam is no longer there.

Though I have no mortal hand to clasp, no steps in tune to compose,
Behold, Hope and Faith still wander inside,  and outward, in my prose.
And what of Nature? I'll tell you. Possession of a freedom I full own.
No enemy, traitor, nor judge can claim the memories I have known.

The majestic crystal sparkling, of tiny buds on trees.
When noon is at its' highest, clear day on summers' eve.
Deafening quiet, stillness yet, of brook in land, far, near.
Where all alone, I gathered pebbles, and threw to spring so clear.

To sit and almost ponder, paths foreborne, foregone and chose,
Then too pensive, outcast those thoughts, minds' purpose opted close.
And stared, vacant, purposeless; to focal point, of what?, unsure;
Oppression could not enter there; for nature and heart were pure.

And dear sweet wind to hydrate, the thirst; sunquenched,  my skin,
Yet not too fierce or frequent, that would be appreciations' sin.
Clouds, course set  by own accord, frolicking, playfully, with the sun,
Flit over, near, under, and back, and then softly, become just one.

And behold, grey cloud, rumbling, with precipice; this is natures'way,
To alter sky and mind inspire;  grant seasons within the day.
And rain; higher powers' solace, to cool, to heal, to renew,
Sparkles more grandly at times by far, then sun on the morning dew.


May life impose upon my heart, oppression, body frail, dreary cope,
It shall not ever wrench the hold of Nature, Faith, and Hope.