'salman' poems - Hello Poetry

Alexander K Opicho Apr 2014

LITERARY VALUE IN AFRICA’S BENCHMARKING OF GABRIEL GARCIA MARGUEZ’S MAGICAL REALISM

Alexander K Opicho Apr 2014

LITERARY VALUE IN AFRICA’S BENCHMARKING OF GABRIEL GARCIA MARGUEZ’S MAGICAL REALISM

Given the apparent magical surrealism that the months of April is the month of fate for and death of writers, artists, dramatis, philosophers and poets, a phenomenon which readily gets support from the cases of untimely and early April deaths of; Max Weber, Miguel de Cervantes, William Shakespeare, Francis Imbuga, and Chinua Achebe  then  Wisdom of the moment behooves me to adjure away the fateful month by  allowing  me to mourn Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez by expressing my feelings of grieve through the following dirge of elegy;
You lived alone in the solitude
Of pure hundred years in Colombia
Roaming in Amacondo with a Spanish tongue
Carrying the bones of your grandmother in a sisal sag
On your poverty written Colombian back,
Gadabouting to make love in times of cholera,
On none other than your bitter-sweet memories
Of your melancholic ***** the daughter of Castro,
Your cowardice made you to fear your momentous life
In this glorious and poetic time of April 2014,
Only to succumb to untimely black death
That similarly dimunitized your cultural ancestor;
Miguel de Cervantes, a quixotic Spaniard,
You were to write to the colonel for your life,
Before eating the cockerel you had ear-marked
For Olympic cockfight, the hope of the oppressed,
Come back from death, you dear Marquez
To tell me more stories fanaticism to surrealism,
From Tarzanic Africa the fabulous land
An avatar of evil gods that are impish propre
Only Vitian Naipaul and Salman Rushdie are not enough,
For both of them are so naïve to tell the African stories,
I will miss you a lot the rest of my life, my dear Garbo,
But I will ever carry your living soul, my dear Garcia,
Soul of your literature and poetry in a Maasai kioondo
On my broad African shoulders during my journey of art,
When coming to America to look for your culture
That gave you versatile tongue and quill of a pen,
Both I will take as your memento and crystallize them
Into my future thespic umbrella of orature and literature.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, an eminent Latin American and most widely acclaimed authors, died untimely at his home in Mexico City on Thursday, 17th April 2014. The 1982 literature Nobel laureate, whose reputation drew comparisons to Mark Twain of adventures of Huckleberry Finny and Charles Dickens of hard Times, was 87 of age. Already a luminous legend in his well used lifetime, Latin American writer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez was perceived as not only one of the most consequential writers of the 20th and 21ist centuries, but also the sterling performing Spanish-language author since the world’s experience of Miguel de Cervantes, the Spanish Jail bird and Author of Don Quixote who lived in the 17th century.
Like very many other writers from the politically and economically poor parts of the world, in the likes of J M Coatze, Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer, Doris May Lessing, Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda, V S Naipaul, and Rabidranathe Tagore, Marguez won the literature Nobel prize in addition to the previous countless awards for his magically fabulous novels, gripping short stories, farcical screenplays, incisive journalistic contributions and spellbinding essays. But due to postmodern global thespic civilization the Nobel Prize is recognized as most important of his prizes in the sense that, he received in 1982, as the first Colombian author to achieve such literary eminence. The eminence of his work in literature communicated in Spanish are towered by none other than the Bible, especially  in its Homeric style which Moses used when writing the book of Genesis and the fictitious drama of Job.
Just like Ngugi, Achebe, Soyinka, and Ousmane Marquez is not the first born. He is the youngest of siblings. He was born on March 6, 1927 in the Colombian village of Aracataca, on the Caribbean coast. His literary bravado was displayed in his book, Love in the Times of Cholera.  In which he narrated how his parents met and got married. Marguez did not grow up with his father and mother, but instead he grew up with his grandparents. He often felt lonely as a child. Environment of aunts and grandmother did not fill the psychological void of father and mother. This social phenomenon of inadequate parenthood is also seen catapulting Richard Wright, Charlese Dickens, and Barrack Obama to literary excellency.Obama recounted the same experience in his Dreams from my father.

Poverty determines convenience or hardship of marriage. This is mirrored by Garcia Marquez in his marriage to Mercedes Barcha.  An early childhood play-mate and neighbour in 1958. In appreciation of his marriage, Marquez later wrote in his memoirs that it is women who maintain the world, whereas we men tend to plunge it into disarray with all our historic brutality. This was a connotation of his grandmother in particular who played an important role during the times of childhood. The grand mother introduced him to the beauty of orature by telling him fabulous stories about ghosts and dead relatives haunting the cellar and attic, a social experience which exactly produced Chinua Achebe, Okot P’Bitek, Mazizi Kunene, Margaret Ogola and very many other writers of the third world.
Little Gabo as his affectionate pseudonym for literature goes, was a voracious bookworm, who like his ideological master Karl Marx read King Lear of Shakespeare at the age of sixteen. He fondly devoured the works of Spanish authors, obviously Miguel de Cervantes, as well as other European heavyweights like; Edward Hemingway, Faulkner and Frantz Kafka.
Good writers usually drop out of school and at most writers who win the Nobel Prize. This formative virtue of writers is evinced in Alice Munro, Doris Lessing, Nadine Gordimer, John Steinbeck, William Shakespeare, Sembene Ousmane, Octavio Paz as well as Gabriel Garcia Marquez. After dropping out of law school, Garcia Marquez decided instead to embark on a call of his passion as a journalist. The career he perfectly did by regularly criticizing Colombian as well as ideological failures of the then foreign politics. In a nutshell he was a literary crusader against poverty. This is of course the obvious hall marker of leftist political orientation.
Garcia Marquez’s sensational breakthrough occurred in 1967 with the break-away publication of his oeuvre; One Hundred Years of Solitude which the New York Times Book Review meritoriously elevated as ‘the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race. The position similarly taken by Salman Rushdie. Marquez often shared out that this novel carried him above emotional tantrums on its publication. He was keen on this as his manner of speech was always devoid of la di da.so humble and suave that his genius can only be appreciated not from the booming media outlets about his death, but by reading all of his works and especially his Literature Noble price acceptance speech delivered in 1982.

Ember Evanescent Jan 2015

Compliments to Maha

Ember Evanescent Jan 2015

Compliments to Maha

So apparently today is National Compliments Day.
I'd like to compliment Maha Salman.
She is a genuinely caring soul and has such a loving heart and an understanding personality.

Maha, thank you for being such a kind person and listening to me despite my extreme negativity. Thank you for talking me out of starving myself again, and being so compassionate. You mean a lot to me as a fellow poet and person. You are a beautiful friend :)

p.s. ur poetry is amaaazing

idk, apparently it's National Compliments Day, so yeah...

#compliments

Alexander K Opicho Apr 2014

GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ

Alexander K Opicho Apr 2014

GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ

You lived alone in the solititude
Of pure hundred years in Colombia
Roaming in Amacondo with a Spanish tongue
Carrying the bones of your grandmother in a sisal sag
On your poverty written Colombian back,
Gadabouting to make love in times of cholera,
On none other than your bitter-sweet memories
Of your melancholic ***** the daughter of Castro,
Your cowardice made you to fear your momentous life
In this glorious and poetic time of April 2014,
Only to succumb to untimely black death
That similarly dimunitized your cultural ancestor;
Miguel de Cervantes, a quixotic Spaniard,
You were to write to the colonel for your life,
Before eating the cockerel you had ear-marked
For Olympic cockfight, the hope of the oppressed,
Come back from death, you dear Marquez
To tell me more stories fanaticism to surrealism,
From Tarzanic Africa the fabulous land
An avatar of evil gods that are impish propre
Only Vitian Naipaul and Salman Rushdie are not enough,
For both of them are so naïve to tell the African stories,
I will miss you a lot the rest of my life, my dear Garbo,
But I will ever carry your living soul, my dear Garcia,
Soul of your literature and poetry in a Maasai kioondo
On my broad African shoulders during my journey of art,
When coming to America to look for your culture
That gave you versatile tongue and quill of a pen,
Both I will take as your memento and crystallize them
Into my future thespic umbrella of orature and literature.

I am mourning my model; Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Alexander K Opicho Aug 2014

NGUGI WA THIONG'O NOMINATED FOR NOBEL PRIZE 2014

Alexander K Opicho Aug 2014

NGUGI WA THIONG'O NOMINATED FOR NOBEL PRIZE 2014

by
Alexander  K  Opicho
Eldoret,Kenya
(aopicho@yahoo.com)

Ladbrokes, the online betting firm has once again nominated Ngugi wa Thiong'o as a candidate for Nobel prize in literature 2014.The firm arrives at the probable nominee through a highly polished probabilist mechanism.It also nominated Ngugi as the probable candidate for literature Nobel prize, but the final was Alice Munro the Canadian short story writress.The eventuality of Ngugi winning the literature Nobel prize is a long a waited event in Africa , especially among Kenyans.
However, Ngugi is not the only nominee , he is among others and even to make it worse he is not the top scoring nominee. He has tied with four  others at the score of 50/1 points.These  are; Umberto Eco who wrote the famous book In the Name of the Rose, Nuruddin Farah a Kenya *** Somalian veteran poet and prose writer   and   then Darcia Maraini.
There are eleven writers of global stature who are currently scoring above Ngugi wa Thiong'o.They are operating at the level of 50/1 scores. These include ;Margaret Atwoo d, Salman Rushdie, Cees Nooteboom, Don DeLillo, Amos Oz, Javier Marias, Cormac McCarthy , Bob Dylan, Peter Handke, William Trevor and Les Murray . The missing writer in this category of global writers is Yan Martel the author of Life of Mr. Pi , whose also on the list of the favourite writers of president Barrack Obama.His book Life of Mr. Pi once shared  a prize and equivalent acclaim with Salman Rushdie's The Ground Beneath Her Legs. So, why Martel was not nominated remains the usual intrigues of Nobel nomination process.
Haruki Murakami ,Assia Djebar,Svetlana Aleksijevitj , Peter Nadas, Joyce Carol Oates , Adonis ,Milan Kundera , Philip Roth , Mircea Cartarescu, Ko Un , Jon Fosse  and Thomas Pynchon  are currently scoring below Ngugi.They are operating between 10/1 and 26/1 scores.However among them Haruki Murakami, Joyce Carol Oates and Phillip Roth were very story contenders and hence competeters for the same prize with Ngugi during last year.But Joyce Carol Oates is a weaker contender this year given than he recently wrote an offensive and tortuous poem against the eminent American  poet Robert Frost .  Oates drew from the book Lovely, Dark and  Deep  which   paints the  Frost  as an arrogant, sexist pig who gave up on his mentally ill children. The story has outraged Frost’s fans, biographers, and  his survivors.
Inspite of all these there is no literary value that can make Ngugi wa Thiong'o to deserve a Nobel prize reward for  Literature. Apart from his first  two books weep not child and the river between that had concrete literary position, his later works are pamphlets of communism , that keep of regurgitating communism as initially written by Karl Marx and France Fanon.His second last book Globalectics is written as annual lectures in respect of Rene Wellek, the books is a practical duplication of Paulo Freire , and Spivak Gavatri.His contemporaries at the University of Nairobi accusing him of tribalism when it came to supervising post graduate students. he was soft on his fellow Kiguyu's and discriminative agains Luo and Luhyia students.He lifestyle as communist ideologue is also self defeating as teaches in america at Irvine University , very busy amassing wealths just like any other capitalist.He campaign for vernacular writing is egually not water tight on the bench of praxis, as he himself teaches special English in America but not kiguyu language.
Another stunning revelation from the Swedish academy is nomiantion of Vladimir Putin the Russian president for Nobel peace prize alongside fifty something  organizations as competitors.the nominations is based on his role he played in the Nuclear disarmament of Syria.The Ukraine question has not been yet raised.But logic of these goes like historical imbroglio that puzzled the world in relation to the role of ****** in relation communism against the then gathering storm for the second world war.

judy smith May 2016

When celebs’ actions say more than words...

judy smith May 2016

When celebs’ actions say more than words...

When you don't want to say it in words, let your actions do the talking. And we're talking about celebrities' relationships here. It seems that the words 'we are just good friends' is also passe. Nowadays, even a selfie with your lovely other half says it all. So, while the media can hound the actors everywhere they go for that one quote to admit to their relationship, the B-Town folks choose to do it in their own style. Most commonly, they walk hand-firmly-in-hand to events, parties and premieres — pretty much confirming their 'couple' status. Recently, Salman Khanmade a grand entry at Preity Zinta-Gene Goodenough's wedding party with Romanian model/actress Iulia Vantur and everyone went into a frenzy. They didn't walk in hand-in-hand, but well, that day doesn't seem too far away. Though at a recent event, when asked about his marriage plans, Salman siad, "It's between me and my fans." Iulia too shared on her phto-sharing profile that she's "in no hurry to wear her wedding dress." Here is taking a look at other celebrities who walked the red carpet together, and soon after walked down the aisle.

Despite the strong buzz about a relationship brewing between Bipasha Basu and Karan Singh Grover during the shoot of 'Alone', both actors kept mum about the reports. It was only when Karan was promoting his second film that he conceded that Bipasha 'is special and very dear' to him. Every time the media questioned them, the two actors consistently kept quiet about their relationship. At the same time, they never shied away from posting pictures of them, while going on their holidays.

Even when reports of their wedding plans made news, the couple at first denied them but soon confessed that April 29 was indeed the day on which they were tying the knot.

Yuvraj Singh and Hazel Keech

Indian cricketer Yuvraj Singh annouced at teammate Harbhajan Singh's wedding with Geeta Basra last October that Hazel Keech was the woman he'll spend the rest of his life with. A month later, when they went holidaying in Bali, he popped the question with a ring and she accepted. The two are said to be tying the knot later this year.

Kareena Kapoor Khan and Saif Ali Khan

While the public may not remember 'Tashan' best known for Kareena Kapoor Khan's size zero figure, she and Saif Ali Khan would never like to forget this film. It was during the Greece schedule of this film that the two fell in love. Though reports of their affair made news, they remained non-committal to the media. Until they walked the ramp together for her friend designer Manish Malhotra at a fashion event in 2007. That was the first time Saif told the media that they were a couple. Later, he even got her name inked on his left arm. The tied-the-knot on October 16, 2012.

Maanayata and Sanjay Dutt

Married twice before, Sanjay Dutt made known that Maanayata was the woman of his life when he walked in with her at an awards function in January 2007. A few days later, on January 11, 2007, he told a tabloid that he and Maanayata had a secret wedding at his house on November 19, 2006. However, after the news spread like wildfire, he went in denial mode. Their registered marriage in Goa on February 7 a year later became the subject of controversy, as they weren't residents of the state. A couple of days later, they solemnised their marriage vows as per Hindu rites.

Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma

When the reports of Anushka Sharma and Indian cricketer Virat Kohli being a couple appeared, the two went in overdrive denying the news through their spokespersons. It was Virat who first revealed the relationship when he tweeted after watching her film, "Just watched #NH10 and I am blown away. What a brilliant film and specially an outstanding performance by my love @AnushkaSharma. SO PROUD:)" Even as they continued going steady, they didn't concede their relationship to the media until they walked in haathon-mein-haath at a fashion event July 2015.Read more at:http://www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses-brisbane

Alexander K Opicho Sep 2014

ODE TO LODWAR CATHOLIC LIBRARY

Alexander K Opicho Sep 2014

ODE TO LODWAR CATHOLIC LIBRARY

Build in a very humble way
Its architecture redolent of Europe,
Plain and honest in structure,
The vestibule at the entrance
Replete with old hardbound books
Dust covering the jackets
In their agony of human oblivion,
Every section has shelves under lock
Only to be open on permitted access.

Located in the desert like an oases,
But the desert of readers not waters,
But like any other oasis, it is useful,
At most to the genuine users.

There are books and books all over,
Windows only open after adjustment,
You start at the door step with classics,
Indian, European, American and global classics,
I pumped into Leo Tolstoy at the first glance,
Finely juxtaposed; Anne Karenina after War and peace.

I opened war and peace and I chanced on Napoleon
Then thrill of intellect and bliss of art
Began flowing into my guts like a river
I kept on wandering why Leo Tolstoy
Never became a Christian sub religion,
To be added to the two testaments,
For it to begat the post-modern holy Bible.

My physical peregrination of the hand
Led me to a vase of rosy wine
Its intellectual whiff surpassing all,
The psalms of David and songs of songs
This was nothing but precious discovery;
A thousand Rubiyats of Omar Khayyam
The shoulder of wisdom and love of God
The hero of Sufism and demystifier of heaven,
When in fact I came unto his 69th Rubiyat;
I have heard people say
that those who love wine are ******.
That can't be true, that clearly is a lie.
For if lovers of wine and love are bound for hell,
heaven would be quite empty!

I chewed and chewed fortune out of Rubiyats,
I went through all the thousand Rubiyats,
Only hot Sun and desert sand storms of Lodwar
Are my witnesses among the myriads of bystanders
As life of a reader is similar to the life a writer,
They both derive energy from solitude’s power.

I moved on again to Alfred Jarren
The son of France, the father of mystery;
Pataphysics the science of fantasy
It has the realm beyond metaphysics,
His survey of pataphorical world
Has remained witchcraft
Beyond my simple soul’s grasp.

Paradox is one other worldwide wonder
As I look at an illiterate Turkana Man,
Guarding the library, club in his hand,
His ever week from stubborn hunger,
His sires never go to school, perhaps culture
I looked at him often in my pause for muse,
Why guard knowledge that you can’t use?

I again came upon the Quran
I read it voraciously over and again,
In expectation of great knowledge
Always making Muslims to be noisy,
I have found nothing great in the Quran,
Only regular subversions of Biblical grammar,
Let Muslims sober up to respect Jesus Christ,
His sermon on the Mountain is perfectly enough
as an impeachment to crazed pataphoricals
That Muslims often dare the world with.

I read the Bible again in repetition
Of what I had did ten years ago,
I read psalms, Job and Isaiah,
Gospels and epistles are more nice,
Chronicles and Habakkuk are so dull,
Lamentations are somber poems,
Revelations are esoteric lies,
Kings and Samuel full of chauvinism,
Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are mere clichés
My idea is; mankind can fear God
Minus Jewish intervention.

Now I chanced upon The synagogue of Satan,
A book written by one other crazy American,
His name is Andrew Hitchcock Crichton,
The book is long and spellbinding,
Having historical facts from early centuries,
Chronicling mysterious growth of Jewish empire,
Arranging facts one after another
Dismissing Bush’s anger against Arabs,
Over the bombing of the twin towers
When they are the Jews who Bombed America
As a decoy to induce American wrath,
Thus twin towers bombing was Jewish war ploy
To put Arabs into a rat’s corner.

I came across one funny book
Written by a Indian sage
Its title was Secrets of ***
From male perspective,
I don’t liked the book
For its prurient content,
But to my sad chagrin it was the most read
Its leaves were dog eared and use worn
I spied into the rumour about its tearing,
T it was a hot cake among nuns and priests
Presently living at Lodwar cathedral.

You could also wonder my dear brother
Why a Christian library has works of Marx?
This was my muse as I read Karl Marx,
I mean everything written by Karl Marx,
From Das Kapita to Germany Philosophy,
Selected works to Poverty of philosophy,
18th Brumaire to Integral calculus,
The Manifesto to the letters,
I read Karl Marx as if I was in Russia,
I wondered why Catholics are Liberal
They fear not those who contradict them.

The Holy Grail is visibly placed
In fact at right hand corner,
At the far end on your entrance
I chose to read it
Because of its voluminousity,
The book is about ****** life
Of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene,
This book shares out that;
One time Jesus was found hiding,
Kissing Mary Magdalene, the Grail
In the most affectionate manner ever.

The catholic Library at Lodwar is bad news
It swallowed me like waters of Indian Ocean,
It is located at place called Lokiriama,
It was established by Bishop Mahoni
One other man deserving my respect
He was humble and catholically wise,
Very intelligent and consciously bookish,
His mission was to make the Turkana people
A modern community, but he failed,
He was so disappointed to his hilt
He transferred to the Archdioceses of New-York
Where he began facing problems of the law
On allegations of him being a *******,
I curse the devil for such temptations.

I did meet Yan Martel in this dome of books
His famous book; Life of Mr. Pi
It was my eye opener?
It transformed me from a village bumpkin
To a modern reader of global literature,
I read this book amid my fear of Tigre
But I was thrilled, to my bone marrow
When the main character drunk the blood,
Warm salty blood of the sea turtle.

I got another book with folded pages,
At its mid was the red book marker
Baring the name of the respected priest,
The book was entitled; How to excel as
A ****-******, chapter one focused on gays
Chapter two focused on lesbians,
But the rest of the book was all homosexuality,
In nothing else, but rosiest terms.

On such encounters I once again went back,
To re-read 89th Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam
It has the following quatrain to echo;
Looking for peace on earth? Foolishness.
Believing in eternal calm? Foolishness.
Once dead your sleep will be short. You may
be reborn as a clump of weeds that will be
trodden underfoot, or as a flower that
will wither in the sun's heat.

African writers were stuffed on one shelve
Labeled African books of English expressions,
But on my request to the project manager,
His name was Peter Kebo, he was Flamboyant
And physically indifferent to Turkana poverty,
We agreed with him to rename the shelves
As; African literature in English Language,
Nobel Laureates are in this section;
Soyinka, Lessing, Coatze and Gordimer
Not forgetting the Egyptian literary tiger
In the name of Mahfouz or Maguiz
I clearly don’t know,
Sembene Ousmane is also here
I read him again for the fourth time,
It’s when I found out the simple truth,
That God’s bits of wood, translates as;
The wretched of the earth,
I read Lessing’s Grass is singing,
She likes ***,
I read Gordimer’s July’s people,
She likes menstrual blood,
I read everything here
As published by James Currey
In his Africa writes back,
I also read the White African Nobelite
Joshua Maxwell Coetzee
He is a wizard of Narrative literature,
I read his life of Mr. K.
I found amusing plots and amusing themes,
I also read Ngugi’s Wizard of the Crow
It is nice; Ngugi is still fighting dictatorship,
Not physically but in a metaphysical manner.

I was again lucky enough
To chance on Caribbean literature,
Is when I read Vitian S Naipaul
The humourist Marxist of Marxists,
I read his Mr. Biswas’s house,
With avidness of an aphrodisiac cur,
His characters like taking a long time
In the toilets, Naipaul is good,
I again chanced on George Flamming
In the Castle of my skin
Caribbean literature stinks of slavery
And counter-slavery.

My landing to the shelve of Latin America,
Was a total blessing; Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Stood out like tor of literature among others,
I began with his Big Maria’s Funeral,
Then I moved on to Love in Times of Cholera,
And then You Can’t Write to the Colonel,
As I spiced my intellect with Melancholic *****,
Then finally I revisited his Stories from Africa
And the Hundred Years of Solitude,
The following morning when I came back,
I read in the newspaper that;
Gabriel Garcia Marquez is dead!
It was sad and poor of me, I mourned him
With long essays and somber poetry,
Then I fell in love with the literatures
of Spanish origin in language sense,
I read Octavio Paz and Pablo Neruda
From Octavio I enjoyed coda,
Between Coming and Going and so on,
Neruda thrilled me with his sense of Marx
Especially his poem; on burying the dog.

European classics section arrested me
I never easily moved out of there,
I chanced on ****** and annals of Goebbels,
Reading Russians like Tolstoy,Chenkov,
Gorky, Gogol and Shelynetsyn was lively,
Chewing Shakespeare from cover to cover
Not spearing Pushkin nor Homer,
Victor Hugo was a relish. Emile Zola
And Maugham, I too enjoyed…

Then my holiday in Lodwar was finally over,
But I am soon going back for my Xmas,
I will directly go back to the European section,
I also remember having come by;
The Satanic Verses of Salman Rushdie,
I will have to re-read it with passion,
It is my prayer that this time comes
For I to resume my holy duty
In the Catholic Library at Lokiriama
In Lodwar Dioceses of Turkana County
In the Savannah desert in North West
Regions of my country Kenya.

Alexander K Opicho May 2014

LITERATURE CAN THRIVE WITHOUT PROFESSORS BUT PROFESSORS CANNOT THRIVE WITHOUT LITERATURE

Alexander K Opicho May 2014

LITERATURE CAN THRIVE WITHOUT PROFESSORS BUT PROFESSORS CANNOT THRIVE WITHOUT LITERATURE

In response to a sardonic essay written in the recent Saturday Nation by Proffessor Ekara Kabaji, wryly  disregarding the position of Kwani in the global literary movement within and without Kenya , I beg to be permitted a leeway  to observe that any literature, orature, music,drama,cyborature,prisnorature,wallorature,streetorature , sculptor  or painting can effortlessly thrive and off course it has been thriving without professors of  literature, but the reverse is not possible as a proffessor of literature cannot be when literature is not there. Facts in support of this position are bare and readily available in the history of world literature, why they may not be seen is perhaps the blurring effects from tor like protuberant irrelevance of professors of literature in a given literary civilization.
A starting point is that literature exists as a people’s subculture, it can be written or not written like the case of orature which survive as an educative and aesthetic value stored in the collective memory of the given people. The people to be pillars of this collectivity of the memory are not differentiated by academic ranking for superlativity of any reason, but they are simply a people of that place, that community, that time, that heritage, that era and that collective experience. Writing it down is an option, but novels and other written matter is not a sine qua non for existence of literature in such situations. This is not a bolekaja of literature as Proffessor Ekara Kabaji would readily put, but it is a stretch towards realism that it is only people’s condition that creates literature. Poverty, slavery, colonialism, ***, marriage, circumcision, migration, or any other conditions experienced as collective experience of the people is stored or even stowed away in the collective memory of the people as their literature. Literature does not come from idealistic imagination of an educated person.
Historical experience of written literature informs us that the good novels, prose, drama and poetry were written before human society had people known as professors of literature. I want you my dear reader and You-Tube audience to reflect on the Cantos of Dante Alighieri in Italy, novels of Geoffrey Chaucer in England, Herman Melville and his Moby **** in Americas, poetry of Omar khwarisim in Persia, Homeric epics of Odyssey in Greece and the Makonde sculptures of Africa and finally link your reflections to Romesh Tulsi who grafted the Indian epic poetry of Ramayana and Mahabharata. At least you must realize that in those days literature was good, full of charm, very aesthetic and superbly entertaining. This leads to a re-justification that, weapon of theory is not useful in literature. University taught theories of literature have helped not in the growth of literature as compared to the role played by folk culture.
Keen observation will lead you dear reader, down to revelations that; professors of literature squarely depend on the thespic work of the people who are not substantially educated to make a living. Let me share with you the story about Dr. Tom Odhiambo who went to University of Witwasterand in South Africa for post graduate studies in literature only to do his Doctoral research on books of David G Maillu. Maillu is a Kenyan writer, he did not finish his second year of secondary school education but he has been successfully writing poetry and prose for the past three decades. His successful romantic work is After 4.30, probably sarcasm against Kenyan office capitalism, while his eclectic, philosophical and scholarly work is the Broken Drum. Maillu has many other works on his name. But the point is that Dr. Odhiambo now teaches at University of Nairobi in the capacity of senior lecturer in Literature. What makes him to put food on the table is the effort of un-educated person in the name of David Maillu. Dr.Odhiambo himself has not written any book we can mention him for, apart from regular literary journalism he is often involved in on the platforms of the Literary discourse in the Kenyan Saturday Nation which are in turn regular Harangues and ripostes among literature teachers at the University of Nairobi, the likes of Dr Siundu, Proffessor wanjala Chris and Evans Mwangi just but to mention by not being oblivious to professors; Indangasi and Shitanda.
No study has yet been done to establish the role of university professors on growth of African literature. One is overdue. Results may be positive role on negative role, myself I contemplate negative role. Especially when I reflect on how the African literati reacted on the publication of Amos Tutuola’s book The Palm Wine Drinkard. The reactions were more disparaging than appreciative. Taban Lo Liyong reacted to this book by calling Amos Tutuola the son of Zinjathropus as well as taking a self styled intellectual responsibility in form of writing a more  schooled version of this book; Taking Wisdom up the Palm Tree. Nigerians of Igbo (Tutuola being a Yoruba) nation cowed from being associated with the book as it had shamefully broken English, broken grammar etc. Wole Soyinka had a blemished stand, but it is only Achebe who came out forthrightly to appreciate the book in its efforts to Africanize English for the purpose of African literature. Courtesy of Igbo wisdom. But in a nutshell, what had happened is that Amos Tutuola had taken a plunge to contribute towards written literature in Africa.
One more contemplated result from the research about professors and African literature can be that apart from their role of criticism, professors write very boring books. A ready point of reference is deliberate and reasonless obscurantism taken Wole Soyinka in all of his books, Soyinka’s books are difficult to understand, sombre, without humour and not capable to entertain an average reader. In fact Wole Soyinka has been writing for himself but not for the people. No common man can quote Soyinka the way Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is quoted. Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart when he had not began his graduate studies. However, he did not escape the obvious mistake of professors to become obscure in the Anthills of the Savanna, the book he wrote when he had become a proffessor. This is on a sharp contrast to entertaining effectiveness, simplicity and thematic diversity of Captain Elechi Amadi, Amadi who studied chemistry but not literature. He does not have a second degree, but his books from the Concubine, The great Ponds, and Sunset in the Biafra and Isibiru are as spellbinding as their counterparts in Russia.
Kenyan scenario has Ngugi wa Thiongio, he displayed eminence in his first two books; Weep not Child and The River Between. These ones he wrote when he was not yet educated, as he was still an undergraduate student at Makerere University. But later on Ngugi became a victim of prosaic socialism, an ideology that warped his literary imagination only to put him in a paradoxical situation as an African communist who works in America as an English teacher at Irvine University. His other outcrops are misuse of Mau Mau as a literary springboard and campaigning for use of Kikuyu dialect of the Gema languages to become literary Lingua Franca in Kenya. Such efforts of Ngugi are only a disservice to Kenyan literature in particular and African literature collectively. Ngugi having been a student of Caribbean literature has failed to borrow from global literary behaviour of Vitian S. Naipaul.  Ngugi’s position also contrasts sharply with Meja Mwangi whose urban folksy literature swollen with diversity in themes has remained spellbinding entertainers.
The world’s literary thirsty has never failed to get palatable quenching from the works of Harriet Bechetor Stowe, Robert Louis Stevenson, Shakespeare, Alice Munro, Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda, John Steinbeck, Garcia Guarbriel Marguez,Salman Rushdie, Lenrie Peters, Cyprian Ekwenzi, Nikolai Gogol,I mean the list is as long as the road from Kaduna to Cape town. Contribution of these writers to global literature has been and is still critical. Literature could not be without them. Surprisingly, most of them are not trained in literature; they don’t have a diploma or a degree in literature, but some have won literature Nobel Prize and other prizes. Alfred Nobel himself the author of a classical novella, The Nemesis, does not have University education in literature. What else can we say apart from acceding to the truth that literature can blossom without professors, the Vis-à-vis an obvious and stark impossibility.

Mateuš Conrad Mar 2016

a library index / end credits of a movie

Mateuš Conrad Mar 2016

a library index / end credits of a movie

i only started collecting a library, because, would you believe it, my local library was a pauper in rags and tatters; apologies for omitting necessary diacritic marks, the whiskey was ******* on icecubes to a shrivel.*

ernest hemingway, e.m. forster, mary shelley,
aesop, r. l. stevenson, jean-paul sartre,
jack kerouac, sylvia plath, evelyn waugh,
chekhov, cortazar, freud, virginia woolf,
philip k. ****, dostoyevsky, aleksandr solzhenitsyn,
oscar wilde, malcolm x, kafka, nabokov,
bukowski, sacher-masoch, thomas a kempis,
yevgeny zamyatin, alexandre dumas,
will self, j. r. r. tolkien, richard b. bentall,
james joyce, william burroughs, truman capote,
herman hesse, thomas mann, j. d. salinger,
nikos kazantzakis, george orwell,
philip roth, joseph roth, bulgakov, huxley,
marquis de sade, john milton, samuel beckett,
huysmans, michel de montaigne, walter benjamin,
sienkiewicz, rilke, lipton, harold norse,
alfred jarry, miguel de cervantes, von krafft-ebing,
kierkegaard, julian jaynes, bynum porter & shephred,
r. d. laing, c. g. jung, spinoza, hegel, kant, artistotle,
plato, josephus, korner, la rochefoucauld, stendhal,
nietzsche, bertrand russell, irwin edman,
faucault, anwicenna, descartes, voltaire, rousseau,
popper, heidegger, tatarkiewicz, kolakowski,
seneca, cycero, milan kundera, g. j. warnock,
stefan zweig, the pre-socratics, julian tuwim,
ezra pound, gregory corso, ted hughes,
guiseppe gioacchino belli, dante, peshwari women,
e. e. cummings, ginsberg, will alexander, max jacob,
schwob, william blake, comte de lautreamont,
jack spicer, zbigniew herbert, frank o'hara,
richard brautigan, miroslav holub, al purdy,
tzara, ted berrigan, fady joudah, nikolai leskov,
anna kavan, jean genet, albert camus, gunter grass,
susan hill, katherine dunn, gil scott-heron,
kleist, irvine welsh, clarice lispector, hunter thompson,
machado de assisi, reymont, tolstoy, jim bradbury,
norman davies, shakespeare, balzac, dickens,
jasienica, mary fulbrook, stuart t. miller,
walter la feber, jan wimmer, terry jones & alan ereira,
kenneth clark, edward robinson, heinrich harrer,
gombrowicz, a. krawczuk, andrzej stasiuk, ivan bunin,
joseph heller, goethe, mcmurry, atkins & de paula,
bernard shaw, horace, ovid, virgil, aeschyles,
rumi, omar khayyam, humbert wolfe, e. h. bickersteth,
asnyk, witkacy, mickiewicz, slowacki, lesmian,
lechon, lep szarzynski, victor alexandrov, gogol,
william styron, krasznahorkai, robert graves,
defoe, tim burton, antoine de saint-exupery,
christiane f., salman rushdie, hazlitt, marcus aurelius,
nick hornby, emily bronte, walt whitman,
aryeh kaplan, rolf g. renner, j. p. hodin, tim hilton... etc.

WickedHope Dec 2014

You Don't Know Anything About Someone Beyond What They Let You See

WickedHope Dec 2014

You Don't Know Anything About Someone Beyond What They Let You See

WITH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM MULTIPLE POETS

You don't cut, your wrists are fine.
          If I was dumb enough to cut my wrists I'd have been caught by now.
You're not anorexic, I've seen you eat.
          How much, really?
You're not depressed, you smile all the time.
          Yeah, because acting and lying aren't things.
     ~WickedHope

You can't have anxiety, you talk to so many people.
          Its funny how you see me talking, but don't see the panic attacks.
     ~aesha nisar

You have a good life. There's no reason to be sad.
          You're part of the reason why I'm depressed.
     ~Phoenix

You're not angry, you haven't raised your voice or yelled.
          Maybe the voices yelling in my head are so loud I can't do anything
          but focus on keeping them quiet.
You're not scarred from your past, you act normal.
          If normal is crying for hours at night till tears can't come anymore
          and apathy sets in, then yes I'm quite normal.
     ~Stardust

You are so lucky, it's so easy for you to be good at what you do.
          You don't see the intensity of doubt and countless hours of anxiety to
          get things to the point they're not too embarrassing to show someone.
     ~PrttyBrd

You're fine. You aren't depressed, just really sad.
          If I'm not depressed, just sad, then why am I here everyday?
          Why am I here crying to you when I should be out, living?
     ~Tiffany Smith

God I swear every guy you meet online just wants to bone you.
          You say that like its a good thing. All I want is someone I can trust,
          someone I can rely on, not someone who wants to bone me.
You have boyfriends from everywhere, india, japan, china...
          I have none. These are only friends, the only one I want is you.
Your so strong.
          Yea, 'cause going home to cry in a corner, then stuffing my face with ice
          cream while watching sad anime is totally legit.
Are you okay?
          No I'm not ok. I just want to punch both your eyes out, then cuddle with
          you and make out with your face. Then maybe I'll just take a long break
          to bawl my eyes out and get rid of all evidence, all but the telltale clue of
          how swollen my eyes are
     ~Creep that Loved You

Come on. You can go to school. You're not sick.
          Physically, no. Now mentally...
Why are you so good at everything?
          That's because you don't bother to look deeper.
You look fine.
          Oh yeah, the red eyes and dark circles just add to my beauty.
I love you.
          Yeah, it looked like it when you were 'out' with your 'friends.'
     ~maha salman

You're so resilient. You've been through so much pain, yet here you are living strong.
          That's because every time someone says, are you OK? I just smile and
          say I'm fine. But none of them can hear the screaming in my brain saying
          I should just die.
You're so beautiful.
          No.... The smile is fake, powder covers the circles under my eyes,
          mascara makes my eyes look bright and lip stick covers the bite marks
          on my lips from where I chew through them when I'm anxious, or
          panicking, or being asked questions. You would be repulsed by the
          beast underneath.
You're such a talented poet.
          If writing down my deepest darkest dreams, nightmares, fantasies and
          memories, make me a good poet, then yes. But all I write is the thoughts
          that scream to come out or my head will explode.
     ~The Girl Who Loved You

You have never felt real pain, you are a man not a wuss.
          The worst pain hits you in the heart not in the head... Whats a man
          without pride, whats a man without a name?
Get over her bro, shes just one girl.
          One girl that I chose to love out of the 7 billion other people in the
          world.
Open up your heart to new people new things.
          What's the point in meeting people, when in the end they all just leave?
You aren't alone.
          I'm not alone? You lie through your teeth, where where you when I sold
          my soul to the devil and condemned myself to the abyss?
We are proud of you always, son.
          Words I've never heard, just the echoes of my parents inside my head.
You live a great life.
          That's not the message the untouched prescribed sleeping pills and           ecstasy portray.
     ~grld

You're so patient.
          On the outside yes, in the recesses of my mind I'm screaming my
          head off... waiting for something that will never happen.
     ~Julian Pacheco

Who cares about the others? You're not like them you're different.
          What if I don't want to be different? What If I want to curl up into a
          ball and pretend I don't think I'm failing you every moment of the day.
Life's not fair.
          Well maybe it's time it should be. Maybe it's time for us to stop
          thinking that we deserve more because that's all we've ever known.
          Maybe it's our job to MAKE life fair.
Forget it, move on.
          I don't want to. Shouldn't everyone be able to hold onto the things they
          hold close? If they were holding it close it meant something and if it
          meant something good then it's worth fighting for.
Shut up.
          No. This time I won't be quiet because I sit here and I listen to what you
          say every day; you treat whoever you want however you want and that
          is not your right. Everyone has an opinion. I want to share mine.
     ~Forgotten Dreams

You're so confident.
          Only because you do not see the pain and turmoil it causes me
          inside, and the sores inside my cheeks to keep from crying.
Why are you shaking? It's not even cold.
          Because I'm scared, scared of scenarios untrue.
~Makayla

You're not sad, you look so happy.
          Tell that to the guys who keep pointing all my flaws, and laughing
          about it, leaving me speechless because I have nothing to say in return.
You're such a good writer.
          And look how handy that is, won't ever shut them up for good.
You still have so much to live for.
          To keep living like this, might be considered anything but living. You're
          all too perfect for this world, but you know what? My body can't keep
          living in a different place my soul is.
     ~A Sad Sam

Chill out man, it's just a couple people.
          To me, three people is like three thousand people. Their voices circulate
          in my head and drive me crazy until I can't help but break down. You're
          right, I should definitely just chill out because I don't know anything
          about the disorder that brings a constant burden to my days.
Why are you so antisocial? Get off the computer and do something productive for once
          Try the fact that everybody that surrounds me makes me feel like the life
          I live isn't worth living and the comfort of understand people on the
          internet keeps me sane.
You're so lazy.
          Don't you dare start on that, because every ******* day I wake up and
          breathe despite my lungs collapsing in on themselves from all the
          pressure people give me, and every single day I do the work I'm told to
          do and I'm trying my hardest but I'm fighting a war with myself and it
          takes up every ounce of energy I have left. Don't you dare tell me that
          I'm lazy when every day I take all the strength I have to keep on living.
     ~Emma Tauzell

They had never met, didn’t know each other’s name --
          Yet their eyes were already making love.
     ~Deborah

You can't really love someone you've never met.
          He's the first thing on my mind when I open my eyes, the last
          thing I think about before I go to sleep, he's in my thoughts all
          the moments in between, his face takes away the nightmares and
          fills all my dreams. How is this not love?
     ~Just Melz

Just forget about her and move on.
          How am I supposed to do that, when all I see is her and her
          precious qualities I so dearly love in every girl I talk to?
          Forgetting is a lot harder to do than finding.
     ~Neb Dnarts

Feel free to add to this in the comments,
and I'll tac it on the end with credits to your screen name.

#shh #twoam #youknownothing #behindcloseddoors

Allison Wonderland Feb 2015

Maha Salman

Allison Wonderland Feb 2015

Maha Salman

She is the one who will listen to what you need
Her desires, in the future we will need
You don't seem to understand
She writes poems, they come out of her hand
Her eyes are the mysterious ones
Different colors, so many, TONS
She will hear you out to the very end
That's why Maha is one of my friends

She is one of the first people on here that I talked to <3
You should all follow here and The-Devil-Is-Real

— The End —