Let me start by appreciating Austen Bukenya’s stand on the challenges that boggle young African writers. He recently published in the literature pages of Saturday Nation. In which he argued that before one can be declared a bad writer we must see his or her writings first. Good. I agree with Professor Bukenya.And I also argue yes, bad writers can also survive. In fact they can thrive alongside good and popular writers. Thus the way forward is to take a pen and write. But not to surrender to the torture by internal fear that you may write a bad book or a worthless script.
Charles Darwin also toyed with an idea of presenting his manuscript of Origin of species for a decade. He also feared that may be he had written a worthless book. But when he presented the book, it was suddenly published and became a spell binder in diverse respects. Same thing to Richard Wright, the Author of the Native Son. He similarly feared presenting the Manuscripts to the publishers on the basis of fear that he was only a ***** and not formally educated. But when he presented the manuscript, it was published and became the most influential book on race relations and civil rights movement in America of those days.
Thus, the first thing is to break fear of self doubt and begin writing. If whatever you write will be bad, just keep on as you may end up surviving as a bad writer. History of written literature has a lot of bad writers who have survived to extreme. And even succeed through persistent writing regardless of their sorry state of popularity. The glowing example can be seen in the case of Patrick Mondiano the winner of 2014 literature Nobel Prize. Mondiano was not popular and has been the least read writer until the time he won the prize. In fact by the time he won the prize he had less than fifty followers on his face book page. Meaning he was not known as a writer. But he emerged the winner of the Nobel Prize against titans of Literature like Phillip Rooth, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Salman Rushdie, Yarn Mattel and Haruki Murakami.The fact is that Mondiano’s books are not lively. But he has kept on writing alongside the discouragingly insignificant consumption of his literary workmanship.
Other writers that have persisted to write even if their works don’t excite readers are; Eric Ambler, Louis D’Amour, **** Francis and Alistair Maclean. They are all from America and they have persistently written for the past three decades. Thomas Mann also tastes to me as a very boring writer. I have read his short stories entitled Death in Venice. They proved so boring that I have gone back to read him again. But remember, this is the very book that earned him the Literature Nobel prize.
The African writers’ series has Nkem Nwanko the Author of Danda, Francis Salomey the author of the Narrow Path and Tayeb Saleh the Author of Wedding in Zayen.These are boring writers and as well their books are replete with technical mistakes of structure and grammar. But they have prospered to be known as African writers. Another supportive experience is evident in the writing career of Ayi Kwei Arma; Wole Soyinka dismissed Ayi Kwei Armah’s Beautiful Ones are Not Yet Born. Soyinka argued that Arma’s book is substandard inspite of author’s command of good English. He went a head to declare Arma as an incompetent writer. But to day every one knows that Ayi Kwei Arma is a saint of African literature.
So, writing is expression of individual ability but not excellence of education.And human ability varies from person to person. Therefore, there must be bad writers and good writers. Not every person can writer like Shakespeare. So don’t fear to write because you fear that you will not write like Shakespeare.

Alexander K Opicho
Eldoret, Kenya.

it makes its entrance in flashy fogs,
the selfish hog of
undesired credibility,
the crushing weight of "cool."
it's so like
the fragile strength of the rain,
burning on your skin,
yearning to slip in
to something a little more casual,
a little more
******
hexual
textual
we flirt in codes
we glance in nods
we feel in rhythms
we speak in silence,
we dance together with the thrusts and sways of our bony little hips,
feeling and inspecting one another
though never looking upon either face.
it was so real yet so fake,
plastic kisses and the taste of regret,
the sterile defilement of a hotel bed,
your **** in my mouth,
your ***** on my chin,
your hand on my head and
my insecurity's egging me on,
whispering the truths that often try to hide
within the narrow little alleyways of my tiny little head,
"it is too late to save yourself,"
"you were never clean anyway,"
"heaven is a lie,"
"you have no say."
I choke on your ****,
you tell me to shut up,
you slap both my cheeks and
you tell me to grow up.
it all pushes me down so hard,
so strong,
so discouragingly,
so relentless in its intent
like the gentle power of the rain,
the bursting burning on my skin,
the heaviness of unnecessaries.
I make my exits in flashy fogs,
I am a magician,
a wizard,
a ghost and
a demon.
I am a legend,
a fable,
a story with no end,
lost to the cities full
of ancient histories and ruined worlds
and patterns of the Earth forgotten;
I am woven into the rich and tangled workings of the world forgotten.

You've serenaded me into a comotose slumber.
I'm continuously sensing lullabies whilst paralyzed.
I'm too terrified to speak; too timid to even mumble.
Your intonation is so soothing; a banshee in disguise.

I'm stuck asleep in this in-pain asylum built of thorns.
Dreaming of the agenda I've never been capable of.
So turn the lights out in the tornado haven in my insane and in-pain brain,
and never admonish the fact that this pain is a continuous refrain.

The fires of my desires are cornered and defeated,
smouldering beneath the timber of my emotions.
I know you could never be lighter fluid for me,
but with our incandescent splendor blown out we can still go blindly through the motions.

My reveries never used to be this empty, and now they're becoming hollow with my conscience;
and these hollow empty chances are drying out as I continue to discouragingly pursue you.

You'll never envisage your face as I see it, and you'll never envisage why this bliss makes me weap.
I'll never have the most alluring face to you,
and my cold shoulder only monotonously lulls you peacefully to sleep.

And now it's to everyone's amusement that I can't manipulate my liquor anymore.
I'm so messy hahahahahahahaha.
So they prevail, standing as if they're boulders upon my shoulders,
compressing my heart deep into my intestines.

So now my love is growing slender
as yours becomes a pretender
and my whispy love surrenders as I surrender to this alcoholic ******.

The grains of my affinity rest in your palm and you spread your fingers and let them fall.
I could beseech you to clench your fist, but I won't.

I'm your lover you don't have to love
as my heart is left hanging above.
It's high and dry;
too weak and too shy.
So tie me to this clothes line
and hang me out to dry.

You are more than you see
A child stares at the movie screen
Strutting with the confidence of a cowboy
Imagining the characters that pops off the watercolor pages
As they jump up and down in their onesie
Holding tight to their plushy sidekick
That seems to whisper an end to moon landings
With every inch taller
You gaze at your potential like it sits on Everest's summit
So discouragingly out of reach
Your disappointment juts into your dreams
And makes you feel like the pinnacle of your being
Will only amount to a mound of dirt
But that isn't true
Every time you stand with the legs
That hold a rallying cry in its gait
Of the kind of independence
penned by our founding fathers
as an unalienable right
You gain footing
Up the rock face
That stuck its rocky tongue out at you
From the jester's thrown below
But you are far from a joke
A riddle maybe
The kind that a sphinx would lovingly smirk at
Its tail thumping with an instinctive eye roll
Mixed with the gaze of Eskimo kisses
Your hand holds lie
In the reach
That pulls you closer to the jewels
That dot the edges of your resolves
A bell ringing in the background
You're an angel who deserves their wings
And flying is falling
The first time a bird leaves the nest

time usually heals faster than this
I must be stuck in some sort of time lapse
in an alternate dimension like abyss
my realitys been about to collapse
but none of it feels real to me
cause where can I go if I can't go back
and all i know is an illusion, a dream,
a black sky-what I discouragingly lack
is myself and all its esteem
my having fell victim to a strange hijack  
I go through the motions like a machine  
you see me functioning but im under attack
I need some fuel, some gasoline
or whatever will help me stay on track
cause I can only get so far on moon beams
and I care about progress, not you, not syntax
just the nightmares and the screams
that continue to haunt and entrap
my existence with their extremes
I need to hurry before I end up a maniac
tho I am kinda programmed for this routine
if someone would just get a ***** a map
i'd be gone and life less obscene
instead i get variations of prozac
with my misfortune..but i’ve seen
glimpses of my destiny and now I know that
the pulse of my heart, of my bloodstream
will guide me to the end of my suffering

To sit thinking quietly on ones own
is perhaps today’s rarest commodity
when you say that you wish to be alone
observers will tag you as an oddity
and yet that solitariness is divine
a time to question one’s thoughts
a moment where honesty will guide you
and lies get your personal retorts.

©Joe Wilson – Private moments 2014



We seem though discouragingly needy
to resist the desire in our mind
to be seen to be caring to others
as if it was a sin to be kind
but to be kind to others is no sin
it is all that we should ever be
and He who is watching and caring
misses nothing in His Heavenly See.

©Joe Wilson – Not sinning 2014