EFFECTS OF CHILD ABUSE ON PERFORMANCE OF PRIMARY SCHOOL IN KAPYEMIT WARD, TURBO CONSTITUENCY, UASIN-GISHU COUNTY.





BY
ERICK NYAKUNDI
KIS/03013/14




A RESEARCH PROJECTSUBMITED TO THE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES, DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY IN THE PARTIAL FULFILMENT FOR THE AWARD OF THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF SOCIOLOGY



MAY, 2014

DECLARATION

I, the undersigned, declare that this project is my original work and that it has not been presented in any other university or institution for academic credit.

Signature...............................................­..... Date...................................
ERICK NYAKUNDI
KIS/03013/14






SUPERVISOR
This project has been submitted for examination with my approval as university supervisor
DR. W. O. ABUYA
Signature..................................................­.. Date....................................




DEDICATION
I dedicate this work to my Dad, Mom, my sister Lydia and my lovely brother Dun who contributed in one way or another to make this project to be successful.


















ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to thank all individuals who contributed and sacrificed their time towards completion of this project.
To my supervisor, for the guidance and support in the development of this research project, His advice and criticism made this project what it is.
Thanks to colleagues and friends for their suggestions, advice and encouragement. To all of you may God bless you abundantly for your tireless effort.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents Page
DECLARATION i
DEDICATION ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS iv
LIST OF TABLES vii
LIST OF FIGURE viii
ABSTRACT ix
CHAPTER ONE 10
STUDY OVERVIEW AND STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 10
1.1 Background of the Study 10
1.2 Research Questions 13
1.3 Research Objectives 13
1.4 Justification of the Study 13
1.5 Significance of the Study 14
1.6 Scope of the Study 15
1.6.1Assumptions of the Study 16
CHAPTER TWO 17
LITERATURE REVIEW 17
2.1 Introduction 17
2.2 Common Forms of Child Abuse 17
2.2.1 Child ****** Abuse 17
2.2.2 Physiological or Emotional Abuse 17
2.2.3 Physical Abuse 18
2.2.4 Child Neglect or Abandonment 18
2.2.4.1 Physical Neglect 19
2.2.4.2 Educational Neglect 19
2.2.4.3 Medical Neglect 19
2.2.5 Child Fatalities 20
2.3 How Child Abuse Affects Academic Performance 20
2.3.1 Child Abuse and Academic Performance 20
2.3.2 Child Abuse and School Image 23
2.3.3 Child Abuse and Dropout Rate 25
2.4 Strategies that Schools can Employ to Curb Child Abuse 26
2.4.1 Role of Public Regulation 26
2.4.1.1 Nurturing and Attachment 27
2.4.1.2 Social Connections 27
2.5 Theoretical Framework 27
2.5.1 Learning Theory 28
2.5.1.1 Relationship with the Study 28
2.5.2 Family Dysfunction Theory 29
2.5.2.1 Relationship with the Study 29
CHAPTER THREE 30
RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY 30
3.0 Introduction 30
3.1 Site Description 30
3.2 Research Design 30
3.3.1 Target Population 30
3.3.2 Sample Size and Sampling Procedure 31
3.4 Description of Research Instruments 32
3.4.1 Research Instrument 32
3.4.1.1 Questionnaire 32
3.5 Data Collection Procedure 32
3.5.1 Validity and Reliability of Research Instruments 33
3.5.1.1 Reliability of Research Instruments 33
3.5.1.2 Validity 33
3.6 Data Analysis and Presentation 33
CHAPTER FOUR 35
DATA PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS 35
4.0 Introduction 35
4.1 Background Information 35
4.1.1 Age of the Respondents 35
4.1.2 *** of the Respondents 35
4.1.3 Education Level of the Respondents 36
4.1.4 Marital Status 36
4.2 Specific Information 37
4.2.1 Effects of Child Abuse on Academic Performance 37
4.2.2 How Child Abuse Affects Dropout Rate of Students in School 38
4.2.3 Proposed Strategies that Schools can Employ to Curb Child Abuse 41
CHAPTER FIVE 43
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 43
5.0 Introduction 43
5.1 Summary of the findings 43
5.2 Discussion of the Findings 44
5.3 Conclusion 45
5.4 Recommendations 46
REFERENCES 47

LIST OF TABLES & FIGURES
Table 3.1 Target population 32
Table 3.1 Sample size 33
Table 4.1 Age of the Respondents 36
Table 4.2 *** of the Respondents 37
Table 4.3 Education Level of the Respondents 37
Table 4.4 Marital Status 38
Table 4.5 Effects of Child Abuse on Academic Performance 38
Table 4.6 How Child Abuse Affects Dropout Rate of Students in School 40
Figure 4.1 Views of the Pupils on Abuse 41
Table 4.7 Proposed Strategies that Schools can Employ to Curb Child Abuse 42





















ABSTRACT
Child abuse is the physical, ****** or emotional maltreatment or neglect of a child or children. The consequences of child maltreatment can be profound and may endure long after the abuse or neglect occurs. The purpose of the study was to investigate the effect of child abuse on school performance in Primary Schools in Kapyemit ward, Uasin-Gishu County. The objectives of the study were: To assess the impacts of child abuse on academic performance; to determine the effects of child abuse on schools image, to identify the impacts of child abuse on pupil drop out rate, to investigate the effects of child abuse on pupil transition rate. The study employed a survey study design. The study targeted 160 respondents which includes; 5 Head Teachers, 40 Teachers, 70 Pupils and 35 parents of which a sample size of 48 was obtained from using 30%. Purposive sampling technique was used in selecting the head teachers while simple random sampling technique will be used to select the teachers, Pupils and parents who formed the respondents of the study. Questionnaires and interview schedules were used as data collection instruments. Data was analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively and presented in form of tables, percentages and frequency. The study helped in the understanding of the effects of child abuse on the school performance, the realization of the roles parents and teachers play in the curbing of child abuse among pupils and raising awareness on the same.
 
CHAPTER ONE
STUDY OVERVIEW AND STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
1.1 Background of the Study
Child abuse is the physical, ****** or emotional maltreatment or neglect of a child or children. The consequences of child maltreatment can be profound and may endure long after the abuse or neglect occurs. The effects can appear in childhood, adolescence, or adulthood, and may affect various aspects of an individual's development (e.g., physical, cognitive, psychological, and behavioral). These effects range in consequence from minor physical injuries, low self-esteem, attention disorders, and poor peer relations to severe brain damage, extremely violent behavior, and death. In extreme cases, child abuse affects the performance of schools in the affected region (Daniel, 1978).
Performance refers to how students deal with their academic studies and how they cope with or accomplish different tasks given to them by their teachers. Performance is also the ability of a school to portray a good image which can influence the public (Decastro, 1978). There are several factors that influence the performance of a school at large, however, there is a critical factor that most researchers have avoided to discuss, and child abuse has been a crucial factor that has contributed to children’s dismal performance. Apart from children’s personal intelligence, child abuse is among then key factors contributing to poor performance of learners. Child abuse can lead to school dropping, emotional trauma or can even be fatal, hence destructing or even terminating the educational ambitions of a child. (Harris, 2005)
Worldwide, according to World Health Organization (WHO, 2000) approximately 40 million children are subjected to child abuse each year. According to Human Rights Watch (2001) about 30% of all severely disabled children relegated to special homes in the Ukraine died before they reached 18 years of age. UNICEF estimates that two million children died as a result of armed conflict during a recent 10-year period and that another six million were injured or disabled. In Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, over 6.5 million children annually are exposed to unwanted ****** materials over the internet; over 1.7 million of these report distress over exposure to these materials. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department for Children and Families (DCF) define child maltreatment as any act or series of acts of commission or omission by a parent or other caregiver that results in harm, potential for harm, or threat of harm to a child. Child abuse can occur in a child's home, or in the organizations, schools or communities the child interacts with. Each year, approximately one million children around the world are introduced into commercial ****** exploitation despite this problem; these developed countries have put measures to curb the vice. Rehabilitation schools have been formed and introduction of counseling centers as well. Despite the prevalence of child abuse in this developed nations they narrowly affect the academic performance since there are organizations put in place to curb the situation e.g. child associations, guidance and counseling institutions, and school based counseling programs (Giles, 2001)
Concern for victims of child abuse in Africa expressed by the African network of the International Society for The Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (ISPCAN) which gave five main presentations of child abuse: child labor, street wandering, ****** abuse, child battering and abandonment (Elma, 1977). Child labor according to the international labor organization (ILO), about 10 million children less than 15years in Africa are in formal employment, working long hours with poor pay and are exposed to substantial health hazards. Wandering of children refers to children, usually unkempt and with delinquent propensities, living rough in town. The reasons for children taking to the street remain poorly understood particularly in relation to factors in the child rather than parental hostility and economic (Dubowitz, 2002)
****** abuse is another. For example, arranged under-age marriages are common in some parts of the continent and doubt was often expressed as to whether a young girl fully gave consent to being betrothed (Galdsone, 1965). Prevalence rates in Africa are very difficult to ascertain because of the fear of disclosure by victims and lack of proper documentation. Most of the girls by reasons of shame fear or surprisingly respect for their usually older perpetrators. Physical battering is also eminent. Physical abuse of children is widely claimed to berate in the third world; however, there are anecdotes from east Africa skeletal frame or localized body areas of all first attendees aged 0-12 years at this hospital during the four-year period 1 January 1987 to 31 December 1990 (Garbarino, 1975). Sixty-nine of these reports reveals evidence of multiple bone fractures wither without evidence of rib or skull fracture. Abandonment of children to roam around the streets in what we call street children is also eminent in Africa, though valid and adequate information on abandonment are difficult to obtain due mainly to failure of offending parents to show up out of guilt, shame, judicial repercussions or a combination of these. However, some euro-American missionaries identified inter alia breech birth. (Erickson, 2003)
Child protection measures in Kenya are currently not implemented effectively and fully (Galdstone, 1965). Compliance with such legislation would increase if the magnitude of the problem and better knowledge about the factors that put children at risk was available. Additionally, involving stakeholders, especially agencies charged with protection, as well as involving affected children, will highlight the issues and thereby promote adherence to protection policies. Kenyan children, child activists and children organizations are pinning their hopes on the implementation of the Children’s Act to improve the lot of the nation’s youth. The Act, which came into effect on 1 March 2002, puts in place full safeguards for the rights of the child. Its passage was a giant stride in harmonizing the national laws with international agreements which Kenya has signed such as the UN Conventions on the Rights of the Child (CRC, 2002)
There is hope that the new legislation will dramatically change the inattention, neglect and abuse towards child rights. The Act outlaws any form discrimination of children, and forbids Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), child prostitution, and child labor, among other forms of abuse. The Children’s Act has immensely improved the lives of many Kenyan children plagued with high illiteracy levels, frequent **** cases and child labor since it guarantees children the right to health and medical care, provision of which is the responsibility of the parents, the extended family and the government (Erickson, 2005).
Cases of child abuse in Uasin-Gishu region have been so eminent in the recent years ((Kenya Media Report, 2004). In the year 2010 and the year 2011, there was a program started to rehabilitate this behavior. This problem is clearly evident when you first arrive in Eldoret town, it is among the towns in the country with the highest number of abandoned children who keep on moving from one Centre to another seeking help from passersby. Parents have developed behaviors of abandoning their children and deliberately sending them to the town so that they can benefit from their borrowing. So to say this has led to child labor in this region. High profile cases of school dropouts have been recorded regarding the environs of this region. Young school children from different locations in Eldoret converge in town to persuade people to offer them financial assistance. Some attend school in numbered days and decide to spend some good number of days out of school.
The communities and societies around tend to assume this situation and term it as norm. A few who might seem concerned lack cooperation from the rest. This has adversely affected the performance of most of schools, hence leading to poor living standards of the people and a poisoned future of a young citizen. The problem has affected learners in regions like many areas in Uasin-Gishu County. It has really affected child development and affected their attendance and performance in school. Little intervention measures has been taken to advocate the holistic development of the children. It was to this reason that the researcher conducted the research in the named above region
1.2 Research Questions
The study was guided by the following questions;
1) What is the effect of child abuse on the academic performance of students in Kapyemit Ward?  
2) What are some of the proposed strategies that schools can employ to curb child abuse?
1.3 Research Objectives
The study was guided by the following research objectives;
1) To identify the effect of child abuse on the academic performance of students in Kapyemit Ward.
2) To identify proposed strategies that can be employed to help curb child abuse.
1.4 Justification of the Study
It is becoming increasingly difficult to separate child abuse prevention into separate categories. For instance, strategies on the societal level include increasing the “value” of children, increasing the economic self-sufficiency of families, discouraging corporal punishment and other forms of violence, making health care more accessible and affordable, expanding and improving coordination of social services, improving the identification and treatment of psychological problems and alcohol and drug abuse, providing more affordable child care and preventing the birth of unwanted children.
Very little analysis has been done to estimate the total cost of preventing child abuse and neglect or the long-term social costs of not preventing it. There is now a move to situate child abuse and neglect within the continuum of intervention which addresses multiple aspects of family behaviors. The efficacy of tackling portions of the problem of child abuse apart from broader societal needs is not known. And, perhaps prevention can only come in tandem with efforts to reduce poverty, improve health care and make children’s issues a national priority. However, despite these constraints, evaluations of prevention programs can be improved by coming to terms with definitions of key varia

My friend Gerard, (who is alive), looks like an Arabian slave-boy, though swarthier and longer of hair than Tony Curtis; an olive –skinned Mowgli, ape boy of Kipling’s  “Jungle Book”, although I have never seen Gerard swinging through any trees, nor eating any insects, nor even kissing a sultan’s foot. But looks can be deceiving, or receiving, with the proper pen, the zen pen of a poet, this proper poet who lives upstairs with his multitude of books piled on the floors, walking on Whitman, sitting on Shakespeare; tripping over Ginsberg, sleeping on Sartre; not a single shelf for this Jung man.
“A place for everything, and for everything it’s place”, he stands and stares out of a window overlooking the jungle of five-foot high weeds that serves as our backyard and wonders aloud “whither Oregon?”; questions our alleged enlightened sense of awareness, his disposition toward liberalness in a world gone madder than usual. Have I convinced him yet, my naïve, trusting neighbor? Yes, he realizes with a sigh that it is so, now that he has finally succumbed and bought a thirteen inch, black & white television of his own, now he can see with his own brown eyes in his own living room, far off wars, instant coffee & instant karma, depersonalized tragedies, faceless fatalities, insidious soap operas and humorless sitcoms, adverse advertisements, Howard Stern; “whither sanity?” we both cry and laugh out loud at this mediocre media, the global sewage, the Marshall McClueless, me and Gerard Rizza, my friend who is alive.

Gerard, (who is healthy), is gay, yet straighter than most men, and has been complaining quite a bit about the ferry service lately; contemplating a move off of Staten Island, and leaving his sporadic substitute teaching gig at a nearby high school, a mere six block walk from our house atop Winter Hill, where he is trying to convince me, a wide-eyed cynic, that a blank, white, unused canvas, surrounded by a wooden picture frame hung upon his wall is indeed a work of art; the job is very convenient, but again the ******* about the ferry, not the boat ride per se, but the incongruities of the ****** schedule, which anybody who has ever just missed a three a.m. boat and had to wait for an hour in the Hierynomous Bosch triptych known as the Whitehall Ferry terminal ,will definitely attest to; and Gerard has this thing about Staten Islanders, like the homophobes at a recent anti-peace rally in New Dorp, supporting the carpet bombing of an oil rich yet still poor third-world country, throwing beer cans at him and his companions while shouting “we know where you live, *******!”. Rizz came home that evening, visibly shaken and pale, (not his usual olive-skinned self), knocked on my door and pleaded “whither ******?”. I went upstairs, sat on his couch and rolled a joint. Gerard puts on the new 10,000 Maniacs tape and tries, once again, to bait me in a conversation about his “work of art”, my work of naught; he speaks of the horrific details of his day. “Isn’t this picture of Doc Gooden on my refrigerator door proof enough of my manhood, my patriotic intent, for those *******? The ******’ Mets, fuh chrissakes!” We sit out on his porch, watching the sun set over our backyard jungle as Natalie sings wireless Verdi cries, and I pass the burning joint to Gerard, my friend who is still healthy.

My friend Gerard, who is *** positive, was quite possibly a cat in a former life, probably a Siamese, thin, dark and aloof; yes, I can see ol’ Rizz now, sprawled out on an old tapestry rug, getting his belly scratched by his owner, perhaps Emily Dickinson or Georgia O’Keefe, Rizz purring like the engine of an old bi-winged barnstormer; abruptly rolls over, gets on all fours, tail waving *****, slinks over to lap water out of a bowl marked “Gerard”. He’d sleep all day on books and original manuscripts, and play all night amongst oil & acrylic, knocking over an occasional blank canvas, which he, in a future incarnation, will try to convince me, in his feline manner, is art. Sitting and staring from his usual spot on the windowsill, his cat eyes blink slowly as he wonders, “whither dinner?”; and begins to clean himself with tongue and paw, this cat who might be Gerard, my friend who is *** positive.

Gerard, who is sick, recently moved to Manhattan, Chelsea, to be precise, in with his best friend; and has stopped ******* about the Staten Island ferry, having far more pressing matters to ***** about, i.e. the ever-rising cost of homeopathic medicine and the lack of coverage for holistic and alternative care; any number of political and social concerns (Gerard was never the silent type); the lateness of his first published book of poems, entitled “Regard for Junction”; his rapidly deteriorating health, etc., etc.; and is now a true city dweller, a zen denizen, a proper poet with high regard for junction. That’s all that remains when it’s all over anyway, this junction, that junction, petticoat junction, petticoat junction – “I always wanted to **** the brunette sister”, I’d once told him; “I prefer uncle Joe!”, he laughingly replied; dejection, rejection, reclamation, defamation, cremation, conjecture, conjunction, all junctions happening at the same time, at now, a single place, a single moment, this forever junction with Gerard, my friend who is dying.

My friend Gerard, who is dead, officially passed from this life on a Saturday morning in early April, a mere two weeks before his junction with publication, although Gerard my friend passed away much earlier, leaving a sick and emaciated body behind to play host to his bedside guests, to help bear the pain of his family and friends; so doped-up on morphine, no longer able to remember any names, he called me “*****” when I entered the hospital room, where this barely physical manifestation of what had once been Gerard Rizza was being kept alive like the barest glimmer of hope, and displayed like some recently fallen leader, lying in state;  “whither Gerard withers” I thought, saying goodbye to this Rizza impersonator, this imposter, this visitor from a shadow world, an abstraction of a friend, whom the nurses told us, his disbelieving visitors, was our friend Gerard, who though technically still alive, was already dead.

My friend Gerard, who is laughing
My friend Gerard, who is singing
My friend Gerard, who is coughing
My friend Gerard, who is sleeping
My friend Gerard, who is holy
My friend Gerard, who is missed.

We’ll try to answer
The unanswerable paradox
Of tragedy and pain
And attempt to explain suffering.
Why ****** wasn’t born with an incurable disease
And why Anne Frank
Couldn’t have just held off
For three more weeks
Until Liberation.

These questions make
the world become poetry.
And we who ask them
become the world.

Inevitable losses contrived from the actuality
Saying goodbye to the ones that we love
Letting them go
Before we’re destroyed
By the inevitable suffering.

I am a grenade.
I am bound to explode.
Fatalities by the dozens.
Even more wounded.
PTSD for years after
I will leave an emptiness
In the lives of those I love
And those who love me.

Life will end midsentence
Before I have a chance to explain
Or say goodbye
Or say I’m sorry
To those who never got the chance.
Because I knew I was a grenade
And I loved them too much
To even be
One of my fatalities.

[Boom]

I have fears – they are very real to me. But contrary to what the some may think, my greatest fears are not rejection and abandonment.

My greatest fear is that everyone will continue to turn their heads while victims are screaming.

My greatest fear is that survivors will express exactly how they feel, whether verbally, or acting out, and they will continue to be invalidated by being told they need medication and therapy in order to control their behavior, thereby reinforcing what they learned as children.

My greatest fear is that victims will continue to be silenced by therapy, or numbed from medication, and the clinicians, the researchers, will continue to ‘theorize’ and develop treatment that, in the long-run, is not helpful because they, themselves were NOT abused and have no idea what really should be done.

My greatest fear is that survivors will continue to be lab rats in the development of treatment that is not helpful, they will continue to drop out, time after time, and they will continue to self-harm, ‘repeat the trauma’, and possibly commit suicide because they believe no one cares.

My greatest fear is that the statistics will grow and no one will do anything about it because they do not know what to do. These are the facts:
             A report of child abuse is made every ten seconds
             More than five children die every day as a result of child abuse.
             Approximately 80% of children that die from abuse are under the age of 4.
             It is estimated that between 50-60% of child fatalities due to maltreatment are not recorded as
             such on death certificates.
             More than 90% of juvenile ****** abuse victims know their perpetrator in some way.
             Child abuse occurs at every socioeconomic level, across ethnic and cultural lines, within all
             religions and at all levels of education.
            About 30% of abused and neglected children will later abuse their own children, continuing
            the horrible cycle of abuse.
            About 80% of 21 year olds that were abused as children met criteria for at least one
            psychological disorder.

And this reflects only what is reported. Imagine what that percentage would be if all of the unreported cases were included.

And of the millions of children that survive the abuse, many grow up to be adults who are able to put it behind them, succeed and present themselves as an acceptable member of society, and many of them do not. But what are we DOING about it? When will people stop turning their heads? When will we finally stop, look and listen to these children being abused and to the adults who were abused as children?

When will we, society, decide that child abuse, and ****, and ****** assault are important, and affect millions of lives every year, and that it can be just as deadly as cancer. When will we finally stop whispering and turning our heads and actually face it and do something to stop it, and effectively treat those who ‘survived’?

I hope it happens in my lifetime, and I hope I can make a difference!

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My father was not good to his body when he was younger.
The smoking and drinking and snorting and fighting and drinking and crashes and drinking were not good for him.
My father was not good to his body when he was younger.
One summer, when he was 16, everyday he would take a bottle of wine from his mother's liquor cabinet, buy a pack of cigarettes at the corner store, meet up with his friend Mario, who also stole a bottle of wine, and together they would ride down to the river and smoke and drink and swim. Everyday, for a full 1970's summer they did this.
And now he tells me, that at the time they were having fun and they were not worried about money or addictions or the future.
They were just having fun.
My father was not good to his body when he was younger.
One day, in the dead of fall 1981, he and his friends Mario, Mark, ****** and John all got together at Mark's apartment on the corner of 51st and Diablo boulevard. They hit the town, drank, snuck into movie theatres, harassed girls and had a good time. They returned to Mark's apartment at 2 am and thought it a good idea to steal Mark's mom's new car. They decided to go to Reno.
Driving, as my dad put it, well above the speed limit on Highway 49, they collided head on with a big rig. There were no fatalities but my dad broke his shoulder and suffered a minor concussion. Mark's mom chose to not press charges nor did the driver of the big rig. The next day my father was back at work, refusing to adhere to the doctor's orders of taking it easy and wearing a soft cast, entrapping his left arm against his chest, climbing under cars, changing oil, and repairing engines.
My father was not good to his body when he was younger.
One cold winter's day, in December of '82, my father's ever faithful companion, Mario, picked my father and his dog, Wimpy, up and they drove over to a small burger joint named Big A's. My father ordered two bacon cheeseburgers and a large rootbeer. Mario got the same, only with a single bacon cheeseburger. My father father gave his second bacon cheeseburger to his pitbull Wimpy.
My father was better to his dog than he was to his own body.
Now, my father coughs himself to sleep every night, and has chronic bronchitis. His liver and kidneys are shot and he plans to not live passed sixty. He will be turning fifty in two weeks.
My father was not good to his body when he was younger.

It's the Grim Reaper
It's the Boogie Man
It's the wolf in the closet
It's the monster under the bed
It's the phantom that's chasing you in your dreams
It's the madman who dances delightfully in your brain matter
It's the poison in your coffee
Paralyzing
Petrifying and penetrating
A flesh eating
Bone chomping
Soul *******
Grave robbing Ghoul
Right within the halls of your head
Grotesque and greedy, it is
Gloom everywhere
An anxiety production line
Breeding anguish
Bleeding you out
Windpipe choking
Werewolf watching
Witches brewing
It's dreadful and dooming
It's horror at every corner
It's a newspaper dripping in disaster
It's a future forecasting fatalities
Your obituary in every new edition

BUT IT'S NOT REAL

Work to do.

I've always dreamt of impossible realities,
I've learnt from certain fatalities,
Things get hard with every second passing,
Your innerself dieing and anger lashing;
Get a grip on your emotions and pick yourself,
Because nothing can degrade you but yourself,

Guard your mind from useless words,
Let not become the castle of queens an empty hearse,

Keep chaising the dream you live for,
The dream you've placed in your soul's core.

Keep the spark alive until your last breath.

Change tackles a broad spectrum of life.
You change your hair, you change your underwear, you change your shoes.
How the hell could someone change their Personalities in the blink of an eye.
Can some one so thoughtful and sensitive turn into such a **** with the turn of one sentence phrase and punctuation.
She storms in on her high horse ready to take the world by storm with her fury.
She may say im her world but what have i done to deserve such punishments.
I asked a Question.
The fatalities of words and sentence structures leave a gaping hole in the ego and sense of trust.
Sense of what is right and wrong cuz what is right by all does not apply to her.
Her mind twists and bends to form views and morals that not even a twisted fairy tale can concoct.
What she fights for doesnt fit the way of the world.
She believes in things that will never happen, that make no sense. She fights for views that will leave her fighting forever.
She is a non conformist but she conforms to stereotypes that go against her better thinking.
The way she used to think.
Stress has got her in a headlock, cutting off her brain's circulatory flow of intelligent words and clean blood.
She inhales.
Breathes in a mixture of smoke and unclean thoughts.
Yea, she can stop.
She's walking corruption.
Digesting poison in the pit of her stomach killing the butterflies she claim died.
Yea they died.
In a fiery pit of lies and hypocrisy that gets you nowhere.
She tells me her worst thoughts and wishes but her honesty doesnt justify the unjust actions that go against who she was.
Who is she becoming?
Someone who is dependent on drugs and drinks to make her happy Cuz she doesnt have the ***** to go against the grain and
Stick to her guns and stay clean and fresh,
Keeping her lungs pink and her brain free,
free to believe and grow with each intake of air not smoke.
I hate to see it happen but she is just like the others.
**** views take the form of rolled up paper.
Not an application but a temptation.
Non conformists need not apply.

the droplets of water are singing a trail down the bricks of the houses
through the alleys of the glassy-eyed broken people with soft hearts, a pre-disposition for death
weaving a tabooed trail across the sidewalks that when gazed upon reeks of obscurity
and leaving faint lines on the creased skin of all the sinewy fatalities
the mildewed rain peaks across the rusted windowsill that sighs with familiarity
it sloshes against the children’s playground and slaps at the pavement with a sudden clarity
it empties itself into the spiked maze of the tree branch hoping the leafs will cling onto to it dearly
it mellows into a pond that breaks apart with sharp staccatos when mushy feet run down the street
and it hurls itself into the bitterly sweet lips of two frost-bitten lovers who will soon meet
it daintily steps into the burning embers of the flame, only to be flushed out in shame
it turns to the shower as a last resort, but whines in dismay when it’s slurped down the drain
it embraces the eyelashes until it’s shaken in misery and then watches wearily as it’s blinked away in positivity
it lumbers down the path of the bruised ego, a shattering of phrases that leaves the person’s mouth
and before it has the chance to drop it is scooped up and chastised until it moves no more
the tears and the rain drops wander listlessly for all of eternity
only to be hastily thrown away or brushed into cotton for fear of a restless divinity
it is never to reach a destination and only doomed to be forgotten
and so it seems dear friends, that raindrops are simply you and me

It was bad. crazy. eh. horrifying. media. nothing. odd. saddening. terrifying. unbelievable.

Who the **** are you? No. No. Naw. Nah. No. No thanks. Sorry, no. No time. No. No thank you. No. No time. Not now. No, what? No, what? What happened. Oh my gosh. Oh my god. Oh jeez. Whoa. Why? When? My God. Where? How? Why? I heard, yeah. I heard, why? I heard only two people died. two deaths. two fatalities. two souls. I heard only 14 were injured. only 19 were injured. only 23 were injured. only. only. only. only 71 were injured. Wait, 3 died? Wait, 144 were injured?

It was horrible. I don’t care. inappropriate. scary. terrible. wild. it was like. It was like.
9/11. 9/11. Like 9/11. Reminds me of September 11th. Just like 9/11. All over again. Again. Terrorists. Bin Laden. Osama. Taliban. Al Qaeda.
Hate. ****. ****. Revenge. Angry. Rage. Destroy. Attack. Invade. Retaliate. Hate.
God bless America. **** America.

4 bombs. 2 bombs. 1 bomb, I heard. I heard. I heard.  I heard it was an explosive finish. Haha. Yeah, I heard they had a blast. That the runners were really blown away. I heard. *******. I heard. Go away. I heard. Sorry it’s my last cigarette.

I have friends. I have friends at BC. I have friends at Northeastern. I have friends at Boston College. I have friend at BU. I have friends in Boston. I have friends. Thank God they’re ok.

At least only two people died.

Have I what? No. Go away. Don’t touch my dog. What’s wrong with you. Not today thanks. I don’t want to donate. Leave me alone, please. Go get a job. I don’t care. No, bye. No time. Maybe later. Yeah, yeah, whatever. Sorry, no change.

Who did I think of? I don’t know. Maybe. My mom. My dad. My brother. My wife. My sister. My husband. My family. My son. My daughters. My friends. My best friend. My girlfriend. Kat. Sarah. Jamie. Joe. Jocelyn. Reggie. Owen. Brian. Jack. Rosa. Abe. Chen. Colin. Gail. Gabe. God. Joe. Andrew. Jesus. Anna. Allah. Vicki. Vishnu. My mother. father. sister. brother. Everyone, I guess. I pray for them too.

I’m sad. grateful. angry. thankful. depressed. hopeful. shocked. confused. Only 71 people were injured. 144 people were injured. At least only 2 people died. 3 people died. I can’t believe two people died. Poor, sad, hapless, helpless, hopeless. Why? I should watch the news more.

Rocky squirrel flew through the air
Safely landing precisely where
He wished.

Caught glimpse as Shirley squirrel
(Herself in front of car did hurl)
Was nearly squished.

Rocky had warned Shirley before
Admonition Shirley chose to ignore-
Cars can smite

Such events reveal it's not merely heuristic
Fatalities by car is greater statistic
Than fatalities by flight

Go ****** your opinions and your political minions up another ***’s *******, or maybe take that noise, and show some glamour and some poise like the bigs wigs on capital hill, filled with the ideals of the real, reality sets in with a pen on paper and a veto or a stapler to add another pile to another pile stacked high with paper and anger and a wager on top of all that to rate his and her, him and them, freedom or not, this is when the world goes black, back to a rack of what was and what wasn’t and isn’t and hasn’t been or whatever may come, from, whatever’s the machine in charge of the largest country on a scale of humility to ego, eating eggos daily, watching bombs drop and proms go on like any other day, a dance filled way too high with alter personalities and ratchet fatalities. This is another normality in this bleak reality of life. Full of wisdom, full of strife, take your knife and force it down someone’s throat, coat it with words, thoughts, sought after beliefs and chiefs of the mind. Find what’s real, what’s good, something borrowed something bought, this freedom we fought for, blood sweat and tears for, die for, cry for, ride it till its outlasted every past and bold and rash incision upon decisions. Fission fusion and confusion driven, is a country with stripes stars and bars, filled with past and present Heros, veterans, bet again they’re there for the third night in a row, about to row away down te river of blood and dirt and dignity, until the tugging of righteous voices slices the void of sorrow, but that’s tomorrow, today is just a work in progress.

Wordless my inferior stance yells to be heard
Wheeling the throe of malice to infuriate
The thwarted truth to expose itself, as deterred
  Blows, cower the truth in drier misstate

Justifying tears that cascade the willowed floor
Dwelling my eyes to Illusions in a bid to recall blissful memories,    
Thus allowing my heart’s pleas to implore
The day after tomorrow to pacify my tearful cries    

Wandering the pits of my darkened incarceration
My voice threatened to silence, by my bleeding furrows,
As my life thwarts forward, perplexed by the sanguine
Moat that had been conceived by those endless blows

Dealing my words, to the fatalities dwelling in fear,
Fear no more for as long as you have a voice there will be an ear to hear

"Remembering the Soviet’s silent sufferings!"

Chechnya, Georgia, Crimea…… Kiev!
There they marauded cruelly combing all  
And souls they severely sought to take like hogs
Souls they fatally fought-these Dmitri dogs
In death jails-a hell more than purgatory’s punishment
They put souls to pleasurably slaughter them all
And a soul at its time they picked and hacked in elated excitement
Severely they severed them these trigger happy Zarkozsky fools

Hunger and starvation their invasion caused!
It is a saying: To suppress small states-hunger and violence cause!
And out of these societies’ desperations, demeaned humans
Will subjugate freely as miserable subjects-slaves to any rule
The soviet sacrificed us to their animosity and brutality
Our children, our parents, our experts-we all fatally fell
Of their gallous guns or cruel squads or unnatural hungers
Humans, hardworking humans became bones-NOTHING!

We did the donkeys’ hard works-indefatigably  
And they ungrateful, kingly collected our all
All our tills tires they unjustly carried away
And all was left in sustainable villages were huge hungers-
Everywhere were war casualties: tension, desperation, mass starvations-
And when angered we couldn’t bottle anymore we staged rebellions
And they cursed us with all sorts of chemicals contaminations

They combated and convicted us with any known brutal cruelties
Innocent infants they injured with their injustices-fatalities  
Little angels they hewed with brutality-others they made all sorts of slaves
They collected us, us resilient and begun murdering our mettle vitalities
Men, all able men they collected, killed and covered in mass graves
Them they carried in transport trains, some they threw away in trenches, in rivers…
Their remains they concealed to deny us a claim of their atrocities and animosities

Babies remained, crying for their dying mummies and daddies
Long after finally they have given up fighting-living
Poor innocent babies, unaware it is death……
It is not death the devil but Dmitri dogs the devils
That has fat fed on their last of defenses-able parents
Times ahead of them were tough if not toughest

The Petrovs’, the Pavlovichs’, the Mirovics,
The Lenin’s, the Stalin’s, the Sarkozsky’s.....
They are animals raised from hells horrible
There not to pamper and foster but to decimate  
Ruthless and cruel they killed without a soul-a heart  
Death is their rite, blood is their eucharist
Mass mortuaries of mutilated bodies are their sophists
Killing is their glorious celebrations-theirs sacred sacrifices

In jail, doors opened and rude were ruthless soldiers’ orders
Chains crinkled on ground as sacrifices lead to little altars
Prisoners were time to time collected and lead in cruel commanders’ commands
And from distances came echoes of targeted bingo bull’s-eye shots
A LOW ROW of shots followed by the silences of squeal of sailed souls and their guilt
If a day or a night-if any able to tell from chained scary dark chambers  
Passed and found you fit-alive, you counted yourself very, very lucky!

It was dark when we escaped from the jaws of our starving starring deaths
Out, the moon shone silvery sweet and bright on these sad ******-white snows
Its silver speckle lights letting lurid luminous sparkling glows
The snow rained with such sadness and bitterness
On our ears it whizzed with fury and ferocity
On our bare skins it bit with brutality and cruelty
On our near naked feet it froze and frosted
We endured, we had to!

Had we managed to rob death of its celebration and elation
A taste of our starved wounded bones-surviving skeletons
We had to struggle to live and hope give, we strived, we had no choice
If we were to be counted heroes of our hopeless humans
Saviours of our suppressed peoples
We had to reach a safe distance and our rural homes
To stage the war from the roots, the stems, the base!

A death in nature by nature is better than one in Dmitri dogs hands
Their deaths were inhumane, their deaths were merciless
They were mocking and shocking-laughing and loathing while killing
A mocking moustache peeking from their elongated mouths smiles
A cigar smoking from their mouth and emitting from their nostrils
A red star labeled soviet beret on their ***** irking hairy heads
They killed you slowly loving and laughing of any strength you gave to live
Until at last you are lost-in the abyss arenas of death, your are done
Such a point you give up, you can’t fight, resist anymore

They chased after us–they pursued us
They were too determined to not let any of us live
But miraculously we lived-we somehow survived
Here in this snowy arena it is a fair ground for everyone-
There is no grandmaster, it is improvisation
Survival only for the willed-fittest
Not how well you were equipped or trained
Though too skills and determination also counted

We trapped them in their own constructed coliseum
A lot of them free-froze and fell in these forgotten fields
Their bones never to reach their of-kin commemorating cemeteries
Nature is JUST! As us, theirs too had to bitterly mourn their nature lost
The never to see graves, reminders of their never returned fighting loved ones
With God’s grace on us, we cheated their beginning to tire authorities
We reached home; we reached the earth’s of our ancestors

And here we gathered to charge back-to seek backups
To restore the lost glory of our nastily punished perishing people
Some we sneaked to safety in case we all perish we have remnants
Backups to tell of us-our sorrowful story-our liberty struggles
To Kiev and its heroes; to Kiev and its strong heroines
To Kiev and its resistant living; To Kiev and its resilient
We gathered to kick back, to tell the world of the evils of the Soviet Satans
To mourn with grace our gone and done in this dehumanizing disgrace!  
O Kiev, her heartless Holodomor; O Crimea, O Georgia…..
The Satanic Soviet infiltration brought you eternal sufferings!

© Kìùra Kabiri. All rights reserved.

We pray, we march yet nothing occurs
The line between love and hate remains a blurred
Line...
I...
Want to love them but their hate for me doesnt make the pain hurt less
When they put their bullets in my back, their knees in my back
Dead blacks in the street makes me want to attack
In defense of self
My pride for self
My love for self
Relishes not in useless killing or demeaning
I find myself grieving for every mother and father putting their child in a grave
In a day and age when social media shows the outrage live
The outcry just seems to embolden police officers lies
The 24 hour news, reminds us what we mean to Lady Liberty
And as her children sing the blues
Historical levels of un-education continue
Existential unemployment
Prison rates that makes for better business
The world witnesses police brutality and black fatalities in real time and does nothing about it
If you never walked a mile in my shoes then you know nothing about it
If you lived a day in my life you would never feel blessed
You would feel less vested in teaching your children that in the U.S. all men are created equal

I wish I was referring to a movie
but in all reality an operation
we all see the dangers of automatic weaponry
It's in a painful Christmas story

Did anyone hear about our mission
to send illegal weapons down to mexico?
no?We placed tiny battery operated gps systems
inside every single gun
and down they went into the hands of drug lords
Right under their governments nose

However we forgot to tell them to change
their batteries
and we reclaimed these guns through fatalities
and explicit crime scenes

Obviously this mission was a failure
but in the end it was plain to see
who the true gunrunners are

So now I move on to our right to bare arms
and for those who want to get rid of them entirely
come and ponder this with me

Does anyone ever shoot up a navy base or
a texas bar full of cowboys strapping?
No they go for the places that lack
any kind of defenses
The problem in my eyes is this
NOT the Right to bare arms
but not enough guns in the right hands

What can possibly go wrong,
What harm can it do,
Only five miles an hour faster,
Why not ten more.
It' starting to cloud over,
The once happy sun turns its back on me.

Now the sign flashes 60 mph,
Time to push the boundaries.
It did no harm before,
I'm a good driver.
Foot down,
Eyes open wide,
Rubber's burning fine,
I'm hoping not to collide,
And hurt anything of mine.
I'm a good driver.

The signs order me to slow down,
Me, who is only going 80,
In a 50 zone.
The clouds turn angry,
Stabbing the sky,
Booming it's voice.

It starts raining,
Sirens start wailing,
Rubber starts screeching,
Don't stop accelerating.
The flashing blue lights stalk me,
Like a lion hunting it's feast. haunts me
The piercing cry of judgement haunts me,
But no one can catch this beast.

Open up to 100,
The engine's roaring loudly,
The clouds look upon me in hatred,
Turning the roads against me,
But I'm a good driver.
The police shout in anger,
Telling me I'm in danger,
But I'm a good driver.

I know what I'm doing,
I've got a clean record,
Never any fatalities.
The adrenaline pumps my heart faster,
But the sign's telling me to go 30.
I'll compromise, 60 it is,
They still can't catch me.
A turn up ahead,
The police are getting closer,
I have to go faster.

Peddle to the floor,
I'm a good driver,
65 mph,
Turn up ahead.

Into fifth,
Engine roars loud,
Pull away fast,
Engine roars proud.

Foot off the brake,
It won't save me now,
I'm still a good driver,
So I take a final bow.

Vision fades to black,
Ears start to ring,
I feel so cold,
I slip away.

The sign says ICU,
Do you see?

"Why can't the scientist and poet be the same person?", challenged he.
I mused in between consciousness, "We are all human beings in exploding fatalities."

That night you were golden, sprawling right opposite 'AHEAD', tar and nicotine indistinguishable. That's right. They never mattered in the first place. Sometimes I'd wonder where the gray is. Can there ever be an overdose?

"What is harmony?"
"Find someone who can complete your sentence."*

I still shun psychology even if I do see humans in their separate iridescence; who is to say that Black and Red are fundamentals? I guess what I am trying to say is that I am the gray that you are unable to blend in no matter how much white you wear on your sleeve or the limitless amount of black you struggle to gargoyle into being.

///Your fantasies are caged in the little pleasurable bubbles we both conjured.



//and I never once denied.

Growing is my inner sense
Fading is my innocence
Life is fleeting, non repeating
Forgive my belligerence
Find my as I reference
My childhood that's now gone
Fatalities befalling me
And forcing me to move on
Forcing me to live strong
Forcing me to love long
In reference to the present
I pray my head's not on wrong
Wishing for the simpler things
A time before feeling the sting
Of adult reality and missing all the mystery

She lay with her back to him, face to the wall, says: “Nothing is black and white. All shades of grey. I wanted it to be… just wish it was white.”
She placed the cracks in her voice at calculated places, hoping but no reply expecting. He is usually not aware of her subtleties, the hints to the real state of things, with her. Then he lays his arm around her as he says: “At least it’s grey, not black.”
Her eyes widen in the dark but do not flinch, and she pulls him by his hand closer onto her, wishing it was the only touch she needed to bring her the ultimate comfort that she wanted, that she needed.
“But I’m afraid, the black will seep in and make the grey darker.” She swallows, suppressing her fear for speaking fatalities. “Sometimes it seems like it has and does.”
Silence falls over them as she waits for an answer; the black stylised curls he drew on his wall gaze back at her, with still, reciprocating wonder.
She reminisces to how she drew curls on her own wall, with the artistic charcoal she got for her fifteenth birthday; it was a meagre gift from the one to whom she would lose her virginity barely a few months later. Now, the curls are gone, and her contact with him fell away soon after the fact, reduced only to sporadic visits on her part.

Finally, listening to his steady breathing in sleep, she is convinced he had given up the conversation, feeling comforted that he reassured her enough for now. Her eyes remain open still though; they peer through the darkness as if it held her fortune, solitarily illuminated by the stars shining through the skylight above her. It is relating conflicting prophecies however.
If I was as pure as white, no black could – would contaminate my love for him, she thinks. But white is for virgins and she has been in love before.

© 2006

Invisible souls, nobody knows you exist and are whole,
Disregarded from the minds of those closed,
Only the confines of the open ones know
Of your existence.
They don’t know of your presence.
Your body is evanescent.
They can’t picture the beautiful essence
Inside the body a sinful adolescent,
A reckless, negligent child filled with aggression.
Victim to recklessness, negligence and oppression,
But nonetheless mortal.
For those who don’t know,
Mortality doesn’t always know morality,
Even those with perfected morals are often exposed
To imperfection for only perfection can be expected
From a soul that’s no longer infected
With this disease called sin.
So in actuality, you must recognize
And revert back to reality.
Stop the facilities practicing on fatalities,
The institutions unable to uplift individuals
Who have lost all hope and are often called criminals,
Because in the public’s eye their soul has become invisible.

asteroids were beautifully created to ebb to the misconceived vastness of the galaxy yet they are still known to be perilous. to lessen damages and fatalities, scientists eagerly observe when an asteroid is going towards our vicinity.

and you, i never expected that you’d be an asteroid to my life. you may be a planetesimal, but i’ve always revolved around your presence like you’re the center of my whole life. you approached me, and i accepted you, never knowing that you’d rescind my existence for a while. thanks for leaving me like i’m just an insignificant piece of wreckage, i needed to know your encapsulating spectra, anyway.

*you destroyed me, yes. but you destroyed me gorgeously.

Somewhere along the line,
I lose track of the divide
between the
living and the dead.
In a thrift store, for
almost a minute, I
can't remember
whether or not
my parents are alive.
Staring at a china tea set
with a pattern of brown plums
I swear used to sit
in my grandmother's cabinet,
I can't place which
inevitable tragedies
are in the past, and
which are still ahead of me.

Summer ended
in a screech of brakes
one July night, and
October transitioned
prematurely into winter
with a flare of golden sunlight
and an overdose of anaesthetic.
There have been others - a long
succession of fatalities the
whole year through, but
those two were
the deaths that really
unmade me.
Since then, I guess,
the shadow has always
sort of been there.
Maybe before.  Maybe
it started with that
first small, broken body.
Or else it's just getting older
and outliving friends  
that does it.
Bereavement as the new normal.

Which leaves me here,
staring at thrift store china,
trying to remember
if I'm an orphan.