"maasai" poems
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.
Apr 20, 2014
Apr 20, 2014 at 4:57 AM UTC
You turn me on, you make me misty-eyed,
My nascent science of love, years back,
When I followed you downstream, to bloom it began,
The sight of flowers blossom, in earnest we did invest,
Your frail hands, soft and tender,
Your electric touch, skin-deep not,
You taught me to watch the stars, in reflection I wondered,
The Antares and Aldebaran, caught my sigh,
Provoked, you opened the gates to your heart,
You filled me in, you turned me on,
Oh the Aroma, and the beauty to behold,
Two star-crossed lovers,
As breath-taking as the Maasai Mara, we opened to a new world
Full of life,
Full of energy,
Reasons why you turn me on!
Jul 9, 2013
Jul 9, 2013 at 5:08 AM UTC
They have now thronged brimful, all the barazas
In their elderly gear, in a move to cut off my thing,
The Maasai chiefs and elders have their fangs now,
More glowing in the crudeness of despotic culture,
Their foul circumcisers’ tools sharply menacing,
All focused on my ****** ******** the only joy of my nature,
They want to maliciously cut it off in their selfish solace
Minus mine consent the right of a young girl,
Chided by evils done in the name of culture,
Kwani? a maasai and culture who creates the other?
Can’t we create culture that is so darlingly to rights of girl?
Other than receding back to crookedness of un-gendered past
Denying I your posterity the rights to self worthiness,
Kindly I beg that you don’t cut of my ********
Jun 13, 2014
Jun 13, 2014 at 4:58 AM UTC
I live in Moshi,Tanzania,
As a child,one day I got lost,
A maasai took me to his home.
He lived at the foothills of the majestic Mt.Kilimanjaro,
His home was a kraal (hut)
made of stone,sticks and cow dung.
I cried for my parents,
So he fed me milk and blood from a cow,
He pierced a hole in the cow's neck,
He put a bamboo and told me to drink the blood,
It was warm but I vomited,
Gradually, I got used to it.
The maasai's way of life is communilism,
Hunting,gathering and raiding neighbours cattle.
Theirs is an age set system for men,
The children look after the herd,
I joined them having fun,
No school, no lessons or homework.
Then,there were the Morans,the youths,
They wore black **** cloths,
Carried a spear in one hand,
Their faces were painted with white ochre.
They protected the clan and the cattle,
From predators and other tribes.
They lived in a circle of huts called manyatta.
After being circumcised the Morans were taught the art of warfare
The bravest warrior got to wear the feathers of an ostrich.
The senior morans could marry and settle down,
The Moran who jumped the highest got the best girl.
The Laigewenanis trained the morans to be warriors,
My maasai was a laigwenani,
Like all maasais, he was tall and lean,
He wore a bright red shuka cloth with black stripes,
A red tartan blanket was slung on his shoulder,
He always held a long bladed stabbing spear,
His long hair was tightly braided,
He had ochre painted on his body,
He had no children and treated me like his son,
He would take me to teach the morans about warfare.
But,he had to take the permission of the chief, the Laibon.
The Laibons were the chief religious leaders,
They settled disputes,
They decided when and on whom to attack.
Luckily,after two months my maasai and I had gone to a game reserve for hunting,
A game warden found me.
He alerted the police and I was taken home safely.
But,I missed my maasai and their pastoral way of life.
Apr 17, 2018
Apr 17, 2018 at 5:12 PM UTC
I’d like to climb the clouds
Leave footprints in the sky
so I know I’ve been there
and it’ll have something to remember me by
I want to see all the longitude lines
that are nothing more than constructs of our minds
Have you ever turned the map upside down?
Maybe the US is only hanging on to South America
by a hook called Mexico.
You don’t get what you see
because Mercator
wasn’t quite right with his projections.
Boy, was he ambitious though.
He took something
not even a quarter the size of the Sahara
and dreamed it big enough
to kiss all the corners of Africa.
I want that kind of determination.
I want to stop filling my imagination
and start filling my eyes
with realities of cities and seas,
valleys and villages.
I don’t have to move mountains,
I’ll go to them.
The continents are playing coy
and just because I’ve seen them more than once
doesn’t mean I know them yet
I want to learn their favorite colors.
I want to go far enough away
that I’m not afraid to never come back.
You know wherever I am,
when I close my eyes,
all I see is the horizon.
I’ll draw my own map across my body.
Haleiwa, Hawaii on my chest.
The hottest day in summer, her
shave ice melts into my heart to keep me cool.
Paris is on the inside of my knee,
so I can protect her, keep her on her pedestal,
like you always do with your first love.
Tanzania circles my throat like a Maasai necklace,
it glints in the sun and jingles when I dance.
Dublin’s like a freckle under my chin,
it took me a while to find her,
but now I know there are things worth looking for
And I’ve got plenty of space left on my skin.
Jun 3, 2012
Jun 3, 2012 at 11:41 AM UTC
Brick-dust tumbles
with last reach for light,
choked leaves gasping for air.
Cigarette ends and spiders
come and go
like traffic on the road.
Violet against terracotta,
a Maasai on an African plain -
burning thirst.
Rain drips along
upright canals of grout
slurped by parched roots.
Crinkled buds
like babies’ hands,
drenched, unfold.
Mar 12, 2013
Mar 12, 2013 at 6:08 PM UTC
Why are there entire cities to drain,
When Somewhere in my village,
People are dying for a drop of rain
Coming from a cave through a seepage?
Why are many places flooded elsewhere
When the drought there is constant
And People are struggling everywhere
To moisturize the soil just to plant?
Why are young Maasai men digging
For hours Into the patched African soil
Searching way into the humid evening
For a drop of water, they have to toil?
Why did nature leave my playground arid
When she rains down billions of liters in Texas?
Streetlights, no lights, drought at the power grid,
Scolding of nature is the caveat of the water crisis.
Why did God give us diamonds and gold,
How can he bless us with an abundance of minerals?
Then seal up the skies and put the rains on hold?
Turning the crisis to a vulture's feast and human funerals.
#IvanBrooksPoetry©️
Jan 22, 2018
Jan 22, 2018 at 2:27 PM UTC
the Maasai people
eat mostly blood and milk
after a certain age.
a man we met
showed us his sleeping father
claiming his father was
one hundred and eight
years old
the man under the blanket
looked tiny and fragile
a tangle of bird bones
I could have lifted
in my arms.
Sep 4, 2019
Sep 4, 2019 at 5:07 PM UTC
Mundu hu mundu, is what it need to be, but before we are there, simba akikosa nyama hujaribu kula nyasi.
I at times long for that touch, the breath of a woman next to my ear.
I long for those nights where we wrestle in bed.
I long for those moments where a heart beats next to mine.
I long for the touch that weakens me.
I long for the gasp, the whimper, the silent scream of pleasure as we ***
I long for those days where we kiss and am hard as a maasai warrior,
I long to have her in my arm to see her melt,
I loong for such, but not with a stranger, not with one night stand, but with one we have a mutual understanding, where we fulfill each unmet needs.
As we lay down on the bed exhausted and satiated, we just doze off with a smile in our mouths. It was a great time we had.
Jun 30, 2019
Jun 30, 2019 at 12:51 AM UTC
Mundu hu mundu, is what it need to be, but before we are there, simba akikosa nyama hujaribu kula nyasi.
I at times long for that touch, the breath of a woman next to my ear.
I long for those nights where we wrestle in bed.
I long for those moments where a heart beats next to mine.
I long for the touch that weakens me.
I long for the gasp, the whimper, the silent scream of pleasure as we ***
I long for those days where we kiss and am hard as a maasai warrior,
I long to have her in my arm to see her melt,
I loong for such, but not with a stranger, not with one night stand, but with one we have a mutual understanding, where we fulfill each unmet needs.
As we lay down on the bed exhausted and satiated, we just doze off with a smile in our mouths. It was a great time we had.
Oct 27, 2020
Oct 27, 2020 at 2:42 AM UTC