Kenya glides in beauty.
Her refinements of green and gold,
grace her rounded hills.
She is warm, she cries rivers,
she beckons with mysterious
flirting lashes of cumulus clouds.
She hides her seething intelligence
behind Iroko trees and waving palms.
Well read, and diverse,
she lets men see only what she wants
them to see.
Men and women are drawn to her,
as soul weary pilgrims to an oracle.
Seeking solace, excitement,
knowledge, danger,
peace, love.
Yet, she is in her jubilant beauty,
so outwardly alive and exuberant,
inside so confused, lost,
removed from the deep running roots
that held her to the nourishing past.
She is starving in her
corporate ,concrete plain.
Her rivers are now fountains in which
tourists drop coins.
Her once bare feet now held cramped
and captive in three inch stilettos.
Clicking on the concrete,
knowing no path by heart ..any longer.
She is lovely in her Gucci power suit
and matching Prada bag.
So cool and put together.
Yet inside
she is weary.
Cold, vacant,
longing for the history that flickers in
her minds eye,
as an old movie she immersed her soul
in once and now sees but in stolen,
horded glimpses.
The stories of life as it once was.
Unscathed by violence and war.
Tourists and suits scurry by her,
as she sits ,seemingly serene on a cold
park bench under the hot Kenyan sun.
They choose not to see her crying.
Her soul is restless,
searching incessantly for her past
glory.
When children did not live and die in
slums by the millions,
When police and military “peace
keepers”,did not pay tribal leaders to
lay with their young daughters,’
or take them screaming for the temerity
of walking to the store for bread.
Her honor has been cleaved in twain.
laying torpid and spent neath the blue
skies.
It will not be the politicians and suits
who save her.
No. They see only her beauty to be
boxed and sold,
as a high end escort in a fine hotel.
It will be the poor, the angry, the
barefoot masses,
still connected to the Earth that gives
them life,
A mother who is dying, slowly under
the cement pads of greed and
corruption.
The earth still speaks,
to those who will listen.
It is those powerless millions who shall
be her salvation.
Who must arise and say “NO MORE”.
These humble hordes will be the souls
to stand for her and restore her honor.
Wash her wounds and bathe her again
in scented oils.
They will redeem her lost soul.
She is a goddess among the mortal.
She must be restored.
The makeup removed,
the stilettos tossed into the deep fast
running river,
and she must be baptized in beauty
and admiration once more.
The loss of the sacred, anywhere, at
anytime,
is a scythe through the heart of all.
courtesy of Storyzetu
