Still The King, I Suppose?

I can’t help laughing as I read this book. If you ever thought Stephen King was all about dark, grimy tales of horror and gloomy thrillers; tell you what, you are wrong. During my high school days I read tons of King’s books and yes, they were horror stories but I enjoyed them nonetheless. In fact, he became one of my favourite writers worldwide. Right now, after so many years, I’m reading a Stephen King again. This one is entitled Hearts in Atlantis and it’s a collection of his novellas and short stories. I’m still on the first story and hey, this man took me off guard with this style of writing. He’s created this fragile young character who immediately won my heart and compassion. This story, told on the backdrop of the 60’s, is both fun and sad.  It is such an inspiring read. I find myself pausing now and then to jot down something in my journal.  Take away everything from me. But please, not my books.   

Ruthless Truth

In 2008, I watched my pen dribble on a page, leaving behind ink trails that filled the entire white space. What came out was a poem. I titled it ‘The First Time I Saw You, Was the Last Time I Saw You.’  The title was such a blatant truth, clean as a whistle.  This poem was written with deep emotions of a man whose day had suddenly become night and dawn refused to creep up. Hope and hopelessness were crashed into one pot and stirred into a murky blend – the kind of juice that was too hard to swallow, yet not that bitter. But in this man’s heart, he knew that this poem would rise up his sun again. But since time waits for no man, years came and passed by. Now it’s the end of 2012, and that truth is still the truth. Ruthless truth.  

My Alma Mater

I just revisited a collection of short stories by African writers and the power and intensity of the writings still spellbind me.  The plots, with which I can easily identify as an African, are gripping and the story lines summon a concoction of emotions - though I’ve read these I-don’t-know-how-many-times before. In his story, The Man, which was banned in his home country, The Congo, Emmanuel Dongala writes in a style and approach that squeezes tears off my eyes. Light-hearted and satirical language yet the deadly seriousness of the underlying subject matter hits like a full blow. Eish, the power of the written word!  Take anything away from me but don’t take my books...please. Books are my alma mater.  

12-12-12

December 12, 2012. Or 12-12-12 in short. There’ll never be a sequence of numbers like this again. There’s not gonna be 13-13-13. This year 2012 is very interesting indeed. To me it has been a very bad year. Sometimes I wondered if it really was true that the world is ending on December 21^st 2012. The way events have been unspooling for me, it felt like it led to the so-called doomsday. The kind I’ve seen in disaster movies like 2012, Knowing, The Impossible and many other apocalyptic films.  But I guess these are all ‘conspiracy theories’. Life is such a sweet cushion of feathers, neh?  

Thoughts of a Rusty Nail (Recently Hit on the Head)

One of my favourite African writers, Dambudzo Marechera, wrote;

The brain is stuttering. The days are reduced to rubble. There is nothing to Rain but water. Tell it the way it tastes. Pronounce it the way it touches. Let the singular fragrance waft softly into syllables. I am the end of the tunnel in my beginning. The answer to a question forgotten long ago.

I am the room in which something stirs, whispering my name. Your bare arm encircles not my body but a deadly vision of the image of you. 

From the difficult dark, points of light project thought into speech, into terrain of terror, mystery of commonsense.

I am the small scream underneath the bolt of the Sky.

Toasted and battered I await your voluptuous lips, your small cutting teeth, the raw sweet reeling leap into ecstasy  prelude to bathroom anxieties  Memories too hot to touch, that black-red magma which underlines every minute, feeling there is no purpose but to wait for purpose...

Till I resist to reason the irrational symbol of no regret.

History on three feet crawls toward the dungheap, the rubbish pit of all my yesterday's names. The final word does not belong to the Worm. The last word is desolation.

But first, to bound the bone in lemonlbright sunlightA pause...

To gain, under destiny's lampshade, a permanent intensity, dare I hesitate?To cry, what no scream ever whispered, to shrill, to how what no dread bombardment ever shuddered!

Fear is no small thing under the microscope. Fear is the flesh, the gorgeous dress my skeleton wears. 

From 'Scrapiron Blues', his compilation of short stories and poems.