If you’re with your other friends,
Will you deny my existence?
If the time is right,
Will you laugh at me?
If the pressure is on,
Will you reject me?
If the sky is blue,
Is the sea blue too?
If you want power,
Will you reach out to me?
If you’re feeling vulnerable,
Will you ignore me?
If I get too close,
Will you push me away?
If it gets to much,
Will you lock yourself away?
Can I ask you a question?
Can I listen to your voice?
Can I lend you a shoulder,
When you need someone to lean on?
Can pigs fly?
Do you cry?
Are elephants real,
Or just made up?
Are you happy?
Are you sad?
Are you angry?
Are you mad?
If I tell you a secret,
Will you spread it around?
If I pretend I am nothing,
Will you believe I am nothing?
What’s your favourite colour?
Food?
Pop star?
Language?
Will you be here tomorrow?
Were you there yesterday?
Overall, how do you rate your life?
How do you rate mine?
When words get too much
Do you buy a gun?
And do you shoot the world down
Or do you change yourself?
Do you have an identity?
Do you really need one?
When will I see you again?
When will you see me again?
Do you have memories of the future
And remember seeing them in the past?
Do you have any bold memories?
Do you have anything to add?
You have the right to remain silent.
You have the right to remain silent.
What do you really think of me?
What if I wanted my life to be private? Would you let me be silent? Would you let me hide away and stay away? On days when I do not want the world to see me, I wear a black hat to hide my head and my long coat. I know that it does not really make any difference to the world, but, in my mind, I feel at last anonymous. I feel at last in that private world.
Sometimes my silent world is what I want. Sometimes I can be a loner, in the midst of crowds, and sometimes that is how I want it. With no smile in sight, and my eyes reading the pavement, perhaps I am in that private place. Hiding my life; a desire for anonymity. When you do not question my ways. Sometimes I hide my face. I hide my thoughts. Sometimes I cover my head beneath a black hat and it is my sign of privacy. Sometimes.
When I stand up straight and look around. When my head is raised and I look at you. You will know that I have emerged from that secluded world. You can say hello to me.
I wanted to hide away
And be anonymous.
I wanted to hide away:
Delete my face.
I wanted to be hidden,
I wanted a private world,
I wanted to be in my world.
I wanted to hide away.
I wore a black hat,
Though the sun was hot,
For it covered my head
And I felt anonymous.
I chose a silent world,
Though the world was fine,
For, in my silence,
I felt anonymous.
But as I tried to hide away,
As I slowly, slipped away,
My thoughts became intense
And the pain was immense.
I had a real reason
To hide myself away.
I concentrated my hurt
And I focused my mind.
Three weeks of aimless wandering,
Venting irritation on my friends,
There came the time
When I was ready
And found out what was wrong.
I intensified my feelings;
I poured each tiny one out,
And struck an arrow
Through my victim’s soul.
Standing now,
I was hidden away,
Anonymous and hidden from view.
My face, beyond recognition;
Deleted face.
At last I was free:
Hidden away.
I wanted to be hidden.
I wanted my private world.
I wanted to be in my own world,
So I made myself burn away.
At last, I am nothing.
I don’t see them smiling at me,
When I know the truth,
That they have no trust for me.
At last, I am anonymous.
I don’t hear a dishonest “Hello.”
At last, I am truly free,
I don’t see what they think of me.
I wanted to become nothing;
To become invisible.
I wanted to hide away;
To be, silently, free.
And now that I’m invisible
And hidden from their eyes,
I feel a kind of freedom;
An unknown, quiet peace.
Now that I am invisible
I can leap and fly away.
I have no place in that world;
I will spread my wings and fly.
Two years ago, I sat in a concert hall in Grenay, northern France, while the mayor of the town used our performance as a backdrop for his political speech. According to him, our orchestra was ‘a fine example of how the youth of today were the people who would break down barriers and share their qualities regardless of nationality’. (A lie, he would have seen, had he witnessed the xenophobia of a number of our group, walking through the streets that morning.) The slogans dominating one end of the market place, displayed that the Communiste Municipal Party were playing for the votes in that town.
I read the graffiti on the wall. In big, bold letters, scrawled a foot high, it said “APNI MARZI KARDHI!” I didn’t understand. Next to it, written in white correction fluid, the words, “THE POOR CAN TAKE NO MORE: RESIGN”. My conscience was jolted and I took a pen from my pocket and wrote, “The cure is an elixir in a small glass bottle, but only god knows where it is”. There were other words on the wall. “Hold me tight. Don’t let go.” “You don’t own me. I have rights too.” “Fahari wawili wanapo pigana nyasi ndizo ziumiazo.” “If you treat me like shit, you’ll have to live with the stench.” “I love…” and “Sal was ere B4 U”.
The words expressed people’s thoughts. I left and returned a week later, but now the words were gone, lost beneath another layer of cream emulsion. There was a single, new message.
“PRIVATE PROPERTY”
It is when you feel down that you really realise that the friends you have are worth more than anyone else in the world. It should be obvious that the friends you have are worth more than the ones you don’t. I was so, so down one evening; I had hurt someone in a desperate attempt to become anonymous and to be someone that I’m not. Someone who was arrogant and carefree. Someone who could blame someone else for his own mistakes.
I had become anonymous, for the other person ignored me, but she despised me too. And no matter how I had denied my guilt at the time, now I felt as guilty as sin. I spent hours cursing myself, wishing that I could slip away and become truly invisible. Wishing that they would forget me and lose their recognition; truly invisible.
In the end, I found the courage to phone a friend, just needing someone to talk to. And that friend listened, advised, told me to pull myself together and that I had no right to waste the talents I held, by running off. Fifteen minutes on the phone transformed my misery into understanding. Fifteen minutes later, after I tapped the four digits into the phone, I realised what good friends I have. As for the mistake I made, I just have to accept I make these. A friend told me that.
I don’t deserve you, but I want you.
I’ve done nothing for you, but I want you.
I’ve done nothing for the world,
But I want the world.
I’ve taken all my life and I’ve never given back.
I don’t deserve you, but I want you.
I’ve had everything I wanted
And I threw most of it away
I wasted many years
I threw it all away.
I don’t deserve my friends, but I love them.
They give and give to me.
What do I give to them?
Stories about my sorry life?
My sorry life?
I was given everything I wanted
But I threw most of it away.
Look at me and listen.
Listen what I say.
I want to change everything.
I hate what I see.
Me.
I hate what I see. I want to change me.
I want to hold you. Not for me.
For you.
I never give. Now I want to give.
Hold me.
I wanted to hate her because she made me feel like nothing. I wanted to make her feel small because she made me feel small. I wanted to hurt her because she hurt me. I thought of a hundred ways to hate.
Now I am reduced to a mad, psychotic idiot, crying, lying down in a cold police cell. Now I am reduced to nothing, but a man capable of only hating. I am small and weak today, but I felt powerful and strong yesterday, when I held that gun in my hands. I shot the world down. Because the world shot me down. Or did I just imagine that? Was I really alone? Was there really no one there? Now there is no one there. I could think of one hundred ways to love, but it’s too late now.
The war was over, but the scars remained. Pushed together, the people lived in compounds scattered across the vast landscape. It was better like this; not much better, but better than the urban squalor that faced the returning refugees. The compounds were a sanctory from the ever threatening outside world: The minefield hell holes. The pitted landscape filled with cluster bombs. The poisoned lakes. And the dead land. The dead land that was good for nothing any more. Poisoned for a million years; a graveyard of a once fertile land. The compounds offered saftey.
I offend my friends in what I say
I offend my friends in what I write
But they never tell me,
But I know.
I offend them because I write too much
I offend them because I pour my anger out
I write everything down
Like the Blues
Only it’s more like purple,
Because my anger is red.
I offend them,
But they don’t say.
Too personal, they think
I shouldn’t read it out, they think.
It offends them, but they never say.
I am not one of you because I cannot find my feet.
I want to stand proud, but I’m too quick to admit defeat.
I want to be just like you; you’re so self-assured,
Thinking about my own life, I can tell you, I just get bored.
I hate my selfish, self-centred ways.
I hate them, but I cannot change them.
That is what I am.
Love is the most important thing in my life,
But I haven’t got a clue.
I’m lost and crying.
Dying.
Now I’m lying.
I want love and I want to give away love,
And they say love isn’t love til you give it away.
But what I want is more than that. How do you say?
I guess it doesn’t matter how you say it.
I’m bored of being alone.
I hate my empty heart.
I can hate myself more than the world can,
But it’s the world that makes me hate myself.
They ignore me; I hate myself. I wish I’d never spoken.
They laugh at me; I hate myself. That stupid, stupid book.
I find myself on my own; I hate myself.
I brought this on myself.
You are so, so confident. I feel like death.
You have so much to say. I feel like a brick.
I am not one of you because I feel so empty.
I’m sitting in the dark. I feel like nothing.
Rejection hurts me. It makes me hate myself.
I am not one of you, because I cannot find my feet.
I looked him in the eye and he said no. Good. I needed that. I asked him why and he just smiled and winked his eye. That wasn’t an answer. I wanted an answer, not a smile and a wink. I turned around and saw a hole in reality. A huge gap. A gap where there was nothing. Just. Nothing.
There was a reason, but it was pink. And as anyone knows, a reason that is a colour helps nobody. It means nothing. The reason was pink and my life was purple, so if the floor stayed green and the door blue I was sure that everything was insane. Drink. Eat. Die.
Smile.
I turned back to the man. “Why?” I asked. He winked again and nodded his head towards the hole. Then he said, “Minty fresh” and left me. What did that mean? Life is like a Polo mint? Insane.
I stepped into the hole and now everything was nothing and nothing was everything. Everything had become the gap and the gap had become everything. It was yellow and my mind was mellow. Inside, the rain. Outside, the pain.
I drank the coffee. The coffee was me. It screwed the world, but who cares? It would be my brother who’d say, “Wake up and smell the coffee.” But what he’d mean is something quite different: Get a life. Pull yourself together.
That’s what he’d mean.
If he ever came home.
Now smell the coffee. Smooth aroma. Taste it. Drink it. Live it. In debt. Cash crop. Poverty. Death.
In this other reality; through the gap, there was a man. A tall African, farming man. But he wasn’t farming when I saw him. His face was buried deep in his hands and he was sobbing empty tears. “Your actions are illegal.” I heard. I heard a voice behind me, shouting. Yelling. Shouting at the man.
Coffee. Debt. Death.
I couldn’t stand it there, so I stepped back into the other reality. Reality. Hole. Gap. Whatever. I stepped back into the place where I was comfortable. The man was there again, as though he had never left. It seemed too familiar. Like I’d done this before. It seemed too familiar. Like I’d done this. I looked him in the eye and he said no. I was kind of expecting that. Somehow. I asked him why and he just smiled at me and winked.
I shouted at him.
I screamed.
Balled.
“Don’t wink. Don’t smile. What’s going on?”
“I thought you’d never ask.” he replied, as though he hadn’t heard me the last three hundred times, when the hole became everything and everything, nothing.
“Kenya, right?” he said, almost like a robot, “Debts, yeah? Coffee plantations. Grow coffee. Sell coffee. Man, right? Hungry, lives, sleeps. Food to live. Land to grow food. Need land. No land. Only coffee land. Eat. Drink. Man chops down coffee bush to grow food, while debts cut down man to grow profit. Illegal to chop down bushes to use the land for food production. Income from coffee pays back debts.”
“Does it?” I asked.
“I doubt it.” he said. “Come with me,” he said, “I’ll buy you a coffee.”
Naive. That’s me. Naive to the point that I didn’t expect rumours and gossip at University. Naive to the point that I believed that there would be a certain air of openness and accepting. Naive to hope that I would not be ostracised. Quite naive.
I admit, I bring a lot of this upon myself, but only up to a point. If I want to be silent from time to time, that’s my business. If I decide to give people things, that’s my business too; it doesn’t mean anything.
Yet, however naive I may be, I sense a certain naivety in others. A misinterpretation of gestures. A smile means “Hi, I’m happy,” not “Why, you’re mighty fine!”
Dedicated conversation to one person means, “I’m interested in what you have to say,” not “I can’t wait to jump into bed with you.”
But now, apparently, just looking at someone means that you want to go out with them.
Naive? What’s on your mind?
What I say
What I do.
They say don’t put yourself down.
Do I put myself down?
I’m just stating a fact.
I’m just making a statement.
They don’t really know me.
They think what they see
Is what they get.
But it isn’t.
I don’t know me very well
But I know me better than they do
And I don’t like what I see.
They say don’t put yourself down
So they want to see the real me.
But then they would hate me
Selfish me.
I hate like anybody else.
I love and I admire,
But my mind is twisted
And broken in two.
I always think of me.
Me. Me. Me.
I’m not putting myself down.
I’m just stating a fact.
I’m bored of the arrogant bastard
With the verbal diarrhoea.
(A friend’s words, not mine,
But I agree)
He says a lot, all the time.
He says a lot,
But it sounds like shit to me.
He is happy to offend you,
If you’re out of the room.
And smile or nod if you’re there.
Sometimes he’ll even show his disapproval to your face
If the time is right. (Very often, it seems, to me)
He’s happy to offend;
Make you feel two foot tall.
Trouble is, what he says,
He’s probably right.
Well, he said so.
