by
Alexander K Opicho

(Eldoret, Kenya;aopicho@yahoo.com)

When I grow up I will seek permission
From my parents, my mother before my father
To travel to Russia the European land of dystopia
that has never known democracy in any tincture
I will beckon the tsar of Russia to open for me
Their classical cipher that Bogy visoky tsa dalyko
I will ask the daughters of Russia to oblivionize my dark skin
***** skin and make love to me the real pre-democratic love
Love that calls for ambers that will claw the fire of revolution,
I will ask my love from the land of Siberia to show me cradle of Rand
The European manger on which Ayn Rand was born during the Leninist census
I will exhume her umbilical cord plus the placenta to link me up
To her dystopian mind that germinated the vice
For shrugging the atlas for we the living ones,
In a full dint of my ***** libido I will ask her
With my African temerarious manner I will bother her
To show me the bronze statues of Alexander Pushkin
I hear it is at ******* of the city of Moscow; Petersburg
I will talk to my brother Pushkin, my fellow African born in Ethiopia
In the family of Godunov only taken to Europe in a slave raid
Ask the Frenchman Henri Troyat who stood with his ***** erected
As he watched an Ethiopian father fertilizing an Ethiopian mother
And child who was born was Dystopian Alexander Pushkin,
I will carry his remains; the bones, the skull and the skeleton in oily
Sisal threads made bag on my broad African shoulders back to Africa
I will re-bury him in the city of Omurate in southern Ethiopia at the buttocks
Of the fish venting beautiful summer waters of Lake Turkana,
I will ask Alexander Pushkin when in a sag on my back to sing for me
His famous poems in praise of thighs of women;

(I loved you: and, it may be, from my soul
The former love has never gone away,
But let it not recall to you my dole;
I wish not sadden you in any way.

I loved you silently, without hope, fully,
In diffidence, in jealousy, in pain;
I loved you so tenderly and truly,
As let you else be loved by any man.
I loved you because of your smooth thighs
They put my heart on fire like amber in gasoline)

I will leave the bronze statue of Alexander Pushkin in Moscow
For Lenin to look at, he will assign Mayakovski to guard it
Day and night as he sings for it the cacotopian
Poems of a slap in the face of public taste;

(I know the power of words, I know words' tocsin.
They're not the kind applauded by the boxes.
From words like these coffins burst from the earth
and on their own four oaken legs stride forth.
It happens they reject you, unpublished, unprinted.
But saddle-girths tightening words gallop ahead.
See how the centuries ring and trains crawl
to lick poetry's calloused hands.
I know the power of words. Seeming trifles that fall
like petals beneath the heel-taps of dance.
But man with his soul, his lips, his bones.)

I will come along to African city of Omurate
With the pedagogue of the thespic poet
The teacher of the poets, the teacher who taught
Alexander Sergeyvich Pushkin; I know his name
The name is Nikolai Vasileyvitch Gogol
I will caution him to carry only two books
From which he will teach the re-Africanized Pushkin
The first book is the Cloak and second book will be
The voluminous dead souls that have two sharp children of Russian dystopia;
The cactopia of Nosdrezv in his sadistic cult of betrayal
And utopia of Chichikov in his paranoid ownership of dead souls
Of the Russian peasants, muzhiks and serfs,
I will caution him not to carry the government inspector incognito
We don’t want the inspector general in the African city of Omurate
He will leave it behind for Lenin to read because he needs to know
What is to be done.
I don’t like the extreme badness of owning the dead souls
Let me run away to the city of Paris, where romance and poetry
Are utopian commanders of the dystopian orchestra
In which Victor Marie Hugo is haunted by
The ghost of Jean Val Jean; Le Miserable,
I will implore Hugo to take me to the Corsican Island
And chant for me one **** song of the French revolution;


       (  take heed of this small child of earth;
He is great; he hath in him God most high.
Children before their fleshly birth
Are lights alive in the blue sky.
  
In our light bitter world of wrong
They come; God gives us them awhile.
His speech is in their stammering tongue,
And his forgiveness in their smile.
  
Their sweet light rests upon our eyes.
Alas! their right to joy is plain.
If they are hungry Paradise
Weeps, and, if cold, Heaven thrills with pain.
  
The want that saps their sinless flower
Speaks judgment on sin's ministers.
Man holds an angel in his power.
Ah! deep in Heaven what thunder stirs,
  
When God seeks out these tender things
Whom in the shadow where we sleep
He sends us clothed about with wings,
And finds them ragged babes that we)

 From the Corsican I won’t go back to Paris
Because Napoleon Bonaparte and the proletariat
Has already taken over the municipal of Paris
I will dodge this city and maneuver my ways
Through Alsace and Lorraine
The Miginko islands of Europe
And cross the boundaries in to bundeslander
Into Germany, I will go to Berlin and beg the Gestapo
The State police not to shoot me as I climb the Berlin wall
I will balance dramatically on the top of Berlin wall
Like Eshu the Nigerian god of fate
With East Germany on my right; Die ossie
And West Germany on my left; Die wessie
Then like Jesus balancing and walking
On the waters of Lake Galilee
I will balance on Berlin wall
And call one of my faithful followers from Germany
The strong hearted Friedrich von Schiller
To climb the Berlin wall with me
So that we can sing his dystopic Cassandra as a duet
We shall sing and balance on the wall of Berlin
Schiller’s beauteous song of Cassandra;

(Mirth the halls of Troy was filling,
Ere its lofty ramparts fell;
From the golden lute so thrilling
Hymns of joy were heard to swell.
From the sad and tearful slaughter
All had laid their arms aside,
For Pelides Priam's daughter
Claimed then as his own fair bride.

Laurel branches with them bearing,
Troop on troop in bright array
To the temples were repairing,
Owning Thymbrius' sovereign sway.
Through the streets, with frantic measure,
Danced the bacchanal mad round,
And, amid the radiant pleasure,
Only one sad breast was found.

Joyless in the midst of gladness,
None to heed her, none to love,
Roamed Cassandra, plunged in sadness,
To Apollo's laurel grove.
To its dark and deep recesses
Swift the sorrowing priestess hied,
And from off her flowing tresses
Tore the sacred band, and cried:

"All around with joy is beaming,
Ev'ry heart is happy now,
And my sire is fondly dreaming,
Wreathed with flowers my sister's brow
I alone am doomed to wailing,
That sweet vision flies from me;
In my mind, these walls assailing,
Fierce destruction I can see."

"Though a torch I see all-glowing,
Yet 'tis not in *****'s hand;
Smoke across the skies is blowing,
Yet 'tis from no votive brand.
Yonder see I feasts entrancing,
But in my prophetic soul,
Hear I now the God advancing,
Who will steep in tears the bowl!"

"And they blame my lamentation,
And they laugh my grief to scorn;
To the haunts of desolation
I must bear my woes forlorn.
All who happy are, now shun me,
And my tears with laughter see;
Heavy lies thy hand upon me,
Cruel Pythian deity!"

"Thy divine decrees foretelling,
Wherefore hast thou thrown me here,
Where the ever-blind are dwelling,
With a mind, alas, too clear?
Wherefore hast thou power thus given,
What must needs occur to know?
Wrought must be the will of Heaven--
Onward come the hour of woe!"

"When impending fate strikes terror,
Why remove the covering?
Life we have alone in error,
Knowledge with it death must bring.
Take away this prescience tearful,
Take this sight of woe from me;
Of thy truths, alas! how fearful
'Tis the mouthpiece frail to be!"

"Veil my mind once more in slumbers
Let me heedlessly rejoice;
Never have I sung glad numbers
Since I've been thy chosen voice.
Knowledge of the future giving,
Thou hast stolen the present day,
Stolen the moment's joyous living,--
Take thy false gift, then, away!"

"Ne'er with bridal train around me,
Have I wreathed my radiant brow,
Since to serve thy fane I bound me--
Bound me with a solemn vow.
Evermore in grief I languish--
All my youth in tears was spent;
And with thoughts of bitter anguish
My too-feeling heart is rent."

"Joyously my friends are playing,
All around are blest and glad,
In the paths of pleasure straying,--
My poor heart alone is sad.
Spring in vain unfolds each treasure,
Filling all the earth with bliss;
Who in life can e'er take pleasure,
When is seen its dark abyss?"

"With her heart in vision burning,
Truly blest is Polyxene,
As a bride to clasp him yearning.
Him, the noblest, best Hellene!
And her breast with rapture swelling,
All its bliss can scarcely know;
E'en the Gods in heavenly dwelling
Envying not, when dreaming so."

"He to whom my heart is plighted
Stood before my ravished eye,
And his look, by passion lighted,
Toward me turned imploringly.
With the loved one, oh, how gladly
Homeward would I take my flight
But a Stygian shadow sadly
Steps between us every night."

"Cruel Proserpine is sending
All her spectres pale to me;
Ever on my steps attending
Those dread shadowy forms I see.
Though I seek, in mirth and laughter
Refuge from that ghastly train,
Still I see them hastening after,--
Ne'er shall I know joy again."

"And I see the death-steel glancing,
And the eye of ****** glare;
On, with hasty strides advancing,
Terror haunts me everywhere.
Vain I seek alleviation;--
Knowing, seeing, suffering all,
I must wait the consummation,
In a foreign land must fall."

While her solemn words are ringing,
Hark! a dull and wailing tone
From the temple's gate upspringing,--
Dead lies Thetis' mighty son!
Eris shakes her snake-locks hated,
Swiftly flies each deity,
And o'er Ilion's walls ill-fated
Thunder-clouds loom heavily!)

When the Gestapoes get impatient
We shall not climb down to walk on earth
Because by this time  of utopia
Thespis and Muse the gods of poetry
Would have given us the wings to fly
To fly high over England, I and schiller
We shall not land any where in London
Nor perch to any of the English tree
Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Thales
We shall not land there in these lands
The waters of river Thames we shall not drink
We shall fly higher over England
The queen of England we shall not commune
For she is my lender; has lend me the language
English language in which I am chanting
My dystopic songs, poor me! What a cacotopia!
If she takes her language away from
I will remain poetically dead
In the Universe of art and culture
I will form a huge palimpsest of African poetry
Friedrich son of schiller please understand me
Let us not land in England lest I loose
My borrowed tools of worker back to the owner,
But instead let us fly higher in to the azure
The zenith of the sky where the eagles never dare
And call the English bard
through  our high shrilled eagle’s contralto
William Shakespeare to come up
In the English sky; to our treat of poetic blitzkrieg
Please dear schiller we shall tell the bard of London
To come up with his three Luftwaffe
These will be; the deer he stole from the rich farmer
Once when he was a lad in the rural house of john the father,
Second in order is the Hamlet the price of Denmark
Thirdly is  his beautiful song of the **** of lucrece,
We shall ask the bard to return back the deer to the owner
Three of ourselves shall enjoy together dystopia in Hamlet
And ask Shakespeare to sing for us his song
In which he saw a man **** Lucrece; the **** of Lucrece;

( From the besieged Ardea all in post,
Borne by the trustless wings of false desire,
Lust-breathed Tarquin leaves the Roman host,
And to Collatium bears the lightless fire
Which, in pale embers hid, lurks to aspire
  And girdle with embracing flames the waist
  Of Collatine's fair love, Lucrece the chaste.

Haply that name of chaste unhapp'ly set
This bateless edge on his keen appetite;
When Collatine unwisely did not let
To praise the clear unmatched red and white
Which triumph'd in that sky of his delight,
  Where mortal stars, as bright as heaven's beauties,
  With pure aspects did him peculiar duties.

For he the night before, in Tarquin's tent,
Unlock'd the treasure of his happy state;
What priceless wealth the heavens had him lent
In the possession of his beauteous mate;
Reckoning his fortune at such high-proud rate,
  That kings might be espoused to more fame,
  But king nor peer to such a peerless dame.

O happiness enjoy'd but of a few!
And, if possess'd, as soon decay'd and done
As is the morning's silver-melting dew
Against the golden splendour of the sun!
An expir'd date, cancell'd ere well begun:
  Honour and beauty, in the owner's arms,
  Are weakly fortress'd from a world of harms.

Beauty itself doth of itself persuade
The eyes of men without an orator;
What needeth then apologies be made,
To set forth that which is so singular?
Or why is Collatine the publisher
  Of that rich jewel he should keep unknown
  From thievish ears, because it is his own?

Perchance his boast of Lucrece' sovereignty
Suggested this proud issue of a king;
For by our ears our hearts oft tainted be:
Perchance that envy of so rich a thing,
Braving compare, disdainfully did sting
  His high-pitch'd thoughts, that meaner men should vaunt
  That golden hap which their superiors want)

  
I and Schiller we shall be the audience
When Shakespeare will echo
The enemies of beauty as
It is weakly protected in the arms of Othello.

I and Schiller we don’t know places in Greece
But Shakespeare’s mother comes from Greece
And Shakespeare’s wife comes from Athens
Shakespeare thus knows Greece like Pericles,
We shall not land anywhere on the way
But straight we shall be let
By Shakespeare to Greece
Into the inner chamber of calypso
Lest the Cyclopes eat us whole meal
We want to redeem Homer from the
Love detention camp of calypso
Where he has dallied nine years in the wilderness
Wilderness of love without reaching home
I will ask Homer to introduce me
To Muse, Clio and Thespis
The three spiritualities of poetry
That gave Homer powers to graft the epics
Of Iliad and Odyssey centerpieces of Greece dystopia
I will ask Homer to chant and sing for us the epical
Songs of love, Grecian cradle of utopia
Where Cyclopes thrive on heavyweight cacotopia
Please dear Homer kindly sing for us;
(Thus through the livelong day to the going down of the sun we
feasted our fill on meat and drink, but when the sun went down and
it came on dark, we camped upon the beach. When the child of
morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared, I bade my men on board and
loose the hawsers. Then they took their places and smote the grey
sea with their oars; so we sailed on with sorrow in our hearts, but
glad to have escaped death though we had lost our comrades)
                                  
From Greece to Africa the short route  is via India
The sub continent of India where humanity
Flocks like the oceans of women and men
The land in which Romesh Tulsi
Grafted Ramayana and Mahabharata
The handbook of slavery and caste prejudice
The land in which Gujarat Indian tongue
In the cheeks of Rabidranathe Tagore
Was awarded a Poetical honour
By Alfred Nobel minus any Nemesis
From the land of Scandinavia,
I will implore Tagore to sing for me
The poem which made Nobel to give him a prize
I will ask Tagore to sing in English
The cacotopia and utopia that made India
An oversized dystopia that man has ever seen,
Tagore sing please Tagore sing for me your beggarly heat;

(When the heart is hard and parched up,
come upon me with a shower of mercy.

When grace is lost from life,
come with a burst of song.

When tumultuous work raises its din on all sides shutting me out from
beyond, come to me, my lord of silence, with thy peace and rest.

When my beggarly heart sits crouched, shut up in a corner,
break open the door, my king, and come with the ceremony of a king.

When desire blinds the mind with delusion and dust, O thou holy one,
thou wakeful, come with thy light and thy thunder)



The heart of beggar must be
A hard heart for it to glorify in the art of begging,

I don’t like begging
This is knot my heart suffered
From my childhood experience
I saw my mother

ALEXANDER K OPICHO

(Eldoret, Kenya;aopicho@yahoo.com)

Poetry is a network of rivers
One river flowing into another
A big river into a small river
A small river into a big one
Some rivers are dead in the catacombs
Others are rapidly flowing down
And up their course making noisy
Roaring waterfalls and poetic whirlpools
Full of the ripple circumlocution as
The whirlwind of gales in the harmattan
And this is the spirit of poetry.

I will sing the songs of Schiller
Hugo, Shakespeare the bard
Alexander Pushkin and Mayakovski,
Homer and Dante the Frenchman son of Maugham
And Dante the Italian father of the divine comedy,
I will sing their songs as they are European rivulets
Of poetry flowing into huge water masses
Of African poemocracy in which
The poetic dystopia is clearly
Couched in the gears of black and white.

I will sing and chant the songs of India
Land of Tagore by shouting his name
Rabitranathe Tagore! Sing for me
The ways of the Indian baby
Your Indian voice is mellifluous like the
Zulu ****** dances Song in full watch
Of King Mswati with dint of libido.

I will sing the songs of revolution
From Bolivia and Chile, neighbours
Of Mexico and Brazil; Brazil in which
Pablo Neruda the dog burrier is a religion
In which was born Paul Freire who forgot
To sing for the world chants and the songs
Of pedagogy of the dystopian poet
Pedagogy of the utopian thespian
Pedagogy of the dystopian bourgeoisie
Pedagogy of the cacotopian capitalist
And pedagogy of the utopian Marxists
Who are mealy mouthied with mutton in  between their ears
Manufacturing and venting dystopian phantasmagoria
I will sing.

Poetry is the river Nile of Africa
Cradling from Uganda at Entebbe
Flowing to Egypt into the Mediterranean Sea
Leaving the statue of Mahatma Gandhi at the cradle
Chanting the pearls of the satyagra
That; in God there is truth and
In truth there is God,
As poetry of Nile flows upwards
Not carrying only poems of love
Or bourgeoisie cosmetic Haikus
Singing carols of summer and Christmas day
But its poetic fluvial is washing away
The heavy social **** of Globalectics
Fearing Pushkin and his love
Shakespeare and his **** of Lucrece
Vladimir Mayakovski and
His slap in the face of public taste,
Schiller and his Cassandra
Master Homer and his Odysseus Iliad
Mocking in an ugly  snook
The Albatross book of the English verse
In tune with Yeats and Rudyard Kipling
Reversing the stanzas to sing of
The world as the Whiteman’s burden.

I will sing everyman and his *****
Every woman and her *******
Every ****** and her flower
I will sing them all and their names
And duties of roles pertinent
In healing the world, abode of mankind
From the impish Mr. Hide of cacotopian streak
To pave way for the saintly Dr. Jekyll
To lull man to sleep in his Cinderella
Of social utopia
As Robert Louis Stevenson
Holds the world a stage
Of dystopia.



Thank you for your audience!

Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya;aopicho@yahoo.com)

From America I have gone home to Africa
I jumped the Atlantic Ocean in one single African hop and skip
Then I landed to Senegal at a point of no return
Where the slaves could not return home once stepped there
Me I have stepped there from a long journey traversing the
World in search of dystopia that mirror man and his folly
Wondrous dystopia that mirror woman and her vices
I passed the point of no return into Senegal, Nocturnes
Which we call in English parlance crepuscular voyages
I met Leopold Sedar Senghor singing nocturnes
He warned me from temerarious reading of Marxism
I said thank you to him for his concern
I asked him of where I could get Marriama Ba
And her pipe ******* Brother Sembene Ousmane
He declined to answer me; he said he is not a brother’s keeper
I got flummoxed so much as in my heart
I terribly wanted to meet Marriama Ba
For she had promised to chant a scarlet song for me
A song which I would cherish its attack
On the cacotopia of an African women in Islam,
And also Sembene Ousmane
I wanted also to smoke his pipe; as I yearn for nicotinic utopia
As we could heartily talk the extreme happiness
Of unionized railway workers in bits of wood
That makes the torso of gods in Xala, Cedo
As the African hunter from the Babukusu Clan of bawambwa
In the land of Senegal could struggle to **** a mangy dog for us.

Any way; gods forgive the poet Sedar Senghor
I crossed in to Nigeria to the city of Lagos
I saw a tall man with white hair and white beards,
I was told Alfred Nobel Gave him an award
For keeping his beards and hairs white,
I was told he was a Nigerian god of Yoruba poetry
He kept on singing from street to street that;
A good name is better tyranny of snobbish taste
The man died, season of anomie, you must be forth by dawn !
I feared to talk to him for he violently looked,
But instead I confined myself to my thespic girlfriend
From Anambra state in northwestern Nigeria
She was a graduate student of University of Nsukka
Her name is Oge Ogoye, she is beautiful and ****
Charming and warm; beauteous individuality
Her beauty campaigns successfully to the palace of men
Without an orator in the bandwagon; O! Sweet Ogoye!
She took me to Port Harcourt the capital city of Biafra
When it was a country; a communist state,
I met Christopher Ogkibo and Chinua Achebe
Both carrying the machines guns
Fighting a secessionist war of Biafra
That wanted to give the socialist tribe of Igbos
A full independent state alongside federal republic of Nigeria
Christopher Ogkibo gave me the gun
That I help him to fight the tribal war
I told him no, I am a poet first then an African
And my tribe comes last
I can not take the gun
To fight a tribal war; tribal cleansing? No way!
Achebe got annoyed with me
In a feat of jealousy ire
He pulled out two books of poetry from his hat;
Be aware soul brother and Girls at a war
He recited to us the poems from each book
The poems that echoed Igbo messages of dystopia
I and Oge Ogoye in an askance
We looked and mused.

I kissed Ogoye and told her bye bye!
I began running to Kenya for the evening had fallen
And from the hills of Biafra I could see my mother’s kitchen
My mother coming in and going out of it
The smoke coming out through the ruffian thatches
Sign of my mother cooking the seasoned hoof of a cow
And sorghum ugali cured by cassava,
I ran faster and faster passing by Uganda
Lest my elder brother may finish Ugali for me
I suddenly pumped in to two men
Running opposite my direction
They were also running to their homes in Uganda
Taban Lo Liyong and Okot p’Bitek
Taban wielding his book of poetry;
Another ****** Dead
While Okot was running with Song of Lawino
In his left hand
They were running away from the University
The University of Nairobi; Chris Wanjala was chasing them
He was wielding a Maasai truncheon in his hand
With an aim of hitting Taban Reneket Lo Liyong
Because him Taban and Okot p’ Bitek
Had refused to stand on the points of literature
But instead they were eating a lot of Ugali
At university of Nairobi, denying Wanjala
An opportunity to get satisfied, he was starving
Wanjala was swearing to himself as he chased them
That he must chase them up to Uganda
In the land where they were born
So that he can get intellectual leeway
To breed his poetic utopia as he nurses tribal cacotopia
To achieve east African thespic utopia
In the literary desert.

Thank you for your audience!

Over on the crescent wing
The bitter gales bring waves of rain:
Listen. Frozen windows sing.
Enraptured by the searing pain
Like pestilence in hurricane.
Buildings rise up to the halls
Impenetrable planet-bane
As summer lost, and spring withal.

Then the writhing storm-clouds bring
A storm of ice and wind again:
The sun rears up, but sets during.
And past the steel-laden plane
Silver orbs first wax, then wane
Then plaster to the mighty wall
Midnight buses, lane-by-lane,
Of nature not, but city fool.

Ascended like a spiteful King
The whispers rise, then sink in shame
No sound is here, no, not a thing.
Soaking in like liquor-stains
The buildings survey their domain
Not city-life, nor life at all;
They wander in the pouring rain
Where love is lost beneath the sprawl.

Tears and laughter, much the same
All are whispers, doomed to fall.
Dystopia without a name:
Not so distant after all.