We Talked

Tags

company, darkness, friends, life, time, understanding

We Talked

We talked.
We walked.
We held a certain conversation.
In a certain dark night.
Darkness surrounded us.
Darkness swallowed us.
Darkness held us captive.
Our words floated in the dark night
Like jetsams of spent thoughts.
Yet we talked and walked together
In the dark night.

Your words sunk and settled deep in the heart.
I longed to steal a look on your face
But the dark night refused.
It was too dark to see anything.
Instead we talked and walked
Along the narrow path.
Talked about past things.
We talked of future things.
We shared our collective fears and hopes.
Maybe the distant stars heard our silent prayers.

Then finally we fell silent.
We stopped talking.
We almost stopped walking.
Suddenly there was nothing to speak of.
Instead the silent silence gave us a curious company, plodding us along the narrow path towards our undefined destiny while crickets and a million other insects murmured in a congenial agreement.

But I still remember that we talked.
But I still remember that we walked.
Together.
Many years ago..

© Ayoub Mzee Mzima 2013

Phone Numbers

Tags

facebook, google, love, man, reality, truth, woman

PHONE NUMBER

Excellent dinners.
Exciting outings.
Quality time spent together.
A movie here.
A night out there.
Yet he won’t ask her for her phone number.
Yet she would never be the first to ask for his phone number.
How?

She was a proud woman,
She who never stooped low,
She who always had her way.
But this man,
This one fine specimen of a vital masculinity was a something totally different…

She swore never to ask for his digits,
She swore never to ask for his facebook, linkedin, skype, google+, twitter and netlog contacts… Never.

Yet she longed to hear his tantalizing voice.
Yet she wished to read his mind through the social websites interactions with other humanities…

© Ayoub Mzee Mzima 2013

The Tenant

Tags

beer, crime, girls, men, police, prostistutes, spirits, work

That lady,
Who lives in the furthest single-room,
That lady,
Who comes and goes at all times,
Has made the children,
Has made other tenants,
Has made the landlord,
Heck, has even made the stray dogs,
Grow weary with her endless antics…

You see,
She comes home when the children are going to school,
When the folks are going to work.
You see,
She leaves home when the children are coming home from school,
When folks are coming home from work…

Not only that,
This tenant has got strange visitors,
Coming and going,
And at all times.
To her room.
Drunk males,
High like kite females,
Keep on going in and out of her room.
What business transacts in there,
We don’t know…

The other day,
The police landed in our plot,
Early in the morning,
And arrested everyone,
In that tenant’s single room.
We couldn’t believe,
That such a tiny house,
Could house,
Six girls, four men and two dogs…

Why, the police even carted away,
A full crate of bootleg beer and a box of illicit spirits.
It was whispered in the plot,
That the police siezed too,
The venerable weed from Jamaica,
For their own use.
But we never speak of these things…

All that we want,
As the tenants of this plot,
Is to have this tenant,
The lady with endless and uncouth friends,
To move out…

She has to move out.
Ah. The tenant…

© Ayoub Mzee Mzima 2013

Movin’ Out

Tags

bed, chaise lounge, darkness, grip, hope, life, neighbours, pain, slums, star, wide world

Movin’ Out

She sat in the front courtyard,
And watched silently,
As the neighbours moved house.
She saw a torn chaise lounge,
Aged with time,
And full of both warm and sad memories,
Being hurled into the waiting truck.
A tired bed was next,
Many a generous generations,
Had been sired,
Upon it’s wobbly legs.
An avalanche of various sad and worn out wordly possessions followed,
And were unceremoniously being heaped upon the old and wheezing truck.
Ah. Moving out…

Finally,
Her neighbours were moving out of the run down neigbhourhood.
A place of shattered dreams.
A home of sordid existence.
A destiny of vicious circle of poverty.
A shanty townwship.
A place where no one lived.
A place where no one survived.
A place where people just existed instead of living,
Not unlike the forlon and unforgiving sordid structures,
That they called home,
That housed them grudgingly…
Movin’ Out.

She didn’t care,
To know where her neighbours,
Were moving to.
To her,
What mattered most was that,
Her neighbours had managed atleast,
To move out,
To escape,
From the tight grip,
Of this slum.
Here,
No one moved out.
The slum held you down,
Suffocating your dreams and will,
Killing your resolve and ambition,
With a determined efficiency…
The slum became you,
And you became the slum.
There was no moving out.
Movin’ Out it was then.

But her heart glowed with hope,
When she saw her neighbours,
Moving out.
She knew deep down,
That she too will move out one day.
she wanted to escape from this meaningless existence.
She dared dream of a better life,
Out there.
She deeply knew and believed that,
She too,
Would one day be a star,
And shine brilliantly,
In a dark night,
And upon the whole wide world…
Movin’ Out.
She will.

©Ayoub Mzee Mzima 2013

Growing Up Suddenly

Tags

age, expectations, hope, judgement, obligations, shoulders, tenderness

We grew up,
Too suddenly.
We were never given an opportunity,
To just be ourselves,
To play around,
Without care,
And without abandon.

Harshly,
Responsibilities
And other obligations,
Were thrust,
Upon our way.

Our shoulders,
Were too tender
To shoulder,
All those expectations.
We just hope,
That we did our best.

Time will judge us justly,
We hope.

© Ayoub Mzee 2013

Going Down….

Tags

bars, beer, brothers, destiny, fate, life, love, stars

• Last night,
  I dropped by,
  At the Tavern,
  At the Shebeen,
  At the place,
  The source of night life,
  The other life,
  The dark life.

  I sat in a dark corner,
  Sipping away at the ethereal existence,

  All alone,
  And watched life pass by,
  But under the recessed lights,
  Life never passed by,
  Instead, it danced nearby
  Shaking it’s well endowed “Strongholds” with abandon.

  Then out of the thick smoky air,
  He materialized,
  A tall lanky fellow,
  Holding his cigarette,
  Askew in his mocking dry lips,
  And without a care in the world.
  His shaggy hair never helped things.
  He was a pale of his former self.
  He looked wasted.
  He looked tired.
  Dear brother.
  Dear friend.

  A dear brother from the past.

  Then he spotted I,
  And he came over,
  Tripping over in the process
  And breaking my beer bottles and glass with excitement.
  I never minded.
  He was a long lost brother.
  But going down.
  And going down real bad.

  He gave a bear hug.
  And I sat him down.
  He was frail,
  From personal burdens.
  Life had not been kind to him.
  Time had been cruel to him.
  He had gone down.
  Over copious flow of drinks,
  And his evil smelling cigarettes,
  He told me his story.
  A life of misfortune after misfortune.
  No love.
  No work.
  No family.
  No hope.
  What a way to go down
  For a dear brother….

  I looked him straight in the eye,
  And told him that he were a good man, and that sometimes things didn’t have to make sense to be understood or be good,
  That everything happens for a reason and in a season,
  And that the most important thing is not to give up but to hold in there until something gives.
  It hurts to see a brother going down.And we spoke,
  And spoke,
  Till the wee hours of the morning.
  Laughing at the vagaries of life.
  Taunting the unfeeling gods.
  Lamenting at the unfair fate.
  I felt for my brother,
  He who was down and out.

  And I promised
  To uplift him,
  To support him,
  To give him hope again,
  Before he hurt I again
  With disappointments….

  And when the sun rose up
  From her deep slumber,
  And when another day had been given birth to,
  We found our way home,
  Staggering and struggling with self doubts in the muddy footpaths to nowhere…

  If only this dear brother knew the many demons and evil fates I had fought before and I was still fighting….

  Going down.

  © Ayoub Mzee 2013

Silent Conversations

Tags

being, conversations, experience, love, mind, silence, time

The best conversations are the conversations that are held in a
comfortable silence.
A conversation where words are unnecessary.
İt is a conversation between hearts that know each other so well.

Words are never enough.
Words are inadequate.
There are some
things that are very deep to be understood through words.
Words fails to commune and communicate the pure and the raw essence of these things most of the time.

Some things are meant to be experienced and never spoken about. İt is that silent song in a starry night that plays silently in a glad heart.
There are certain things that the naked eyes can never see.
There are certain things that the ears can never hear.
These things can only be
experienced by just being with the inner being.

Being means absolute silence.
İt means getting rid of all the clutter and useless thoughts from the mind and letting tranquility, peace, calm
and love settle and take command of the mind.

One day we will have a silent conversation together….

Ayoub Mzee © 2013

Cul-de-Sac

Tags

death, experience, hope, life, time

A dead end,

An abrupt end,

And a sudden end,

A death of one life,

And a beginning of another new life,

Death gives way for a new life to spring forth…

© 2013 Ayoub Mzee

My Night

Tags

betrayal, company, feelings, kisses, love, night, reality

So long dear night so long.
Well, the day has kissed the leas a true goodnight and you have scripted my whole story upon the hours of time.

I hold no grudges but instead I profess a true gratitude for being. Here I am and tomorrow I will be.

Dear night. You know of all of my secrets and cloak and dress them in astute intergrity. Hold me again dear night. I want to feel and fill your cold kisses. It is night again…

What a night…
My night.

Ayoub Mzee Mzima © 2013

The Expatriate

Tags

company, expatriates, foreign, gujarat, india, marketing, money, work

He flew in
From India,
With only a a suitcase,
And the clothes on his back.
He didn’t speak any English.
He spoke only Gujarat.
The Expatriate…

We proceeded to show him around.
And he took the biggest office.
He was supposed to be a marketing guru.
He was brought in to turn around the big company.
He spent the days turning around in his expensive and expansive leather seat instead.
The Expatriate…

We ran around,
Doing work for him.
His work,
With our peanut pay.
He fumbled around
While earning his six figure pay.

Finally, The Expatriate left.

He left in a charter plane,
While a moving company shipped his stuff back home.
He left a wealthy man.
The Expatriate who came with only a briefcase.
He who could not speak English
The Expatriate.

I understand that they will be sending in another Expatriate…

Ayoub Mzee Mzima © 2013