Breaking News, broken hearts!

There is always breaking news
The kind that tears your world apart
And rips your heart out
The temptation to walk away
So great I started to
But I just couldn’t
So I stayed
And thought I would die again
And again

There was the story of the little boy
Whose mother ordered pizza
Because he had been so good
But the pizza deliveryman
Ran over the little boy’s dog
And broke his heart
Into a thousand pieces
That even all the King’s men
Could not put together again

Breaking news of a jet
Flying right into the WTC
Wait! More breaking news
A second plane exploding into
The second Tower
Broken glass
Debris and fire and bodies
Broken dreams and broken hearts
That divided our lives into
Before and after
September 11th 2001

Breaking news of reporters
Who risk their lives
So we can stay on top
Of the world
Kidnapped they become the story
Their spirits never broken
By their captors
Oh! The price they pay
To bring us breaking news


Mixed feelings I have about
Breaking news
To know or not to know
Is the dilemma at times
But I guess all said and done
I salute you
Who risk life and limb
To bring us breaking news!

Go to South Africa!

Go to South Africa
Because you must
Go to that land that starts
At the Cape of Good Hope
And spreads majestically
Through the hopelessly dry
Kalahari Desert

Go south and see a land
So developed
It is in the first half of the First World
Lying side by side with the rest of Africa
That is popularly known as the Third World
The Dark Continent

Go to South Africa
To the land where gold and diamonds
Grow in the bowels of the earth
Yet here surrounded by all this wealth
A child dies
The cost of his death
A small platter of food

Go to South Africa
And see Sun City
So beautiful a man-made creation
It makes mickey mouse of Disney World
And there within a mile or so
Men live like rats and mice

Go to South Africa
And behold the beauty of a woman
And appreciate anew
God’s gift to mankind
Go and listen to the musical laughter
Of the children whom poverty has not robbed
The joy of living under the African skies

Go to South Africa
And see for yourself
What I cannot possibly put into words
For if you should die before you are awed
By the sheer beauty of the Victoria Falls
The magnificence of the African elephant
You will have missed, in life, more than I can say

Go to South Africa
And see for yourself
The sobering unreality of Soweto
Go hear the click sound of the Zulu people
The melody in their laughter
Go and experience the ironies and conflicts
In this land that has been home to peoples
From Europe, India and of course, Africa!

Go to South Africa
Because Oprah and Ms Belafonte said
Go!

I will dance!

I will dance to the sound of music
To the drumbeats I will dance
I will dance into the night
Until dawn brings in the day
And the sunlight brings the cheer
I will dance

I will dance for I am young
And my feet just do not tire
On the dance floor
I will let my hair loose
I will let the spirit move
As I dance
For I will dance

I will dance so when I am old
And my tired bones do not hold
Not as well as they do now
I will be glad that I did dance
For it is to the rhythm
That I dance

I will dance away my pain
I will dance to stay sane
I will dance for I have no fear
I will dance to hide a tear
I will dance because I want to
I will dance!

The African Political Activist

They came for me
In the dead of the night
They came to escort me, they said,
They came when the babies were asleep
At their mothers’ breast
When the chickens had gone to roost
They came when they could not see their shadows
Nor their shadows be seen

They came and we went
In the night’s darkest hour
When no one but ourselves
Knew that they had come and gone
Yes, no one knew that I had left with them
Or is it that they had left with me

They will come for you
They will come in the morning
They will come in with the sun
When their shadows are long and shapeless
They will lie in their words
And inundate you with questions
Which they will answer when you don’t

They will come, I know they will
For such is the lot of African political activists…

The least of my brothers!

He lay there in foetal position
This homeless man
At the corner of 43rd and 9th
Coiled unto himself
As if his shame to hide
From the prying eyes
Of a world
That truly saw him not
As it hurried feverishly along its way
Only to stop at the light on 53rd and 9th

A world that had judged
And found him wanting
A verdict he was no good
To either himself or anyone else
For that matter
Not that it matters
If you really think about it
Because what could he have done
If he could that is
That could have made a difference

You see His Father above
Had already sent His Son
To a world that truly saw him not
As they fervently sought salvation
By their own good works
Only to stop at the cross-roads
Overburdened by pain and care
That they would not give up to Him to bear
For not only did He make the difference
He was the difference
Between death and Eternal Life…

Come, He says
Come you who are weary
And I will give you rest
Greater love has no one than this,
that he lay down his life
For his friends!

The Investor's Regret

Had I but known
I would have turned left instead of right
I would have gone out the door
Instead of watching by the window
As life passed me by

Had I but known
That property values would go up
Despite inflation and elections
In spite of the Republicans
And even with the Democrats
That interest rates
Would not stop homeowners
From pursuing the American dream of
Homeownership

Had I but known
That though September 11th
Took lives and hearts
It left intact
The spirit of capitalism
That opportunities were born
As hearts and doubts were laid to rest

Had I but known
That for every adversity
There is a benefit of equal
Or greater value
I would have embraced life
And reaped a bundle

Had I but known
Of New Smyrna Beach
Daytona Beach Shores
And West Palm Beach
That a dollar invested today
Would yield ten
In a short twelve months
I would have been rich yesterday
And retired today

Had I but known
That you would treasure these words
I would have written a thousand more
I would have put them on CD
So you could learn and buy your home
Your second home and ten investment homes
I would have put them to music
So you could dance
Your way to the bank

Had I but known
I would have been myself
And not who I thought I ought to be
I would have lived in a cottage by the sea
And watched the property values grow
While writing of the local investors
Their rehabs, their joys, their lives
Tightly interwoven into the very fabric
Of my own

Had I but known
I would not be sitting here
Alone
Writing the story of my life
Which I don’t know that anyone
Will care enough to read
When I am gone
A legacy for those
I would have had around me
Had I but known
To stop and mentor someone…

The Ceasefire!

I sit here by the ocean
Listening to the breeze
And hoping that tomorrow
Will come
For here tomorrow doesn’t
Always come
At least for some
For when the sun sets
It might not rise
Ever again…

The night is strange
It brings a recurring darkness
A mirror image of Africa’s history
A civilian government ousted
By a military coup
Oh! The anarchy and devastation
And then just when hopelessness
Threatens to engulf the people
A civilian government is elected
Or rigged into power
And so the cycle goes
With brief interludes of each

So tonight I sit here in thought
Across from the peninsula
Where the new convention center stands
Tall despite our economic stature
The leaders will sign a treatyThat will entitle you and I
To live without fear
They will append their signatures
To pages and pages of unread substance
They will agree to a cease-fire
At least on paper!

I hope those fighting in the trenches
Will get the message tonight
For wouldn’t it be tragic
If one were to die
For a cause
When the ink is already dry
On the signatures of the war-lords
And all that is left
Are the dregs of their champagne toast?

The Genocide!

The road went on and on and so did we
Winding through hills and valleys
Across rivers and ridges
Into the night we walked
Until the morning came upon us
As we trod on into the future
Not quite knowing how far
Away destiny was…

Hoping that the wind on our backs
Would not be replaced by bullets
We followed the road
In the hope that where we were going
Could not possibly be as horrible as
As where we were running from

There were those who were
Fighting us with
Heavy artillery and weapons
We who were so weak the wind
Could have blown us away
If hunger, dysentry or cholera
Did not get us first
Sending us into mass graves
Where we would be buried away
From the eyes of the world…

And then there were those who
Wrote papers and dissertations
Our plight a great academic topic
In political science or International Law
For which they would earn
A graduate degree
Whether we lived or died

There were those who were brave
Enough to challenge aloud
The World sometimes referred to
As the United Nations
To put a stop to the massacre
The debates of which since the
Jewish holocaust continue to divide
The world into a debate on Human rights
And the right of sovereignity

While in churches, synagogues
Mosques and small prayer groups
There were those who
Invoked the power of the Word
In earnest prayer they did
Without ceasing they prayed
That our lives or what remained
Of them would be spared for another
Day or year until the next civil war…

The war is over
The NGOs are every where
Healing the wounds
Which the world should have prevented
The embassies fly the flags
Of nations that should have flown in
In time to save lives and keep the peace
The Doctors without frontiers
That found our pain a barrier to their commitment
The war is over
But the battle was lost before it began

Do I sound bitter?
Actually I am not
I am just stating facts so that history
Does not romanticize our horror
Justify this massacre
Or worse explain it away as civil strive
Between two warring tribes
The Hutu and the Tutsi
Names that sound like popular rock bands

So the war is over at least for now
The battle for survival now begins
To match orphans with family
Mothers with their young
To fill out the death certificates
Without the bodies for burial
To sing at gravesides that will
Hold but a memory
Of those who died for …nothing really
If truth be told!

We dream of Africa!

You dream of Africa
And in your tourist eye
You envision the graceful giraffe
You imagine the roar of the King of the Jungle
Your safari gear is packed
You cannot wait to awaken
To the still silence of the African wild

They dream of Africa
Of the gold and the diamonds
That lie deep in her bosom
Many a night they lie awake
Plotting and planning
How to reach into the depths of her being
And drain her of the oil that runs in a myriad veins
Beneath the surface of her apparent poverty
And process it, ship it
And slip billions and billions of dollars
Into their bank accounts
Before Africa is fully awake

I dream of Africa
And relive the nightmare of ebola
An imported disease so devastating
It’s dread I cannot in words describe
I weep for the little babies
Who didn’t stand a chance?
Because they ventured into the world
Prematurely
And there were no incubators
To shelter them for a month or two
From the harsh realities
Of human greed

I dream of Africa
And pray there will not be a coup d’etat
While we sleep
And if there is
That the bullets will miss the kids
And spare the moms
That the fathers will not die in vain
Leaving yet more orphans
Because those left by AIDs
Are more than the funds from UNICEF can provide for
Until the next budget

We all dream of Africa
We do,
Don’t we!

The Debate!

Last night I watched the documentary
That showed the stark reality
Of the past that has doomed our future
The hour long commentary complete
With graphic illustration of the horror
That I lived through
Wishing every moment that I would die
Like all my friends and family
Blown away by bullets
Slashed by machetes
Or ravaged by diseases
Only peculiar to war-zones

How I got through those nine weeks
The commentator could not tell
And neither can I
For when you thought
You had buried enough bodies
And encouraged survivors
With words that were hollow
Even to your own ears
Another wave of bullets rang out
Into the night
Putting out any light
That was at the end of the long tunnel

Then came the debate
Was it a massacre
Or was it really genocide
In my motherland
One candidate argued his first point
That the killings did not go on
Long enough
While his opponent pointed out
Intelligently, he did
That most of those who died
Did so in combat
He did not add that our oldest soldiers
Were only as old as his ten year old fifth grader

So here then is the analysis,
First, the number of days the horror lasts
Is as critical to the qualification
As is the number of people dead
And secondly, those who die
Must be sitting ducks
People just waiting to die
No will and no inclination to survive
For if the people fought back
It was argued
They became combatants
And not genocide victims!

The Documentary commentator
Took a commercial break
Giving us a moment to take it all in
To reflect and take sides if we would
I remembered then
How the sprays of bullets
Had showered the air around us
Seemingly with no end in sight
It would have been wonderful
To take a commercial break
While I figured out
Which orphan to hold onto
And which widow to comfort
Before we were all blown to pieces

We did get a break I must admit
By tacit agreement it would seem
A temporary ceasefire always heralded
The weekly flight of the Red Cross team
As they landed on the local dusty airstrip
Bringing a little hope for a few hours,
A couple of professional photographers
To capture our hopelessness
And the documentary writers, of course
Who so eloquently carried our plight
To the rest of the world
That they may better debate our fate!

The debate was soon over
The second speaker won
According to the polls that night
He felt that the killings did not go on
Long enough
It seemed only long to those of us
Dodging bullets and burying the bodies
But it was only ninety days
In which about a million people died
Actually nine hundred and fifty six thousand
Two hundred and thirty seven to be exact
Mercifully, he will never know
What it was really like
No, his knowledge was drawn safely
From statistics and a very well presented
Documentary!

The Pineapple!

Did you know she only grows
Under the tropical sun
Nurtured by volcanic-rich soils
And teased by the wind
She comes into her own
Her perfume so potent
It fills you with the urge
To laugh and dance
Through the rows and rows
Of pineapples

The pineapple
Oh, how her juices ran down my fingers
That have tended to her every need
Nurturing her
As she matures
And is ripe for the picking, grading
And shipping to destinations around the world
Where she will grace buffet tables
Fit for a King!

The pineapple
Tended by fifty thousand hands
In the little town of Thika
That sits astride the Equator
Bathed by the River Tana
Twenty-five thousand people
For whom the label
“Grown in Kenya”
Really reads
“Grown by us
With pride”!

The Pineapple
For us, the mainstay
Of our people
The very essence of our community
The ticket to financial freedom
To many of us
A career, a livelihood
A source of pride
The greatest fruit ever grown
To many
Just a pineapple!

The Troops

They should be out shooting
basketball hoops
Not their brothers
Or on their toes
Dancing hip hop
Not dodging bullets
They should be out swimming
Or just out chillin’

They are twelve and thirteen
If that
Some even eight or nine
Too young to die
Too young to take a life
Casually
But they must trade
Another’s life for their own

They are the youth
Of war-torn Africa
The unrepresented
At the United Nations
Because they are not children
According to UNICEF
Nor are they adults
By the guidelines of UNESCO,
UNIDO, UNDERATED
And UNWANTED

Those who are lucky
Fall into the ditches
A natural grave
The bullets taking away
Their meaningless lives
There is no birth certificate
In the Refugee Camp records
No death certificate
For they are querillas
No tomb for the unknown soldier

In history no one will know
That they even came thru’ here
For they were going nowhere
Anyway
Their simple dream
To live another day
To march stoically
To defend an unknown cause
For which their fathers before them
Died
For they are the troops!