A poem to the true woman

     If someone would have told me that there was no beauty on this earth i would believe them. My old mind would struggle to see through the dusty pictures in my head called memories where heartache not only made a home but became the landlord itself.

      If someone would have looked me in the eye and told me love was dead, my old mind would have believed them. Reminiscing on days where my heart would tiptoe in the chambers of love so as not to awake it before its time and when i eventually woke it i would blame it for waking up and toss it away to share a trash can right where my dreams of love lay. Fast forward several years of being introduced to tears that only men know, those that trickle down a centimeter per hour slowly mourning the death of my old mind, rest in pieces. I begun to rethink my stance and rework my dance in preparation for the day one would tell me that love is dead and i would jump at the chance to defend and make amends for the time my perceptions would twist and bend because of a healing i craved to run to while facing a dead end until one day, somebody told me David, love does not exist. 

     They told me real women were a thing of the past, a myth only reserved for books like Ruth and Esther and how all they do these days is pester. In that one moment, i could feel my flesh, the same flesh i thought was dead and gone trying to rise and sound a horn and burst in affirmative but i felt held back. My spirit couldn't let me as i envisioned sistas in my church toil and pray, bruise their knees each day, grow their spirits, face process in the ovens to get their daily bread and instead of moving their bodies form a body submitted to the head. I could picture my mother teach me to be a good man to prepare for a great lady, to be a man not just of my word but his word. Right then my spirit burst forth and begun to proclaim, sista, you who are smoother than the sounds of jazz and blues, yes you sista who when they try to chain your womanhood i watch your spirit refuse. I see your eyes that have stared down tornado's yet your gaze quells the most tempest of seas in the hearts of men. 

     Who else is known to have the grace to walk slow and think fast, love strong and outlast they may call you an out cast because the man came out first but Adam is the only man to have come out without your birth and all other men including your haters all came from you and without you would have no worth. They may tease your emotions but only when a man wins them over will he say he is qualified for unrivaled promotion.  

Obscure men define you as socialites and video vixen but you are the social light pointing to the one that is risen. Your groom, he who loves you so much he had to break from that tomb and as a result only you woman can raise life by hugging and enveloping purpose in your womb.

  

     Do not despise yourself oh mothers of the world, you who nurture nature never neglecting new life, light, love, loyalty all make up your DNA, they may say what they say about looks, shape, hair and worth but without you woman there is no unblemished church. You are the pillars of the house, 

You are a healer, pealing away shame from wounded and broken men after battle has strangled our hope, 

Beauty wrapped in the Holy Ghost, you are not lesser because you came from mans rib cause see man had to act fast because if he didn't all of nature would have called dibs.

So arise as the queens as you are, the best part of the story and with your pores flooding out eternal glory. No one messes the woman, fine and divine with a garment of righteousness as it's the trinity that dresses the woman.

     We the men who have been delivered are like quivers, arrows that shoot truth to the hearts of those who doubt you, you are worthy. No amount of Nicki Minaj or Rihanna flossing flesh can compare to the beauty you hide under a fully covering dress. See yes love was dead it bled went 40 days without being fed was tired and weak but still led then laid its life instead of screaming YOLO instead and in the very same fashion of action it resurrected to show love was more than an emotion but a person and from the bottom of our heart and the one rib remaining, we covenant to love you in a world where love is in training till the day we are glorified, from husband to wife, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters in this life, till we both graduate to be one bride in Christ.

LOVE AND SURRENDER: THE SIGNATURE OF SERVICE

     For God so LOVED the world that He GAVE His ONLY begotten son that whosoever shall believe in Him shall not perish but shall HAVE eternal life.

     When someone has something they love and you are in desperate need of it, a situation so dire if you do not have this possession in their hand you will die, what do you think they would do? The answer is intricately knitted in the verse we all know, John 3:16. No one can love like God. God knew the power inherent in His son to bring deliverance, restoration, reconciliation, reconfiguration and eternal life and He did not hold Him to Himself but sent Him where He was needed, to a fallen, degenerate, separated, erroneous and dead people: you and I. Nobody can love like God. He not only loved, but He surrendered. 

     In my radio show yesterday I asked a question that I did not know would break my heart to the extent it did. I asked, if someone you know had a terrible past (but now lives a life that you bear witness God has changed and restored) wanted to spend the rest of their life with you, would you accept them as changed despite the stigma that may come with it? Majority said they would refuse to. To love, surrender and trust in the work of God through His love not only in us but in others is not only important but is compulsory as well. It is what won us over in the first place. Remember the allure of undeserved love and an eternity spent with one who saw past our deepest flaws and shortcomings, the moment we experienced the beauty of mercy?  Well, the very same power of love that was shown to us when we wallowed in the pit of sin is so hidden many never get to see it in us. 

     The toughest decisions in this world are those that need one to love and surrender.  Many times we are excited by the appeal of doing exploits but we forget that to know God, is to know Him intimately, to see and be immersed in His nature, to be saturated until we naturally and automatically leak it forth. Once we are, the biggest exploit we can do with the help of the Holy Spirit is to daily subdue our flesh with all its pattern, opinion, desires, rights, ‘validities’, intents, configurations and expressions to the autocratic slaying power of the cross to deconstruct every morsel of who we are so as to be who we were created to be. The biggest exploit we can do involves the biggest surrender we can make: to fully give and be given to God in utter sincere relationship, to be fully His to use for His purpose in unraveling His love, His way.

REFERENCES

Daniel 11:32b but the people who KNOW their God shall prove themselves strong and shall stand firm and do exploits [for God]. 1st John 4:8 He who does not love has not become acquainted with God [does not and never did KNOW Him], for God is love.

1ST CORINTHIANS 13:1-2 AMP

1ST JOHN 4:7-12 AMP

ALL IN THE HANDS OF GOD

     Psalms 95:1-7- Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. 2 Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol Him with music and song. 3 For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods. 4 In His hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to Him. 5 The sea is His, for He made it, and His hands formed the dry land. 6 Come, let us bow down in worship,  let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; 7 for He is our God and we are the people of His pasture, the flock under His care.

     Yesterday was quite a tough day for me. My mind had become a battle field again and i was left alone with the enemy within but i am glad that i had the strongest of weapons with me: the word of God. I locked myself in the Studio and begun to pray and read the word of God, the same word i once received in utmost joy knowing the redemption i had found. I went back to the very same word that i knew carried life and indeed, in the darkest moment of the day, the light shone forth. The words of Psalms 95:1-7 soothed me. It started with a reminder that we are united, and we will never be alone: Come, LET US sing for joy.... Many times it seems as though it is 'You there, come and sing for joy' but the beauty of this is that as much as salvation is a singular affair between man and God, relationship, fellowship and communion are best expressed with another.

     My mind went on to to be further engulfed by the beauty of God's word in verse three that He is the great King above all other gods, including the thoughts that wanted to find root in my mind but what was the most astounding thing to me was the arena in which all these things happen: in the hand of God. The sea is His, for He made it, and His hands formed the dry land. This here addressed where i felt i was drowning in the sea of despair, screaming and nobody could hear me, trapped not only at sea but in the proverbial 'wilderness' but truly if the sea and the dry land are in His hand, then doesn't that mean that regardless of my circumstance, i am still in Gods hands? It had failed to fully register in my mind and heart that even the worst moments we go through in life still go on not outside in a hidden place far from the Holy hand of God but they are at play in His hand. Such is the security we can have in our King.

     I don't know what you have gone through or what we may face today but one thing is for certain, we are in the MIGHTY hand of our King and you are still his. 'For He is our God and we are the people of His pasture, the flock under His care,' Those words are real and we can believe them today. So LET US come, Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. 2 Let us come before Him with thanksgiving and extol Him with music and song. 3 For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods. 4 In His hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to Him. 5 The sea is His, for He made it, and His hands formed the dry land. 6 Come, let us bow down in worship,  let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; 7 for He is our God and we are the people of His pasture, the flock under His care.

Don't be afraid to dream

You can come as you are with all your broken pieces and shameful scars, all the pain in your heart you can bring it to Jesus, you can come as you are. Those are the lyrics to the song come as you are by the band Pocket Full Of Rocks. Sitting here and listening to that song paints a clear picture of where both my head and heart are but unlike the band, it's my soul that feels full of rocks.

I am quite the dreamer and shamelessly so. I love waking to see the sun rise, to listen to soulful music, to write music and poetry. I love to speak and to encourage and to facilitate conversation. Many conversations go on in my heart that my ears would banish if they managed to escape. On days like these, some things make painful sense. I have never battled thoughts of failure like i have in the last month.

This makes sense. I have a passion for people, those who see themselves as failures, worth less or even worth nothing. My heart bleeds for them. Who knew that i would battle the very things that i encourage others to attain to? I know God did. I am a firm believer in following not just your dreams but waking up and living them out. I do not believe that a human being should be defined by the money they make, where they live, the cars they drive: i believe these are simply add ons that come when dreams are not only dreamed but lived out with the right partners beside the dreamer. I believe in this life being a journey to a beautiful end but what happens when we begin to lose sight of the 'beautiful end' and even worse, fail to see any end?

'All i want is for you to be a successful man,' said my father this morning as i told him about the wedding date between my fiance and i. The context is, he knows i am a dreamer and he knows this world has a tendency to kill dreams and desire especially when they are bigger than the dreamer. How many people followed a deeply ingrained dream regardless of the voices that said they could never do it, most times their voice being in the mix? I know many, we have case studies of them, we praise them in articles and in lectures but are so fearful to be them. When did we stop dreaming and being a people who hope and envision and love the future as a blank canvas instead of a cluttered one full of rules, regulations with neither mystery nor color? Since when did i have to fight everyday to not dream?

It seems a time has come and is now here where dreams are caged and the worst enemies to our dreams are ourselves. Battling to shelve dreams does not kill the dream, it just gets passed on to a dreamer that will fight for their dream. Ever noticed that every job is one man's dream? What about yours, mine? Not that we should not have a job, but what happens to following a dream that has not necessarily been applied yet? Do we let it doe or follow it, nurture it, fight for it, pray for it, cry for it, work for it and then impart it? I guess i know how so many dreamers feel when they bury their dreams and the only people at the funeral are their mind and heart.

I am a dreamer. I am a writer, a poet, a speaker, a lover, an orator, an encourager, and most importantly a son of God and my God never lets his desires die. He says that His word will never go back to Him without accomplishing what He sent it to do. What if He sent a dream to you that you are so afraid to see rise up? Do you think it will go back to Him? No. He believes in what He has deposited in us to do. David, won't you believe it too? Dear [insert your name] won't you believe that He who started a good work in you will be faithful to complete it? He will. It is His pattern, His nature and His desire, that His word will find fertile ground ground and He will water it to completion. Till your dream, through pain, tears, joy, rain and discouragement. If your dream does not scare you to grow due to its greatness, it will limit and stagnate you due to its mediocrity.

Don't be afraid to dream.

Naked and ashamed

     When did we become such a sexualized generation? In 1974 there was a sexual revolution that basically set the tone for all that we are seeing. This was a subtle move to 'unchain' from the limitations of traditional sexual perceptions that included poems, movies and music that begun to be used on the forefront for Agenda Setting.

     In the guise of being liberated, humanity has never been as internally enslaved since the days of lynching where after being declared free, oppression not only follows you but is made to look normal. What started as a way that the west between 1960-1980's thought was a sexual revolution is what has manifested today to utter sexual degradation. A woman's body is one of the most amazing creations of God. She was in man when God looked at all creation and called it very good. Now, God's own affirmation is deemed nonsense. How can we accept affirmation from someone we vehemently believe does not exist?

     As men, we do not believe we are good and so limit our value to the strength and size of our erections. A man is more than a penis and if we as men can never understand this, then we can never see our women as more than a vagina. The day we begun to esteem a woman's body over her mind and who she is in her most intricate form is the day we lost the power to passionately and positively influence her mind. When all we feed our women is that they have a sexy body and they can gerrit, what looks to be food turns into poison that they take in instead.

     I remember a time we referred to our women as Soul Sistas, Queens and Common even did songs with lyrics like 'i want to build a tribe with you.....the pimp in me will have to die with you.(Come Close) I remember when Talib Kweli and Mos Def did songs like 'Beautiful' featuring Mary J Blige. 

Mos Def Lyrics: 

"God protect my beloved
and keep her covered
from the valley to the summit
like the land undiscovered
like the stars outnumbered, you are so beautiful."

Talib Kweli's Lyrics:

"You're like my reflection
the better half to my whole
like lyrics to the beat
you're the mate for my soul
the breath for my life, my sister and my lover
used to have cold feet, now you're the warmth under my covers
I cant ignore your aura because it grab me by the hand
like the moon pull the tide and the tide pull the sand."

Everything we do now is so degrading to the woman and we have done it so long that many are degrading themselves even without knowing it. My jaw dropped when i saw a picture of a mother taking a picture of her daughters behind as the daughter took a selfie. I thought to myself, if her mother would gladly do that, how can such a beautiful lady be respected by men who not only wants to do the same but go the extra mile? How will she ever value herself beyond her body? Since when did being the most sexy and bedding the most men matter the most and imprint value and identity?

     There was a video by some women who were angry with this but their response was highly myopic. They decided to boycott HBO until men's penises be shown in all HBO productions and in the end of their video against sexualization of media, sexualized men by having naked men stand with them. Men, is this what we call support to our women? Sexualizing ourselves? Absolutely not! We cannot empower the mind of a woman who we have limited to only esteem their body. Even if all the women in the world covered up all the way to their hair, there would be no solution until they see their most intricate form as needs to be seen. You do not need my affirmation as much as you need to stand on eternal affirmation. Before clothes were ever invented God called you good. What changed? Sin not only eroded our position in the garden of Eden but our condition as well. We, while in sin will never be good because our hearts have been made degraded so covering up will never be a solution.

     My heart genuinely pains when i see immature broken men use women as their crutches to spark what looks like a life. I know because severally a darkened mind goes there. I wonder if as men we were restored to God and eventually en mass rejected to watch any video sexualizing women, any song, any poem would there be a slight change? Would sober minded, mature, loving, restorative women join us? I pray so. It is about time we restored factory settings on our sexuality. Adam told Eve 'this IS NOW bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of a man. We need to go back to telling the beautiful amazing women of this world that they are valued, loved and beautiful. That their minds are powerful and their hearts precious. Let us not go back and tell these precious gifts of God that they ARE NOW video vixens, sex objects, money makers. Let us begin to speak back to women their value and their beauty en mass because we can run from that as much as we want but It starts with us.

3 THINGS I AM THANKFUL FOR

     So i have been nominated by my fiance to write 3 things daily that i am thankful for. It is such a great initiative that may just be the thing that gets me back to writing consistently so before i post my three, here's an unofficial thank you to the noble heart that started this initiative and for my beautiful fiance for picking it up :-)

THE THREE THINGS THAT I AM THANKFUL FOR TODAY

1.      1.  My mother’s laugh.

I treasure this mostly because for many years I have been a source of pain and consistent prayer to the queen that pushed me out of her womb and was the first person to call me hers. I fought with her, told her what my bruises from life’s battlefield had made me believe and never once asked how she felt. When God healed me emotionally and spiritually, He not only healed me but used my restoration to heal her. When she laughs with me now, it is more than a laugh, it is a signature of healing; the surgical scar that reminds me that we made it. I beatbox and she sings beautifully on some days and to see her happy and say she loves me then to laugh, that I am thankful for.

2.       2. My father’s strength and trust

Biblically I am to be his Father. Yes my father’s name is Solomon and the wisdom that gushes out of him makes him deserved to bear the name of such a man. Just like my mother, I was a source of pain and prayer for the man who carried me in his heart before I was his seed. We physically fought and of course he would go easy on me yet I would think I won the fights (thank you Dad) I didn't believe in myself and so I didn't believe anyone else did. The funny thing is that when you don’t love yourself, that becomes your lens and every act of love is unseen through that lens. My father once told me he doesn't trust me. I was mad, I was angry, I was betrayed. Not for a second did I ask how it got to that. My reward, standing on the roof of the house as an ‘unloved’ child about to jump and there I saw what I never thought I would. Tears in the eyes of the man I never knew had any. That changed me. I knew I was loved. He has borne so much: from resigning from jobs that paid him millions because he could not stand corruption to selling everything under his name to take care of his amazing wife and 7 children. I understood and once I did, I saw him different. We grew, we merged and today he trusts me: Not only monetarily but with his pain, his joys, his dreams and his hopes.

3.       3. Being believed in

As you have probably noticed, at some point of growing up I stopped believing in myself. I would probably have been the person Lupita spoke of about valid dreams but valid dreams mean nothing if I keep suffocating them myself and blame the fact that all I have is a corpse on everyone else other than me. On this continent, we rarely believe in each other. We seem to all be in a rat race not realizing that the biggest problem of being in a rat race is that we stopped being human eons ago. So when I have an idea and hear an encouragement, or hear a story of a child who had nothing but his bleeding dreams in his hand in a scorching continent and how they met the midwife that saved his dreams life, I stand and salute because there is something powerful that we all need and that is to be believed in. So to those who rise up with their dreams and hopes worn closer to the heart than expensive pendants, those who walk to the rhythm of purpose, feel no pain when the cold wind of rejection blows your way because a warmer breeze is coming. You may find it in the scent of simplicity and a kind gaze all saying one thing. I believe in you. So here’s to those of us who have felt the warmer breeze and are thankful for it

What are your three? Those are mine for today. See you tomorrow :-)

It Starts With Us: The Water

It Starts With Us: The Water:       I always used to wonder when watching these movies that show when one is drowning. Slow, intense, final. How can that which man uses ...

The Water

      I always used to wonder when watching these movies that show when one is drowning. Slow, intense, final. How can that which man uses for leisure be the same that man finds death in? I often wondered, until i was the one left facing the floor of the waters surface. I was drowning. I have been drowning. I think i still am. Being a writer was one of the best things in my life. There were days when i would literally have butterflies when i would hold a pen. Writing always felt like a first date. My mind would play dress up, smell fresh, stand straight and eagerly wait to ring the doorbell of the page i was on just to meet your mind. I used to love to take a walk in the rain while still living in Fedha Estate more than 8 years ago. That, i did not to protect myself from the rain but to enjoy it. I would sit on the slabs in Maua Close with a large umbrella in my right hand as it poured; watching others run almost in slow motion to escape the very drops of water they would on the weekend crave to jump in in the name of swimming. I loved life and you could smell life on me. 

     When i started out in university i remember telling my friend and roommate Kombo that nobody would know i was a poet- false humility at work. He ensured i was proven wrong at his hand. Fast forward a week or so after that statement i was on a stage humbled by yet another standing ovation- false humility not at work here. I had around this very time been the featured poet at Kwani? at just the age of 16/17. I was working with the best artistes in the country as well as the best producers. Later on i met the amazing Imani Woomera who managed to convince me that i could make a difference with my poetry. She carried me as we; together with other brilliant poets begun Slam Africa under who i term one of the best poets i have ever listened to. I believed in myself, my music and my poetry. Things were looking good. I was now recording together with extremely talented friends and the beautiful thing was that these weren't just songs we were doing. We weren't just musicians, we breathed it, bled it and loved it. We were on the rise. I was on the rise. Was. Something happened to me. Something broke. 

    2009 was the last time i loved poetry, music and writing. I can't remember exactly where this passion i once walked hand in hand with slipped away to. Maybe i was careless. How does one walk hand in hand with another and not feel the other hand slipping away? I had gone too far into obscurity to look for passions hand and i was naive enough to believe it would find me. I could write in my sleep but that was never why i loved poetry and eventually i found myself writing in my sleep and never when awake to the fact that i was broken. I saw the art prostituted. I roamed streets seeing poetry and music under street lights skimpily dressed, showing thighs and cleavage and the same voice that once proclaimed in sober breath power to the people was staggering and screaming YOLO. 'Sista' was a term last used by the likes of Angie Stone and Jill Scott before time changed lingoes just as fast as it changed hearts. I now craved for something that nobody recognized any longer. I begun to feel old and irrelevant reading obituaries of hopes and passion. I lost faith in my own words. The very same words that i was told could change the world were dying inside struggling to change me.

      I stopped writing and my reflection begun to grow grey hair and wrinkles so i avoided looking into the mirror. Because i no longer believed in my own words i fueled myself on the words of others to the point only dust from my heart could be seen hanging off the cliff of my lips; even the dust seemed to have no place in me. Hollow filled i did the only thing i thought i could. I gave it all up. I told God take it all. My hands had become too feeble to hold onto dreams any longer and so i put them in stronger hands. What better than to look for passion- old and grey in the one that made her? 

     5 years i felt like i still had nothing to offer. Here i was, restored in my faith in God, yet i still despised myself for not running through those alleyways all those years ago to find passion and here i was still grieving. Still grappling with the question many like me fight with: am I really good enough? Do my words matter anymore? Will i ever feel alive again and will passion ever resurrect because i am tired of graveyard visits staring at unmarked tombstones with all i have being my fear of the rain. So here i am, no umbrella, looking for the living among the dead and knowing that it has to change, and then you pushed me. Pushed me into water that found me in the middle of nowhere and here i am drowning: believing you pushed me for a purpose only you know but that i have come to love; the only thing i love these days. The sky never looked more beautiful like it does from within the water. Suffocating, looking to my left i see you passion: un-aged, smiling and with your hand stretched out. I was pushed to find you and your hand in mine has never felt more purposeful. I remember looking at you as my eyes closed slowly and the illusion of feet wade in the water. 

     Today you're here. Still un-aged, still smiling saying i waited for you and you came for me. You were still beautiful because you were in the water and the very same water is where our love was re-birthed. I now know how it feels to be drowning but now i know the beauty of how it feels to be alive.