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.