The last girl I dated took cocaine as the cane to her pains, A chained soul, Lost & found Found in her own world; a tattered world
She took mad drugs like mandrax Had to kanyaga on mad tracks to get Konyagi And on the nights I tried pillow fights… with her, It was a dark willow move Hard for her to move Move from her mood
She couldn’t chase me back Couldn’t because, Her alcohol wasn’t chased So I ended up being the chaser Each time she went to flash the toilet, drunk
I Johnny felt bad, Felt bad that the Johny Walker she liked couldn’t make her walk, Walk into deep conversations Couldn’t make her work, Work out her obese troubles, Couldn’t make her awake, Awake for our dreams Dreams that couldn’t even be stopped by Lawson’s, Because I wanted her to bear me sons by law.
I remember asking her to join me for the morning glory, To weed off the weeds that devil was trying to plant in our lives, But on the mornings she tried to join me into weeding the devil from our firm, She ended up blunt, blunts.. blunts.. blunts.. Weed at the balcony each morning glory smoking weed
Am not sure whether to be sentimental about her, because I tried, I tried to babysit her into my bedsitter, But she said I can’t sit on the bed And I said Okay baby-sit where you want to sit.
Am not pure to be judgemental Because, Am a victim too, A victim of hard drugs Hard drugs like caffeine in coffee , Coffee in the morning, Coffee in the mid-morning, Java while writing about the last girl I dated
However when she asked me What’s your favorite liquor, I tell her with a smile, “Kagwe Special” She stares back, eyebrows raised asking “Hio ndo gani beb?” (what’s that baby?)
I answered back in Kikuyu accent “Shausage Biri Na Shoda Moja” (Two sausages and one Soda) She laughs back.
And you & your soul are more alike Bitter and entangled on the pasts Past that never made it to happiness You’d want to admit It’s more a little alike So heal it Would you sit with yourself And heal it?
There’s no need for you to get to another soul And yet you can’t make your real settled down Can you do that?
And sharing your soul too When do you see yourself doing that? When you find yourself in yourself ? And when do you think that should be? When you get in love? Aren’t you in love with yourself? Would you rather say that you love yourself, You have never stopped loving you? Or as far as “being in love” ….. You don’t know
Is it flowers & rings you want to yourself? You are courting yourself now, Yourself, With literally everything you want for yourself I suppose you deserve to sweep yourself off your feet In ways Ways you can’t even imagine.
Lately I have been very happy. Happy with myself. The kinda happiness that comes from within me and not anyone else. The reason why I’m happy is because I have adapted the character of acceptance. I have accepted what happened to me, I am accepting what will happen to me and I’m doing the acceptance for positivism only. There are times I feel as if I was a bad person before then just by what people told me and sometimes I feel open to never blame anyone for it. I never question anyone in fact I have grown so fond of sharing it out here because I believe am a better person now(If at all I was bad).
Late February after the week of Valentine’s I was in my favourite happy place doing what I love most. Music; I was playing the piano, there’s a song that was so deep in my heart and so I decided to practice the chords. Took me few minutes to master the notes. And finally I was ready to sing it. All of a sudden I blacked out. The blacking out comes in so quickly because that’s the only part of the story I remember because whatever happened before I had begun practicing, I don’t remember.
Few hours later I woke up at mama Lucy hospital in Nairobi, Embakasi . The only person who was standing right before my eyes was a nurse. I guess she was middle aged, a bit tall and beautiful too. I never fear complimenting people, it’s my thing. I stared at her for a while, closed my eyes to accommodate the lights then opened them again and she began speaking to me.I could see that she was talking to me but I could only get to hear her in bits.
“You don’t have to do this John, look around this place, do you want to be here, really?” she continued, “You need to wear your shoes and go home, go home and continue living.”
When she said “continue living” I gave her one blank stare and everything else she said didn’t get into my ears.
How do you continue living after realising that you don’t even remember your own-self? You can’t remember your 23 years memory? You don’t even remember how old you are? You don’t remember if at all you had any childhood memories? How do you go back to living when you can’t remember if at all you had a love life? -if you ever fell in love. How do you go back to living when you don’t know whether to give up or give in to your fears? How?? Her statement was just untimely and no wonder my ears shut.
A week earlier before all this happened, I had been to Multimedia University. The school where I took my Journalism studies and had graduated months earlier with good grades too. Good grades are hard to get in university!. But here I was all blank. And now I didn’t have any idea of what my profession was.
I always ask myself, why did this have to happen to me? why did it have to happen to me especially after I had graduated. Did it have to come with lose of speech too? Was it someone’s fault? But as I began earlier on to mention, “I have accepted what happened to me and I blame no one.” Am different now, never I was.
The nurse kept on talking but my ears could only grab a few words in what she said. I saw the face of my mother, my lovely mum. Her beauty was covered in sadness. She was worried and I don’t think I would ever want to see her worried that much again about me. My heart felt broken to my bones. It made me question God, why? why would you let a mother see her first born vanishing? Why would you let a father worry about his first seed? My father was speechless, that’s the first time I saw him weak. Sons are meant to see their fathers strong always but in this, the father was no where close to strong. This is not how things work. Why would God let brothers suffer not to have someone to look up-to? All these questions were in-vain.
I stepped down the hospital bed and as I walked outside the hospital, the last thing I grabbed into my ears from the night shift nurse was,
“He needs a counselor.” and I asked myself do counselors sell memories? Maybe they do, who knows!
I didn’t want to stay in the hospital so I walked straight to the car. My parents asked me to go back and have the drip needle removed from my hand but I did not want to go back there. All I wanted was an escape, an escape from all this heartbreak, heartache. An escape from a dark hole.
On my way back home I felt horrible. I felt heartbroken. It was the kind of a heartbreak that goes beyond the heartbreak of falling in love. You can’t explain whether you feel pain or bitterness. You can’t tell whether the day is better than the night.
How do you live without memories? How do you start a fresh at the age of 23 to know people again? How do you live a life of explaining to every one of your old friends that you don’t remember them anymore? How do you look for a job without a memory? How do you survive the interview? All these questions kept running in my head. It’s a feeling I never want anyone to go through. It’s a feeling I never wish for anyone to go through. But I went through it.
When I got home I felt confused. I wanted to go to my house but I couldn’t tell if I had a house or not? No one pretends to lose their memory but sometimes I keep on asking myself people who thought that I pretended why would I waste my time to pretend to lose my memory? Well I’m no longer thinking about questioning anymore. I began…….
I keep on looking for God everywhere
Look! If I go east, He isn’t there! If I go to the west, I don’t perceive Him. …
Job 23:8
And the funny thing is each time I get hold of Him.
He tells me the same thing
The exact words He told Israelites before the Red Sea,
Be still and know my Victory.
When I look behind Pharaoh’s close, so close that I feel shaken
When I look at the sea before me,
It’s hard to tell if my swimming skills will save me from the teeth of the sharks
And the truth is am not Jonah,
Am actually John,
Am John Articles and so if the shark swallows me I’ll definitely get digested.
But still,
His still small voice keeps on saying Be still and see my victory
How I wish my feet were steeled,
Maybe I’d stand still for God to steal my fears away
But here I am
Supposed I cross the sea by His mighty hand -Will the desert spare me?
Where is my Moses?
Or am I my own Moses, not eloquent of speech?
I am told that He is mysterious and I surely believe it
All I hold onto is the promise,
A land of Milk and Honey
He’s not a man, He cannot lie.
So I’ll obey His still small voice for Him steal my fears away and steel my feet to His victory.
🤞
Sometimes you are very close
You fix all your puzzles correct
You align each pieces and there you have an answer
You go through each shelf and you are pretty sure that everything is in order,
But right when you want to sit at the table to have your coffee.
The rack breaks and you have to start all over,
You choose to but still it’s hard because all books are of the same sizes,
Then you have to check title after title
And when you think you are sorted out
You realize the titles are same,
Now it’s your turn to follow up chapter after chapter
Episode after episode
Sentence after sentence
Word by word
The process is longer and compromising promising
You finally quit and choose to have a new shelf
Now you have to keep new books to it
It’s not bad, it’s a new chapter
To the old closed chapter
The first time I fell in love I was 33 years,
The lady I fell for was 10 years older
She was a dynamite- (I realized that when she finally exploded)
She didn’t like to be stared at,
she always told me that stares felt insecure but when I stared at her she didn’t look away
To her, smiles smell like heartbreaks,
Smiles were blindfolding and the last time she smiled back to a guy, It all ended up messy
The truth is I didn’t know smiles have a smell,
The only thing I know is that smiles are contagious, they affect how people behave towards us
The last time I smiled to a lady It all ended up into a different thing
A different thing that I never want to talk about not because it’s bad but because it’s sad
That’s what I think because I first smiled to her.
@Johnarticles +254729653410
I wanted the love to last but she chose lust
She fired up my bullets not knowing I needed them to feel secure around her,
She never liked straight talks, In fact she said
People don’t want straight talks, people want memes,
Journalists want Sound bytes and politicians want a slogan
And poets, poets want nothing but rhymes without considering the content
It pained me she couldn’t be pinned down to talk
If only I knew i would pull the safety pin off before the grenade fell on us
For days fought, fought for answers
I was at war, at war with my peace
The only person who was supposed to be my peace was only available in pieces
She had different obligations, I wished to be her priority but she, she wasn’t ready to pin down a man who couldn’t knife his fork
She said, No one cares about emotions- we have Emojis!!
Sadly men don’t talk, Women contemplate suicide. Men actualize suicide,they die with so much.
Their pain grows on the inside and fades on the outside
Don’t let their suits fool you,
Their cries are louder when they are laughing.
Their tears roll when they look very handsome.
But it’s all on the inside.
We need to put our sons and daughter at a place where they have the right identity,
they know who they are; not based on the material things they have.
We need to teach them
That if they turn at every abuse they get,
they’ll never go anywhere|
We need to make them understand that if they live for the praises of social media, likes, followers and viewers.
They’re in deception.
And on matters of relationships we need to teach them Isaiah 34:16
“..None shall lack a mate…”
Teach them that suicides in relationships is ungodly,
Teach them that sponsors are our fathers and mothers in disguise.
Teach them that walking in the ways of the Lord will give them a long lasting life.
You see gone are the days where because you are millionaire you are a mentor, it’s no longer about that anymore,
it’s about your value systems.
How you perceive the right and the wrongs.
Justifications.
Keep your ears on the ground,
Keep your eyes open,
Keep your noses active,
You may smell something ;
I don’t know.
See am just a man
I have joys,
I have weaknesses,
I have fears,
I have strengths.
But only my closed ones can see the pimples, the limbs, the flaws.
We need to teach our sons and daughters that having a smaller circle gives you bigger opportunities.
But let them remember
A society with broken souls,
is raising insecure minds, Children with no directions,
families with no love,
suicides, homicides and corruptionists in the church. Blasphemy!
we may do wherever we do but if men are broken, the society is broken.
Teach them to keep the joy of the Lord as their strength.
We cannot start now and have a brand new beginning, but we can start and have a brand new ending.
There’s a moment someone is in chains,
probably in detention by their own souls,
Caged souls, insecurities, fears and flaws that chain them
Then you are on the other side,
chains free, soul secure, all bold and different
By a glance of the other tattered soul, something strikes you, hard as never before
And you choose to help them taste what freedom tastes like
You check the guard and he let’s you into the cage,
Not knowing what you’ve gotten your soul into
Day by day you teach the chained soul how to live free,
You make the best out of them
You walk into the valley of the shadow of death with them
Jumping all the hurdles of life like you own them, you teach them that pain isn’t good
But it is meant to help us remember that being strong at all times is the best option,
From all the simplified facts you remind them that,
Being strong at all times is the good thing
but then sometimes being weak is more
better.
The caged soul begins to yearn for freedom,
Your therapy is working as wished
Then you remind them that the best way to defeat your enemy is by making them think they’ve won,
But you also remind them that showing your enemy weakness is the most dangerous thing.
They choose to fight,
fighting the enemy within them,
Breaking free and walking past insecurities
Finally the soul is free and never wishes to track back.
You focus on what is to come,
You forget what is gone.
But then once you get lost into everything,
By the time you recover
Your mind reminds you that *Human beings are very forgetful creatures*
Few days in the same cage,
the soul you’ve freed
strangles you to death
You now realized it was a wrong track.
And when you want to start over the therapy
It’s too late,
The freed soul already knows your moves
Just like a broken wings bird, you lay lifeless
Down there
Numb and lost than ever,
wishing to find relief
Questions hit you hard,
regrets break you down
You stagger to recover but it’s worthless
The unpredictable truth is, you were free
Free before walking into that cage
You got into the cage by yourself
You weren’t on detention but the soul was….
Your soul realizes it, then you walk out the cage..
Never to be seen again.
There’s nothing that has got me detached from people like that statement. It has made me disconnect from people that meant so much to me because somehow, I find it shady and demeaning especially when that person goes for more than 6 hours without getting back, personally I take it as a cue of “I’m detaching!” It’s just a “polite” way of saying “stop bothering me.” And it becomes more humiliating if this whole cue is an indirect communication from the person you love.
I suppose most relationships, partnerships and even friendships have failed from this same menace. A simple delay in replying the text back on time- and that’s how you find yourself single again. If you seek explanations from the other party, sweet blame games come out in the most commonly used quote ‘You made me a joke, I left as if it was funny.’
Isn’t it disappointing that communication is no longer what we used to know? What happened to the good old days where people wouldn’t lie via phones? What happened to the days of commitments where people got an headache from missed calls? Do you know what I think? People no longer care as much. Everyone gets into a bubble of excitement that lasts few moments and once it’s blown up, communication dies, it only means one thing a dead end.
The world has never changed from revolution, each day something new is born in a world of technology. Something that is seasonal. But one thing we need to bear in mind, our way of loving, our way of heart to heart communication never undergoes through any revolution.
Let’s not complicate matters of the heart, when you’re a good person, you don’t lose people, they lose you.
She was always a shy specs wearing lady. Shy to look into any man’s eyes. All because she wore glasses. Glasses that hid the reality of her big eyeballs. Something that had cost her self-esteem. For many times she felt out-of-place. She felt less courageous. And day by day she withdrew from publicity. She feared showing her smiles to the world. She feared not because she wanted to. But because he had never appreciated her. As a matter of fact they had never appreciated her. All she said to herself was..
For a while I’ve tried mixing sunshine with hurricane.
I’ve tried to ignite something to no moves.
I’ve brought the sparks together but there are no flames.
I have nothing else left to hold me. I’ve gotta find my fate.
❤
What’s happiness if our close one’s hate us? What’s peace if our minds are full of fights? What’s strong if our hearts are in struggles? Albeit for most of us wish we could see what is to come but just like everyone else, the future remains a mystery. And that’s how it should be. The reason being that if we all see what good or bad is to befall us, mistakes would be no more since we would live into perfection. And the world would definitely lose it’s balance because of lack of a measure of the good and the bad. The truth is our uniqueness is what makes the world a better place.
And so despite the fact that she was so overwhelmed about her physical appearance. He was never bothered. He wrote her poems that were deeper than her wounds..
So I wish my words would go deeper. Deeper into your darkening soul.
And clear the thought that good men don’t exist.
Men that know what true is. Love that is never lust rather meant to last
For a long time you’ve been in desolation and your soul is caging in.
All because each heartbreak caves your ribcage. How much of reality would you want to hear if not that True men exist?
#Under_the_bridge
Whenever they went for a walk, he would take off her glasses right in the middle of a crowd.
Then he would say it more sweetly into to the perfect harmony.
And before he could get done, she would cling on him sobbing happily. Day by day she started becoming courageous again. She also learned to whistle before him, despite being five years younger.
And when her tears dried first, she realized it was more than a heart to heart connection.
I bet I’ll twist this for some witty guts
