Betrothing the moon

I see her, wincing. The moon winces

at the sun to make sure that

he sinks.

Then she emerges with her yellow legs,

Dusty feet and a wry smile,

Wa’sup world??

I meet her, big, round and yellow,

She is glad that she doesn’t have to look at us

Through the window, today

She is big, round and yellow.

She walks me to the verandah of the dilapidated house

The one the owner is a madam

Worked with the county council.

Madam moon tells me that she feels for her

Since she doesn’t have the money

To complete it.

She saw the day her letter of retrenchment

Was signed by a newly employed

Human resource manager,

On the ground that her typing speed was very slow.

She has no money, moon tells me,

Her savings were lost in the trips to the doctor,

The lawyer,

And that trip to India to have her breast cut,

Sleeping on the whole flight holding her rosary and

Asking her God to speak to

The Hindi God that the operation goes through successfully.

She can’t sell the plot

Because the man who sold it to her died,

Leaving behind a greedy football team fighting

To suck the coin in every asset that man had, dirge, dirge.

Changing topics, I ask the moon, what can you see?

She smiles at me, then tells me about primary school kids

Making way from school,

In wajir,

In Makueni,

In Marsabit.

Sometimes she hides her face when she sees the Shabaab men,

With blinking eyes and homemade guns

Full scrotums and khat cud in their mouths,

Then spitting the wad to scream an instruction,

Rape, rape, rape.

They rape the girls and take the boys to be child soldiers,

Screaming Al Akhbar, Al Akhbar.

I ask moon about God,

She says Allah is very good

She saw Jesus Christ when he was here,

He was a very gentle, kind man, just like Krishna

Confucius was the genius kid

And Moses was a very good man.

Moon told me that Krishna, Jesus and Mohamed,

Said hi to her on their way to work yesterday,

They were talking about the Hamas, the Isis and Ebola,

Jesus hates the death of innocent kids from Ebola,

Mohamed almost cursed,

When he saw innocent Palestine kids lying on the ground,

Krishna was sad that someone sold the lie,

Of a chosen nation.

Moon changed her serious tone,

Told me she had seen a girl and a boy in Maseno university,

Kissing outside the hostels.

Last month she saw them too, they are never sad,

Though she found the boy unbuttoning another girl’s blouse,

But boys are like that, all the same, she says.

In Kenyatta university,

She sees them outside Nyayo 1,

Many times the young lads and lassies spent more time outside the hostels,

Than they did in the library,

Then go to their cubicles to make black coffee,

And eat with stones of wheat, called gumu,

She tells me,

Love is a good thing.

She has seen men kiss, ladies kiss too,

She doesn’t like men kissing, she says

They always open their eyes, making her feel shy,

As two big black bodied glue up in a deep kiss,

Moon,

Prefers,

A boy kissing a girl,

As she measures the thoughts in the boy’s mind,

Thinking about how he will get there,

While the girl is already there.

Moon tells me too,

That the graves are good places for gay men,

Once they die, their honesty to themselves don’t allow them to lay dead,

They don’t fit in graves,

Moon says,

Anybody,

Honest to themselves don’t fit in graves.