Make me esteem the edicts of gravity

Lift me up and alter my altitude

Embrace me and I’ll remember a word or two, of gratitude

Kiss my lips to change my attitude

Unfasten me from these rivets and screws

Lure me to your tunes of blues

Drunken me in this brew,

A cocktail of amity, lust and trust

Run by again what it feels to melt

Rip off my dress

Blow me off my senses

And left me feel the artwork underneath your vest

Let’s brand the taste of zest

Trace me down this maze

You tick and waste no time for a grip

How quickly you fly and leave me behind your ticks

Toking your staccato steps with no stern warnings of my level of deep shit

That I am sinking under tossing down the stenches

Of my thoughtless passion and folly

Time is not my best friend

For it didn’t wait to waste a dime of its arm to stretch an embrace

So that it warns subtly of the brutality of failing to pay its due minute of attention

Time is not my best friend; he spites me for not heeding keenly to his counsel

And my face falls and Time walks away for a lesson I have to pay

And I cry, solemnly waiting for a second round of chance to replay

History I will make in coming days,

Time will only judge as hay

hey, I got derailed, I wait not but catch up your nippy steps turning my back to my older ways

Break to breathe relinquish the being

Calculate moods in sartorial of whatever fashion,

Gaze deeply in those eyes, and judge not discriminations

Hear the brilliance in voices

And know that surely a good one is wished

It’s the composure, 

Not to be overlooked even in serenity

Even in a stormy day

In vexes of moods

Drunken enflamed eyes

Strains bloated upon skin

Seething

Shit faced

Choked in smoke

So be it,

Don’t overlook this fact, even in your outbreak

How deception is amorphous

And a fist could blow that bristly

And the pieces crumpled down low in pieces so fine

A soul I established, a life of lies

Donkey’s years of make-believe

Understanding the unsound mysteries

Trusting in the power of the unseen tuneful limericks of being

It’s illogical but I believed you did dwell inside of me

And I gave my fragile to you

Now it’s tumbled in pieces

Damn it’s just but reckless

Lately I’ve been thinking it was all a ghost past

Cause it’s humiliating to be slapped by life’s reality checks

Evoking words you swore are forever true

And how you would let a tear before I shed a drip

And never allow what you made of us

It’s so reckless

It seems easier not to live, death is gold

It’s all that shimmers

Under the tunnel

You found a new solace

New strength and a happier way

Groupies to tap your shoulders reassuring your choices

Lessons learnt from being a little noble is that everybody is egocentric

Contentment is fed from my desolation

I wonder if there’s a dreamland

How untainted is it,

But how can I ever rely in a stranger that’s dwells in the unfamiliar

Yet I was deceived 3-D

Once again I am the pawn in a reckless game, again and again

Is faith a continuous test to prove your prowess of being injudicious?

Over and over, let stark to watch your falling stars dim their spark

Six years was a lie, forever was a mindless propaganda

I walk away leaving a chapter I once wrote before

This time it reads more mischief

Disguised bystanders

Harsh angels

With ugly smiles

Swinging over their cold hands

A kiss of Judas over intimate tête-à-tête

Why do they get evil as they nigh their graves?

Shouldn’t they be cautious not to play near Lucifer’s residence?

Speaking the devil’s jargon

Heaven’s uncertainty ascertained by man’s careless vows

Faith’s a myth

At a spur of heat

It’s all recklessness, and so am I

 Almost two disasters of significant proportions are recorded every week in Africa since 2000.

The number of people exposed to floods in in Sub-Saharan grew from 500,000 per year in 1970 to almost 2 million per year in 2010. A new UN report, Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR 2011) reveals.

“Around 400 million people in the region live below the poverty line, and 200 million are considered to be under-nourished. Income poverty and food insecurity play a major role in land degradation, as the poor and hungry are forced to over-exploit natural resources to meet their immediate needs for survival,” UNISDR.

More so, the Media has always been the vanguard of providing information in the event and the aftermath of these disasters, be it droughts, floods, landslides etc. The challenge posed is: If the need to communicate is most pressing at a time of disaster, just how much more is it in preventing that disaster?

Disaster reduction as opposed to disaster response evades unnecessary and costly loss of both lives and property. For this reason, disaster risk management should be considered as an investment for any country, and the media can ascertain to this only if they change their manner of reporting disasters.

The Gar 11 further reveals that that disaster risk is an investment to any country drawing several examples.

New York

“New York has chosen an alternative: instead of spending US $6.8 billion in conventional pipe and tank improvements, it has decided to invest US$5.3 billion in green infrastructure – permeable pavements, more green areas, and other measures to address its problem of drainage capacity. Green infrastructure acts like a sponge – absorbing and regulating peak water flows.

Brazil to India

Countries from Brazil to India have shown that mechanisms designed to address structural poverty can be used to stop disaster prone households from sliding into poverty by providing a buffer. These programmes reach out to millions of households (12 million households in Brazil reached with only one programme – Bolsa Familia) and can be adapted at relatively low additional costs. The government has only last week announced that it wants to expand this programme (mid-June 2011).

Chile Earthquake

For example, after the 2010 Chile earthquake and tsunami, the Chilean Government extended payments from the country’s social assistance programmes, Chile Solidario and Programa Puente, to households affected by the February 2010 earthquake, whether they were structurally poor or not.”

“Greater public awareness can translate into greater government accountability” (HFA Mid-Term Review 2010-2011).  More coverage is thus needed to sensitize the public and influence policy underlying issues that affect the economy such as the direct correlation between disaster-related economic losses and the limited investment in risk management particularly at the local level.

We forever keep marveling at life’s obscure sense of humour

Accustomed to grief, dine with sorrow

Fiery ferocity

Deluging waterworks

Sensually until it blossoms to bliss

Loving the taste of it

And the self-embrace between covers

Quivered up with indefinable grief

Coupled with fond thoughts of yesterday

Bloodshot and swollen eyes

Exposing a bleeding soul

A Wondering spirit

Who makes it a student of time

And a disciple to heaven’s sent conviction

And a hush enthusiast to hades

In it you smile at the oddest

In gracefulness you mould your fortitude

And cry and forgive like a child.

In time your reflection reveals, a wondrous sculptor, your own art

That’s Life’s obscure sense of humor, that cycles round and round

Until then… …. Let’s keep our diaries open, our intentions disclosed and hearts exposed to life’s next mischiefs

Photo credits: Courtesy.

As we single out books from shelves

Scanning on pages

Guessing by the covers

Straining ours eyes just to make sense of these premises

We carry along lessons, building our ideologies

As we sit in this dim lit room

Rapt by the intrigues of this big book

Where the plot is, but is not as obvious as it seems

And our breaths bait not knowing what the next line would read

We are silent, wondering, if this re-lived would make a great movie

What a brilliant actor and a haunting performance of color

This could be one legend

Flashes and limelight, Smiles and tears,

Flash and snap out of fantasy

What a book I am reading

So gripped I’d swear I’d want to read it forever

Slugging the pace of flipping to next pages

While toning rhymes sway in the wake of scenes

And stunning visions of the descriptions play

A slap of flash-backs to relay previous episodes

Secretly petrified by chapters that sit awaiting to open up

Restlessly foretelling its climax

Afraid of its complete relation

ROYALTY

From the corner of her eye

And the slyness of her shy

From the quiet laughter she makes

And the swagger in her mystery

Wishing she’d paddle your paltry life and pat you under her skin

Silken and cushioned

Her gentleness, confirmed by her bosom

When she hurts she burns in rant and rave

But she’s never damaged

Sits strong and stands tall

Her tenor is bright and so are her eyes,

When she’s cheerless; it’s a clog of grief

….And with only a giggle; the world’s a jamboree,

… then in time you see

How truly royal she is

A story about me in a new school in Class two in an afternoon at 2.  After having my lunch at the school cafeteria my belly was acting up. It wasn’t clear in my mind where the toilets were located but I was led.  I strode into this corridor, steamed up in a wacky stench. A mixture of overnight urine and crap competing with this annoying fragrance.

A yellowish knit spider web hung firmly, right at the entrance, on the ceiling seemingly being held by her ‘burnisheness’ the black widow, herself. And as I stood there wavering, other pupils walked in daringly, superficially unnerved by the widow’s presence. I was only an 8 year girl, in a new decant public school in class 2 from a decent private school.  In time, I garnered courage and hopped in careful not to skid across this gloomy slimy floor. Swinging the first door, what I saw was enough to roll a grown man crackers. I chocked.

There was a blanket of them. Green eyed buzzing flies mining this big heap of multi colored CRAP.  I banged the door right back, and carefully opened the second loo.

A different revelry of flies, huge and fleshy they even had fur, facial expressions and they used speech as opposed to buzz, I think.

It was like their family get-together or a Passover feast. Feeding avariciously on this smooth milky drippy chunk of chocolate-brown human shit…. And there was all this politics of who will eat what and when… a pandemonium blew attracting the flies next door, a world war 3 blew and boo I was terrified, stuck in the in the damn loos. I didn’t want to come between families so I stood figuring how in this world I’ll ever step out of the toilet while the widow was sleeping up the ceiling, just where my break out from hell stared….