She wasn't singing

She wasn't singing much,
really 
But they kept on cheering, 

leading,
her to do more of what,
she wasn't doing.

There was a certain hope in her presence,
something sublime in her voice.
Perhaps it was the guitar guy.

We murmured in small conversations and everyone else
competed, with her vocals,
made her singing less accommodative.

She wasn't singing much,
but the crowd somehow knew, 
the song had reached the end.

We kept on waiting for her to start 
singing,
but she wasn't singing much.

Then we realised it!
The way she stroked her Brazilian weave
at intervals, is what we liked!

Covered in a red Che Guevara beret,
split in the middle so that her small face 
protruded, from the mass of hair.

The way she stroked it with her tiny fingers,
her tiny hand,
we assumed all her fingers were of the same size.

That thing, that was the thing!
That made me order more drinks,
in a bucket,

As I perched on my stool
and waited
for her to start singing.

Cos she 
wasn't singing 
much!

* * *

Speakerbox, K1, Nairobi
Karun Mungai, 24/7
July

Forsaken inheritance

She never used to write so well,
but her strokes were precise and felt, in pain.
Rubbed her kitty like a bag on sale,
to furious suitors that never rung, her bell.

Indeed she was one whose fate you could tell,
gave me hope that indeed I could sell,
twenty short verses, for the price of ale
to abandoned groupies, now crowded, in a cell.

Mama didn't know how hard we fell,
lost opportunities now wrapped instead,
on borrowed paper that rusts, in beds,
of jilted lovers, whose fate we dealt.

We knew she was a keeper from files we read,
and virtual comments she made, from jail,
while serving a sentence to redeem, her claim,
on a forsaken inheritance, now bought in shame. 

* * *
Rabbit Hole, July 2019