You are All

For you with parched tongues on the road to make good better than best, here is a canister of water for your journey.

I am strong.

I don’t say this to convince myself that I am, neither am I telling myself that I will be in the future.

I am strong - this is a given.

I am who I am because He loves me, because He raises me up and places me on His mighty shoulder every time I get lost and go astray, because He searches for me and blesses me with His beatific dimpled smile when I hide myself in the dark, because no matter how hard I tug, He never lets go of me, because He loves me.

I am awesome.

I am not sorry if this sounds arrogant; sometimes the truth need be told with pride.

I don’t need anyone to tell me I am beautiful, amazing, unique. A voice more true, more awe-inspiring, more intense and terrible than the voices of they who surround me vivifies me with this knowledge at every second of my life.

Sometimes I shut my senses to this reality, sometimes I allow myself to believe that I am less than I am, to actually be less than He has made me. But He doesn’t allow me to wallow in this self-indulgent stupidity for long. When I shut my ears, hold my breath and grit my teeth, He sends me the sunrise and starlit nights to remind me that He who made all this beauty made me; thus I am no mistake. When I close my eyes and detach myself from my skin, He sings me songs through those He has blessed that burn my heart and fill my eyes. No matter where I am, He is there, every moment telling me that because He made me, I am everything.
I am not perfect.

I may tell myself I am, but I am not; so when I do, a part of me stops trying to be perfect and gets lazy. But I cannot afford such complacence. I cannot take it for granted that He has made me strong, awesome, amazing, blessed. I have to keep working so that more than staying this way, I become even better, more beautiful than I was in the last second. He has everything so this is the only way I can thank Him for all He has made me.

I am not perfect, and because I know this, I can forgive myself every time I fall and feel His eyes dim. But I will keep on travelling this road to perfection because it is my trying that makes me perfect before His eyes. I will fall because I am human, but I will rise because my Maker is divine and He lives and burns within me.

I have everything I need to be everything I want to be. Thus I will hold unto His hand so that when I stray, whether I am kicking and screaming or patiently accepting, He will raise me upon His shoulder to more than I let myself be.

Amen.

Your Dimpled Smile…

    I feel it when the sun crawls in
    It flirts my lashes to life
    I read it in Your words
    Stirring my soul to growth
    I see it in the frame on the wall
    The heart the artists paint
    I hold it in my sister’s palm
    And in my father’s warm hug.
    I hear it in the patter
    The marauding rat’s tiny feet
    I dance it with your blessed
    In the fluidity we all crave
    I burn with it in voices
    Sonorous with your beauty


                                                           I mourn it in the tears
And scabs of the child beggar
I touch it in the pages
Of all books, new and old
I tease it in the eyes
Of the bold interested one
I rejoice it in the laugh
Of the burdened tickled man
I breathe it in the dust
The smoke, odour and perfume
I taste it in my buds
Alive in culinary splendour
I ponder it in mishaps
The inevitable human in beings
I always see, touch, taste, smell
I always feel Your dimpled smile
The beauty You are Lord, blesses me
From unworthy existence to incandescent life.

DIALOGUE OF THE FULL MOUTHS.

Said one full mouth to the other:

“It’s terrible how the poor suffer

How they break and they toil

No bread their hunger to buffer.”

Wailed the other to the one:

“Do you see how young girls get raped

And pregnant to their houses

They return with shame?”

Cried one to the other:

“And the boys now so lazy

Connecting with their ‘big-boyhood’

And getting down with women sexy!”

Observed the other to the one:

“The old men don’t get their pensions

After all their years of camelling

Their tables have no rations!”

Moaned the one to the other:

“Women now sell their bodies

Under the guise of dating

Their disgrace earns them jewelry.”

Complained the other to the one:

“The government has core no more

Chop chop and clean mouth

That’s the flag they’ll die for.”

Exclaimed one to the other:

“Religion is now a business

Turning in profit for profit

Thus they sell their graces!”

Grunted the other to the one:

“There is no more culture

Out of date and place

Now ‘civilization’ we nurture.”

Rejoiced the full mouths to each other:

“Let us toast to our fullness

Let the world fall about our ears

At least, we have life’s goodness!”