The Internally Displaced

The memory of you has become that pastness in our present

But  we've learnt to move on without you because living in the past would be too costly

 for a developing country

And we forgave our leaders at the last National Prayer Breakfast

Because they were very sincere in seeking the Lord

So this poem is for the internally displaced in this country

This poem is for every child who cant sleep listening to daddy telling mama that she made him beat her

Because society teaches men that women can never be people

and that love is best expressed in small doses of violent acts

This poem is for every lesbian woman drowning in nightmares every night

Because the head of the gang that raped her said she needed a real dick

and everyone turned a blind eye because she brought it to herself

This poem is for every elderly man and woman in Mosocho and Keroka awaiting a possible lynching

Because we've learnt to blame others for our misfortunes and being suspected of anything in this country should get you killed and that includes witchcraft

This poem is for every single person in Turkana to whom news of oil on their grazing land

Speaks more of a threat than the success story that the government wants them to believe in

Because capitalism teaches us that development and business matters more  than people

This poem is for every Maasai soul sleeping in a tent over their grandfather's graves

still wondering about how the police could oversee their violent eviction

Because we are a country where only certain ethnicities can hold title deeds 

This poem is for every Kenyan Christian who is fundamentalist

about women's submissiveness and everything else in the benefit of domination

Because "love your neighbour" is too much a threat to abide by

This poem is for every woman opening her legs to make way for a manhood she hates

Because society teaches us that forceful sex in marriage is not rape

And Kiraitu can get away with "raping a woman who is already too willing"

This poem is for the spirits of the five suspected gangsters gunned down in cold blood

Because Loresho is too safe a place for young Black males to look unsafe in

And scaring Kenya's middle class is too bad for the economy

This poem is for the young boy in rural Nyahururu  tying a rope over his hand-me-down shirt

Because he wishes it were a dress so that he could tuck it in his Y-front's elastic hemming

Wishing to stop all the noise about men being men and women being women as though she weren't trans*

This poem is for every Kenyan queer living in secret because coming out is too risky an act

in a country where the only way anyone can be is 'straight' which means being a self-appointed vice-God

Because in the last 2000 years White Jesus has not spoken a word and we can only imagine what he wants

This poem is for my friend Kathy who died in an accident

Because the police in this country have become too reluctant to curb road carnage

And it has become okay to drink and drive if you can bribe the cops

This poem is for every street family sitting behind Wakulima Market not sure if the stench is theirs or the city's with their rags packed in sacks because City Council askaris have deemed them unfit for a space that needs gentrification for the sake of revenue coming from poverty tourism

This poem is for every third generation Somali refugee locked up in Dadaab

Stripped of any dignity by the Kenyan government with the much needed help of the UN

As though their integration into society would dilute any sense of Kenyanness

Because we don't even have enough raids in Eastleigh to curb the Somali menace

This poem is for every Kenyan transman breaking his back with a binder

Because going into town with a beard and boobs makes you a freak

And you never know when you might be asked to strip in public interest

This poem is for the innocent child who still calls mama

in the midst of society's murmurs of how she died

Because this big secret has slowly become dangerous

This poem is for the internally displaced Kenyan

This poem is for you

For all of us