The three boats were anchored against a log at the shore. Nobody was supposed to touch anything left in them until the next morning. Nobody slept. The whole island was awake as the devil. Prayerful men prayed. Women mourned their missing. Your mother said your dad had been so secretive the last few days before his disappearance. He had been closing himself inside his hut. Perhaps he was worrying about the tough times. We had been attacked by a belt of hyacinth and fishing was almost impossible. The lake’s clear water was now buried under green twigs and it would be so for months. He had told me over beer that he was thinking of going east. I told him to spit those words out of his mouth. He did. He never mentioned that again. 

This raw, urgent poem is a confessional plunge into the fractured mind of a man drowning in guilt, poverty, lust and alcohol. Caught between the consequences of infidelity, the threat of disease, rising domestic tensions, a failing job and overwhelming shame, he turns repeatedly to the bottle as his only supposed source of courage, clarity and escape.

This raw, urgent poem is a confessional plunge into the fractured mind of a man drowning in guilt, poverty, lust and alcohol. Caught between the consequences of infidelity, the threat of disease, rising domestic tensions, a failing job and overwhelming shame, he turns repeatedly to the bottle as his only supposed source of courage, clarity and escape. Through a voice that is both tragic and darkly comic, the poem exposes the contradictions of a man who wants to “eat life full-tilt” while spiralling under the weight of his choices. It is an unfiltered portrait of urban struggle—a man wrestling with sexual recklessness, fear of AIDS, marital pressures, intrusive in-laws, financial strain, and the gnawing desire to feel powerful again. Visceral, satirical and painfully honest, this work lays bare the psychology of a man running from responsibility but haunted by every consequence. It is a portrait of survival, masculinity, and the dangerous solace of the bottle.

As it had become the tradition of later days of postcolonial politics, funeral functions were harvest times for politicians. They attended funeral functions heavily loaded in the mouth to capitalise on silent funeral crowds, where they enthusiastically marketed their so-called ideologies to the masses. It was where they talked out their spirits and spilt beans of their competitors. No politician worth his salt missed funeral functions. Since the entry of the culture of materialism, the respect and solid attention given to the deceased and the family mourners had been left and forgotten in the forest of tradition.

Your mother is going to need your protection desperately when your father dies. Your useless Uncle Okelo has a dangerous design to inherit your mother at whatever cost. You know how much the Luo culture has been corrupted by materially oriented persons. Okelo is going to cause chaos because I know that only over your mother’s dead body would she accept being inherited by such a skunk.