Let Me Go

I’ve been watching the clock face more than yours lately,
Checking the signal on a glass screen that stays dark.
You say you’re busy, and I suppose that’s a kind of truth,
But busyness is often just a wall we build
Stone by heavy stone, to keep the neighbors out.
I’m standing on the far side of that wall now,
Listening for a footfall that never seems to come.

It’s the silence that does the hardest labor,
It sows a crop of doubts in the fields I thought were cleared.
When you don’t answer, or you answer three days late,
The words feel like an afterthought, a cold crumb
Thrown to a bird that’s forgotten how to fly away.

If the fire has gone to ash, don’t stir the coals.
There’s no use in pretending the room is still warm
Just because we’re both still standing in the dark.
Go on and say it. Unlatch the gate and let me go.
A clean break is like a sharp frost in late autumn,
It kills the garden, yes, but it saves us the long misery
Of watching the leaves turn yellow and rot upon the vine.

@doddyokelo

The First Morning

You carry a light that holds against the wind,
A soul that has weathered the seasons of this year
Without losing its fragrance. It is a rare thing,
Like finding a spring that stays clear in the mud,
And I find myself wondering, in the cooling air,
If my own shadow provides a place for you to rest.

The calendar marks a line we are about to cross,
A fence between the old hay and the new growth.
I have no map for what lies on the other side,
No towering design or blueprints rolled in my palms,
Only the simple desire to walk that uneven ground
With my hand finding yours in the spaces between.

Let us not be like the summer travelers who meet
Only where the view is easy and the sun is high.
There is a deeper labor in the soil than just joy,
I would rather we be the stone walls that hold,
Building something well-weathered, inch by weary inch,
Instead of a tent that collapses when the birds fly south.

It should be a slow abiding chime, like the pulse of a clock,
A turning toward one another to ask, “How goes it?”
Not out of debt, but because the garden needs tending.
I can carry the heavy end, and you the light,
Or we can switch when the day grows long and lean,
So neither of us has to walk the furrow alone.

We must come to this without the polished masks
Or the hollow hope of what the other might provide.
True love is not a merchant weighing out silver,
It is the acceptance of the bread on the table,
Finding grace in the plainness of the wooden grain
And the warmth of a fire we both labored to feed.

So, if you are willing to step into the white frost,
Find me as I am, unadorned and standing still.
I will look for you in the same honest light,
The new year is coming, cold and bright and wide,
Shall we see what the morning has to say to us?

@doddyokelo

Plain Dealing

Your pastor clears his throat behind the wood,
To trade you prophecies for silver coin.
He’ll promise that the coming year is good,
A holy harvest that the stars will join.
He’ll say the year is yours to fence and keep,
As if the seasons care for what you claim,
Or that the seeds of luck are sowed so deep
They’ll grow for anyone who speaks a name.

He’ll warn you of the way the year begins,
That if you start it weary, or in pain,
You’re destined for a winter of your sins,
A long and bitter walk through freezing rain.
But I have lived enough of life to know
A blackout at the start is just a night.
The dirt is indifferent to the things we sow;
It’s up to us to find the morning light.

Don’t mind the bells that clamor in the town,
Nor all the talk of what the year will bring.
A man must pull his own bright vision down
And do the work that makes his spirit sing.
Listen to the wood that builds the frame,
And drop the rot that seeks to make you slow;
A life is not a prayer or ancient name,
But just the steady way you choose to go.

The things that harm you have no place to stay,
So shut the gate and let the latch fall tight.
It’s better far to walk a lonely way
Than lose your footing in another’s light.
Go find the task that fits your heavy hand,
And tend the field that calls your heart to be;
There is no luck within this frozen land,
Save what you strike from flint and mastery.

Be happy in the marrow of your bone,
And make the memories worth the time they take.
The path you walk is yours and yours alone,
With every choice a promise that you make.
You are the master of the coming day,
The only one who holds the final key;
So turn the page and walk the winter way,
As certain as the tide upon the sea.

Happy New Year.

@doddyokelo

First Light

The bells will ring to claim a brand new sky,
And men will preach that luck is bought with gold.
They’ll say the way you start is how you’ll die,
A weary tale that’s long been over-sold.
But shadows do not haunt the year’s first cry,
Nor does the dusk dictate what days will hold.

Go find the work that makes the spirit tall,
And lean into the craft that you adore.
The world will try to make you hear its call,
But you must learn to shutter up the door.
If something seeks to break or make you small,
Then let it fall and find your side no more.

The soul is mended by the things we choose,
By quiet walks and whispers in the dark.
You have no debt to pay, no time to lose,
By chasing every faint and fleeting spark.
To save yourself is all the path you use,
Let joy become your only steady mark.

Happy 2026.

@doddyokelo

Final Gear

I’ve marked no map with ink or public pride,
To show the woods where I intend to go.
The things I seek have nowhere left to hide,
And what I reap is what I choose to sow.
I take the path where fewer shadows bide,
And leave the crowds to talk of what they know.

The fence I mend is built of quiet stone,
To keep the peace and part the draining guest.
A man can walk a standard mile alone,
And find in silence all he needs of rest.
For every seed of will that I have grown,
I ask no leave to put it to the test.

So let the wheels engage their hollow, wind-swept song,
Across the hills and through the turning lane.
I owe no word to prove where I belong,
Or why I chose the sun above the rain.
The drive is short, the inner light is strong,
I go my way, and need not explain.

Bye 2025.

@doddyokelo

The Unsent Text

The number sits there, plain as unstacked wood,
A short row noted in the mind’s own slate.
The path to use it has been long understood,
And all the tools are ready on the gate.
No mountain to be crossed, no debt to pay,
It’s only patience that I choose to spend.
I’ve kept the thought inside me for a day,
A waiting letter that I will not send.

I tell myself the courage yet remains,
That it is wiser to be quiet just now.
The simple act is subject to the soft rains,
The slow bend of the unpicked apple bough.
It is not cowardice that makes a man delay,
But seeing clear the cost of the last turn,
A field can wait for plowing one more day,
But once you light the fire, it must burn.

The true work is not the reaching out with haste,
But in the long regard I give the wire.
A man must know what he intends to taste,
Before he builds a larger, hotter fire.
I know that once the single stone is thrown,
The ripples travel outward from that date,
And must be met, once they are fully grown,
At the slow-built fence where I’ve chosen to wait.

@doddyokelo

Monday, But Why ?

I am tired,
shrunken, chilled, and worn at the cuffs of my soul.
The night itself, a careless laundress,
folded me wrong and ironed in the creases of a bad mood.

My thoughts are heavy, they are a parade of strangers
wearing wet wool coats, stomping through the hallways of my mind.
And my intellect is bald, yes, but worse,
a barren, frozen tundra where not a single rebellious idea
has the audacity to sprout.

It is Monday.
the same old cracked vinyl of a gloomy chorus,
stuck, skipping, repeating the universal dullness.
My strength is a barometer at zero,
my motivation a phone on airplane mode.

This is the taste of it,
Monday, served on a cold porcelain plate.
Bitter at the edges, bland and beige in the middle,
a main course of immediate responsibilities.

But really,
why must Monday always show up like a guest who never takes the hint to leave?

@doddyokelo

Jowi Jamuomo

I went, though my heart dragged its feet through sorrow,
I went, because love called my name through the crowd.
They said, Agwambo is gone, but how can truth perish?
How can wind vanish from the lake that bore it?
There he lay, Agwambo Tinga Wuod Jaramogi,
his face still owns the calm defiance,
his rest too noble, too tender, to be called death.

O Maker of dawn, the hand that stirs the tide of Nam Lolwe,
can You not breathe once more into this still chest?
Can You not summon him as You do the sun at morning?
For some men are forged, not born,
tempered in the furnace of struggle and faith,
Raila was such a one, flame and storm in human form,
a god who walked barefoot among the dust of his people,
teaching them courage by the weight of his silence.

No, gods do not die, they turn into wind,
into whispers that rise when nations kneel.
Jakom sleeps now, but even his sleep commands,
for peace follows him like a loyal song.
And today at Nyayo, love overflowed like a river breaking its banks,

Jowi! Jowi! Jowi!
The lion sleeps,
but his roar has become our prayer.

@doddyokelo

Agwambo Tinga

Jowi! Jowi! Jowi!
Wuod Adonija,
Wuod Nyar Alego,
Son of the wind and will.
You were born in a time when voices were whispers,
and men feared their own tongues.
But you spoke, and the air changed.
You called out freedom by name,
and it answered, even from behind prison bars.

They locked you up for believing too much,
for seeing what others were afraid to imagine.
But dreams don’t serve time,
they grow wings.
You walked out of those cells carrying a country on your shoulders,
tired, scarred, but still sure of tomorrow.
And that is how Legends Begin.

You fought for a Kenya that listened to itself.
For a people who could finally speak in their mother tongues
without asking permission.
You taught us that democracy isn’t ink on a paper,
it’s breath-taken, held, then shared again.
You bled through the cracks of history
so that others could walk without bleeding.

Devolution, they call it policy now.
But we remember it was once your prayer,
your stubborn insistence that every village should matter.
Counties rose from that conviction like sunrise over the lake,
and yet, those who eat from your harvest
pretend they do not know the farmer.
Kenya, ever forgetful,
quick to mock its midwives once the child is born.

They said you shook hands with your enemy,
and they spat the word betrayal.
But peace is never popular, it is necessary.
You taught us that victory isn’t always in winning,
sometimes it’s in choosing not to destroy.
You swallowed pride to save a nation,
and still they called you weak.
But the wise know, restraint is a louder strength than revenge.

You stood in Parliament like a storm,
your words cutting through hypocrisy like glass in sunlight.
You were feared, adored, misunderstood,
and sometimes, all at once.
You turned politics into something alive,
something dangerous, something holy.
Even those who called you stubborn
secretly wished for your courage.

They say you loved power,
and maybe you did,
the way a surgeon loves his scalpel:
not for the cut, but for the healing it can bring.
You weren’t chasing a seat,
you were chasing justice across decades.
And when power refused to listen,
you spoke to the people instead.

Five elections, five heartbreaks.
Yet you never stopped showing up.
You smiled through rigged dawns and broken nights,
still believing in a country
that sometimes forgot how to believe in itself.
You didn’t lose, Jakom,
you only taught us how to endure disappointment with dignity.

They’ve called you names, hero, traitor, messiah, menace.
But your story has never fit into one sentence.
You are Kenya’s contradiction,
the man both loved and feared,
praised and punished,
remembered and erased,
yet always present in the nation’s breath.

And now, as history exhales your name,
we see what you’ve always been,
the mirror this country avoids,
the conscience it still needs.
You lived, you fought, you forgave.
You gave us more than leadership,
you gave us language for courage.

Jowi! Jowi! Jowi!
Wuod Nyar Alego.
The man who kept walking,
even when the road kept ending.

@doddyokelo

Let it Rain, Brother

Hey, broken man,
you don’t have to hold the sky tonight.
Let it fall. Let it rain through your chest.
Strength is not silence, it’s the courage to shatter
and still call yourself whole.
The world taught you to be iron,
but even iron rusts when it holds too much sorrow.
So cry, let your saltwater baptize the pain,
let softness be your rebellion.

You are not weak for weeping,
you are simply human enough to heal.
Tears don’t strip your masculinity, they cleanse it.
Let them fall, and when they do,
may they wash away every lie that said you shouldn’t feel.
Even lions cry, brother,
we just never stay long enough
to hear them mourn.

@doddyokelo