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

Rivers of My Own Making

There is no universe in which I am sitting down to read how someone built a whole cereal shop from a single grain of rice. Never. I respect the effort it took to type all that optimism, but no. Your road doesn’t bend like mine, and I refuse to be shamed into feeling inadequate simply because my idea of joy moves to a different sun. If you want to pray, pray. I pray too, my brother. We are all sinners anyway. The only difference is how we manage our sins. Mine are personal. I enjoy them quietly and carry the consequences alone. Yours arrive with collateral damage, cloaked in lies, dipped in theft, and sanctified from the pulpit. A pastor from hell, if we’re being honest. Cut me some slack, man.

2025 has been incredible. Financially, the fireworks stayed away, but the lessons arrived on time. Lessons that stay. I learned how to take care of myself by leaning into what I love. I learned that some opinions bloom like flowers but are made of dust, pretty to see, hollow to hold. I learned the strength that lives in subtle sighs, the subtle mastery in watching without interference, the rare discipline of letting words fall around me without reaching for a reply. And perhaps the hardest lesson of all. When the lights dim, the applause fades, and the crowd vanishes into the night, only your own shadow remains. That truth seeps in like a silent river, carrying its weight with quiet insistence, tracing the contours of the soul, unseen yet unstoppable, leaving freedom in its wake.

I carry no resolutions scribbled on paper for 2026. Free of banners of ambition and untouched by public drumbeats, I carry instead intentions. I plan to be better. To build myself financially. To chase what I want without hesitation or apology. And yes, I plan to cut people off, gently but firmly, when their presence drains more than it gains. Whether I leave or stay, your life will continue uninterrupted. I’ve made peace with that long ago. I plan to do more business, take bolder risks, and travel wider, seeing places for their stories, feeling the streets beneath my feet, tasting lives outside my own. Unfettered by heralded plans, letting the quiet flowering of my journey reveal its own story.

Still, gratitude stays. Deeply. For the hands that steadied me when my footing slipped. For those who pulled me out of trenches without demanding explanations. For those who trusted my strength enough to place opportunity in my hands. For that, a special medal goes to Sheila Chepkirui Yegon. Some people are mere passing notes in your life, others are chords that resonate. Sheila is a river of melodies, a living network that carries you forward, flowing steady, connecting what was, what is, and what could be. May God widen her path and multiply her grace.

And always, my brother Stephen Ochieng (Soo Ochieng), take your flowers, bana. Always. We remain stubborn believers in the impossible, still dreaming with the audacity of people who refuse to shrink their visions too early.

This isn’t a storm, it’s alignment,
It’s growth,
It’s choosing your lane, and driving without explaining the route.

Solo Drive

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 rhythmic 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.

@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

The Measure of You

I may want to say I love you,
But how does one measure love,
In syllables, or in the tremor of a soul that stumbles at your smile?
Your beauty disarms language, turns words into stardust,
And I, a poet, become a beggar before your glow.

I may want to confess how you make me feel whole,
Yet “whole” feels too small, too mortal,
For you mend things I never knew were broken.
You walk past, and even the wind forgets its direction,
Even time takes a pause, to stare.

I may want to spend all my hours with you,
But what story shall I tell when the universe listens in envy?
Shall I speak of how your laughter baptizes the air,
Or how your eyes hold constellations of dreams that the stars bow to?
Even metaphors kneel when you pass.

You, my dear, are not within the normal SI unit of beauty,
You are the measurement that broke the scale.
The scientists may try to name your glow,
But it is art, not arithmetic; melody, not reason.
You are the kind of beauty that poets chase and never catch.

@doddyokelo

The Black Gold

She is a Black woman, the black gold,
The first melody of the world,
She is the color of earth after rain, rich, breathing, alive,
Her melanin glows like warm bronze kissed by the sun’s worship,
Her scent drips caramel and wild honey,
Her hips roll like soft thunder beneath silk skies,
Each outline a remnant of creation’s finest hour.

Her body, chiseled by the patient hands of eternity,
Waist cinched like whispered secrets of dusk,
Thighs smooth as riverstones, strong yet tender,
Breasts rise with the grace of new mornings,
Her skin, liquid gold beneath the calm of daylight.

Her face, a portrait where galaxies pause,
Eyes deep enough to drown both sorrow and sin,
Lips ripe with the sweetness of mercy,
Cheeks brushed with sunrise and quiet flame,
And when she smiles, even angels forget their songs.

@doddyokelo

How It Feels To Be Home

I am afraid,of the dark that breathes and shifts,
It bends and folds around the corners of my mind,
Where unseen eyes wait in shadowed silence,
And whispers crawl like wind through broken glass.
The night becomes a mouth, open and waiting,
And I am its trembling sound, half-alive, half-lost,
Reaching out for the sound of your name,
To anchor me where the light once stayed.

I see them, those figures born of fear’s design,
They lean against the walls like memories uninvited,
Their outlines blur in the dim, uncertain air,
And I cannot tell if they move or merely breathe.
They haunt the corners of my sight like regret,
Soft, cruel, and patient in their waiting,
Till your voice, gentle as dawn, loosens the dark,
And the room remembers how to breathe again.

I hear them too, the voices that hiss and murmur,
They tell me of endings that never began,
Of love that rusts beneath the weight of time.
They are not real, I tell myself, they are smoke,
Yet they know the cracks in my courage by name,
They slip through the seams of my silence,
Till your presence returns, steady and golden,
And their cruel chorus falls to dust.

Without you, fear builds its kingdom in my chest,
A fortress of shadows and unanswered prayers,
But when you come, the darkness loses its teeth.
You are the dawn that rinses the night of its grief,
The calm after thunder, the stillness after rain.
You make the corners smooth again,
And I, once a ghost in my own house,
Find my pulse, steady and sure, in your light.

So come, my calm, my gentle resurrection,
Wrap your warmth around this frightened skin,
Hold me like a promise you mean to keep,
Till the dark forgets my name,
Till every whisper learns to fade,
Till the moon watches us without envy,
And the stars sing softly of peace.

Walk with me, down these hollow streets of thought,
Where my footsteps answer old fears,
Let your hand fit mine like sunlight fits morning,
Let our shadows melt into one.
For with you, the night forgets its hunger,
And even silence dares to dream again.

Come, fill this hollow where my heart once broke,
Plant your laughter in the cracks of my chest,
Let love grow where fear once built walls,
Let your light spill over my broken fields.
With you, every barren thing learns to bloom again,
The air tastes of spring, and I remember,
How it feels to be unafraid,
How it feels to be home.

So come, be my light, my refuge, my calm,
Walk with me until the dark forgets its way,
Hold me till the world grows quiet and kind.
For when you are here, the night stands still,
And even my ghosts bow in surrender,
For they, too, know your name means dawn.

@doddyokelo

Light of My Days

There are many names for a woman,
but none that speak your fullness,
you are dawn in its first whisper of gold,
a soft psalm wrapped in morning light,
a cathedral of calm where my heart kneels,
finding faith again in the sound of your voice.

You walk as if the earth remembers your kindness;
flowers lift their faces in your passing.
Your laughter, a river that knows its way home,
sculpts joy across the landscape of our days.
Even silence becomes sacred when shared with you,
for you breathe poetry into the air itself.

Once, you were a girl with suns in her eyes,
and the world crowned you mother,
not with jewels, but with gentle burdens,
and you bore them like grace itself.
Your hands stitched comfort into chaos,
turning hunger into hope, noise into hymn.

In your eyes, I have seen God’s tender art,
the patience of oceans, the courage of storms.
You are the soft peace that follows heartbreak,
the reason broken wings learn to fly again.
Your love has been both shelter and sword,
cutting fear from the edges of my name.

Every word I’ve ever spoken carries your echo,
each dream is scented faintly with your prayers.
You are the unseen flow in my becoming,
the quiet architect of my strength.
When I stumbled, you became the ground beneath me,
steady, forgiving, endlessly near.

What language could ever hold your worth?
What poet could bind your light in ink?
You are not to be described, but felt,
like rain, or grace, or home after exile.
And so, I do not thank you with words,
but with the life you helped me build.

Here’s to you, Mum,
keeper of warmth, bearer of mornings,
woman of endless tomorrows.
May joy drape you like silk at sunrise,
and time bow gently before your smile.
You are every beautiful thing I know.

Happy Birthday,
for the world grew softer the day you were born,
and I have been blessed to call its miracle Mother.

@doddyokelo

The White Rose of Evening

This evening, I longed to hear
the soft murmur of your voice,
a balm to soothe my restless day,
a whisper to draw all cares away.

I hoped these tired, journeying eyes
might rest upon your face,
the gentlest vision ever known,
a beauty wrought from heaven.

One word I wished my lips could send,
a tender phrase that has no end
Sleep well, my beautiful,
you are the hymn my soul will always sing.

Do you know, how fair you are?
No star holds such a faithful star,
and in your eyes the heavens lie,
two oceans deep, where tempests die.

They hold the light of morning skies,
the tender gleam where stillness hides,
a secret world where love abides,
the endless truth of paradise.

So take these words, though soft and few,
my white rose, pure as evening dew,
no poet’s hand could dare devise
a bloom more fair than your sweet eyes.

@doddyokelo

The First Flower, The Vagina

The world has sung of sunrises,
of rivers keeping their promise to the sea,
of roses opening after rain.

But rarely has the world spoken
of the first flower it ever knew,
the blossom that does not grow in gardens,
yet feeds every root of humanity.

It cannot be withered by winter,
cannot be starved by famine,
cannot be broken by storm.
It is the beauty at the center of woman,
the place of birth,
of power,
of beauty,
of poetry.

It is no accident that her body
carries both beauty and beginning.
She is a garden,
her petals folding and unfolding with grace.
No sculptor has carved it,
no hand could fashion it better.
This is the seat of power,
waiting in patience,
waiting in reverence.

Do not call it small.
It is wide as oceans,
deep as memory.
Within its folds
nations are conceived,
histories take breath.
Its lines are strong
as the roots of the baobab,
steady as mountains
that do not move.

Yes, it is a flower,
but not a fragile bloom
that dies in the sun.
It is a rose of fire,
a blossom of strength,
pulsing with flow,
beating with song.
Tender for creation,
not decoration.
Its beauty is not for passing eyes,
but for the truth that life itself
begins here.

When it opens,
It blooms in trust,
in the warmth of love,
in the honest catch
of reverent hands.
Like dawn, it spills light.
Like rivers, it flows free.
And in its unfolding
is both poetry and prophecy.

Many have tried to name it,
to paint it,
to own it.
But it belongs to no brush,
no word,
no claim.
It is the garden every woman carries,
the fire every woman guards,
the throne every woman sits upon,
with dignity,
with laughter,
with strength.

Touch it,
and you touch mystery.
Look upon it with reverence,
and you see the handwriting of God
upon flesh.
Here hunger softens,
longing becomes creation,
desire meets its answer.
It is gift,
not possession.
Blessing,
not burden.

So speak of it with respect.
Speak of it as you would
the sun,
the river,
the ground beneath your feet.
It is flower,
it is fire,
it is freedom.
It is woman.

And in its beauty
lives a truth unshakable:
that life,
in all its splendor and sorrow,
begins here,
and nowhere else.

@doddyokelo