Bunguswa Writes.

                               By Bunguswa Brian In the quiet ache of Forgive Me That I Didn’t Come by Iyana, Africa hears a familiar voice—not merely of a lover delayed, but of a people long interrupted. The song becomes a confession shaped by distance, a tender explanation offered after history has already moved on. Africa’s story is crowded with absences. Sons taken to plantations across oceans, daughters marched into alien names and tongues, kingdoms summoned to meetings they never consented to attend. Colonialism did not only conquer land; it engineered non-arrival. Whole civilizations were prevented from showing up to their own futures. In this light, the song’s apology stretches beyond the personal. It becomes historical. “ Forgive me ,” Africa has had to say— to traditions disrupted by the gun and the cross, to timelines fractured by borders drawn with rulers and greed, to ancestors whose...

They thought power lived in titles, in stamped letters and locked offices— they forgot fire does not resign. They tried to exile truth from the party room, to drown courage in polite applause and staged unity. But some men arrive already allergic to lies. Sifuna spoke when silence was profitable. He stood when kneeling was rewarded. He named the rot even when the house was still smiling. They took away the chair, thinking the voice would sit down with it. They miscalculated— you do not sack an echo from the mountains of the people. Now the streets are awake. The nation is leaning forward. From factory floors to lecture halls, from dust roads to digital squares, a million throats borrow his courage. This is not defiance— this is duty. This is a man reminding Kenya that leadership is not loyalty to comfort, but loyalty to conscience. In this new dawn, we will listen. Not to rehearsed promises, but to the voice that chose truth over survival.

The chalice meant for celebration Was lifted in borrowed faith, Not brewed in malice or temptation, But hope, too eager, sealed its fate. I wish it shattered at my feet Before my lips consented wrong— Now ash rehearses on my tongue As heaven and hell dispute my song. Had I been schooled in ancient vows, A monk of Athens or of Rome, I’d bless the cup with careful brows Before I named its poison home. Will they mourn, knowing I agreed To fate disguised as honest wine? Or laugh, then bury guilt in soil Where ignorance blooms red with time? Let truth not fracture at the grave, Nor history revise my name. Let goodness stand, unbought, unbraved, Though rumor plays its petty game. For though my stay was brief to some, I healed where silence used to be— A passing remedy, perhaps, But still an act of efficacy. If this be where the curtain falls, Midway through promised happiness, Then count my thoughts as fertile fields Awaiting joy in lateness. I am not courting death by will— Let ...

Critical Analysis of After the Storm by Bunguswa Brian Analysis by Lindah Nyongesa, University of the Witwatersrand. After the Storm operates as a mature counter-text to its predecessor, shifting the poetic gaze from confrontation to consequence. Where I Was the Shelter, Not the Storm articulates injury and misrepresentation, this sequel is invested in the ethics of aftermath—what remains when narrative conflict exhausts itself. The poem is less reactive and more architectural; it builds rather than defends. Central to the poem’s success is its sustained domestic imagery. The house, roof, windows, and cup function as symbolic vessels of endurance. These are not passive objects but moral witnesses that “remember heat, not blame,” suggesting that memory, when stripped of accusation, retains sensation without bitterness. The cracked cup, refigured as a “map, not a fault,” exemplifies the poem’s core argument: damage can become knowledge rather than shame. This re-symbolisati...

After the storm learned another name, silence moved in like a careful tenant. Walls remembered heat, not blame, and the roof practiced patience with the sky. Footsteps faded into a language of dust, leaving rooms to relearn echo, leaving light to choose its angles. Morning arrived without witnesses, carrying bread-smell and small mercies. The cup, once accused, held water steady, its crack a map, not a fault. Windows opened their throats to birds, and the house discovered a pulse that did not ask permission. Stories continued elsewhere, sharpening mirrors, but the river kept its grammar simple. Current over stone, truth over time, no footnote for reflection. Even the fire forgot the match, warming hands that stayed, teaching ash how to rest. Now the shelter grows moss and memory, a green insistence against ruin. Clouds pass without rehearsal, rain signs its name and leaves. What remains is the craft of standing, learning weather without becoming it, and letting roofs be roo...

She left like a match dropped in dry season, and called the fire “my temper.” Now her timeline blooms with thorns she names “my wounds,” each caption a soft lie dressed in lilies. I read them like weather reports of a storm I survived, wondering how the lightning learned my name, and why the rain keeps apologizing. I was the clay cup that held her thirst, yet she says I was the crack. She gathers sympathy like beads for a rosary of regrets, counting my flaws as prayers. But I remember the nights she borrowed my sunrise, then returned only the shadows, and said darkness was my design. Her posts are mirrors she polishes with blame, reflecting a man she never met. I am a river she crossed on her own reflection, then claimed the water drowned her. The world drinks her version like sweetened tea, while my truth sits, unsipped, cooling beside the memory of her hands. Let her rewrite the sky if it gives her peace, I have already learned the language of clouds. Pain is an ink that ...