Thursday, June 15, 2006

EXCERPTS FROM WORKS IN PROGRESS -II

One thing you should realise is that works in progress seems to mean, to me, stalled projects. I have noticed that since I posted the last excerpts, I haven't worked on those stories. The interesting thing really is that my yuppie friends all seem to talk about 'Vodoo Sex Bomb' that happens to say much about their perverted tastes rather than about that being my best effort ever.

Truth be told: I suck at fiction. Okay I have been working on it this year, but still. I am more of an essayists, which is evident in pseudonymous effort elsewhere. But my real forte is the vignette. Okay, I am not claiming to be good in that, but it is what my informal writing tends towards. (Numerous, episodic, narratives on those blog are sufficient example.) I have accepted to view my fiction the way some people view Mark Twain's,- that Twain was a rambler who has taken his place in the American Literary canon not because he was good writer but because he was a consumptive creative genius. I have ideas, I just express them in a structured way.

Details aside, here is another extract, from a short story that might never see completion. This is another peculiarly POTASH kind of story. Like in Revelation there is also no decidedly Picaresque protagonist here- that being a hallmark of my vignettes- but rather the over riding themes of Satanism, Lucifer, The Dark Arts, and a profoundly Anti- Christian bias- that is a throw back to my most prolific era, Circa 99/ 2000.

Demons Are Forever

It is dark, outside. Inside my mud and wattle hut the sulphurous hues of the blazing fire cast eerie shadows against the four walls. A billow of hot air rises. Then another… and another…merging…then diffusing.
But I am shivering. I am cold. I am cold inside. Yet streams of sweat meander through my naked body and steam with a sizzle as they come into contact with the mat beneath me.
That mat took me four long rain seasons and three moons to put together. I had spent most of that time in the Nuba Mountains collecting materials. It was at the height of the siege of Juba yet harvesting the finest Nubian skin was an ordeal. An ordeal that I overcame, gradually, by at first making mistakes then intricately perfecting my methods.
Eventually, I had a mat; a fine mat that could put a smile- albeit a grudging one- on the hard countenance of my uncle Legelu. Legelu that was, once upon a time, a famous sangoma- a sorcerer and enchanter extraordinaire. Legelu who came merely one ritual short of demon ranking; one rank below the immortals. He, Legelu that would have earned his fair place in the Circle of the Immortals if only my father, who was his brother and called ne Legelu- meaning small Legelu- hadn’t dispatched him to Purgatory.
Purgatory! What an abomination that place would prove to be to the might and pride of Legelu. I have seen him spit and curse at his handlers there with utter contempt. They cannot touch him nor jeer him, and yet he is their prisoner. Being a prisoner in Purgatory hurts Legelu’s pride. If only he could return to this plane- for only one moon- he could earn his immortality.
Legelu must return to this plane.
Return he must, if it depends on me. He has to return but not necessarily for his own good, for I care nothing for him, but for mine. If I can make a Grand Master escape Purgatory, I will earn immediate immortality. Imagine all that without having to go through two hundred and twenty seven rituals all designed to make you fail!



Vodoo Sex Bomb

Reblogged just for kicks

//
“I want us together. Forever. I promise,” Victor coaxed. “When I get back to The State, I will send you The Green card”, he continued. “Then we can be together.” But Victor was lying. Lying just to get what men sell their souls to get. That thing that most crave, not to keep but to use and discard like dregs from a wine pot.He didn’t care the least bit for her. Neither did he care for any of the others that had slapped, scratched and stabbed each other just to have the honour of sucking his mzungu dick. They were merely tides of orgasm to him. Transient. Ebbing and flowing. Never counting for much more than just another notch on his totem.“Amee- neah, please”, he begged. Amenya Smiled. She always did when he mispronounced her name. “A-me-nya”, She pronounced it for him while dragging her henna hued finger- nail over his lip. “ Sawa”, he growled, resignedly as hot blood and much hotter semen pounded his urethra. ‘Sawa” was the only Swahili word he had cared to learn. Maybe because the natives used it to question, to answer, to describe- everything- he had concluded it was about the only word he needed to know.“If I say it right will you let me fuck you?” Victor asked, “ Let you fuck your moron brains out…” was closer to what he meant. She cocked her head sideways her eyes settling momentarily on a point somewhere above his shoulder. These African women could never look him in the eye. They had been taught to submit to their men. Taught to lie down at the drop of a man’ s pants- headache, menses or not. But what they did as they lay under you was no submission. They took you in. Engulfed you with a deep, almost pensive, sensuality. Captivated you with subtle oscillations of pressure. Asphyxiated you with diabolical gyrations as though they were voodoo dolls on rhino horn aphrodisiacs. Then they let you go. Centripetal motion. At times after being kept up all night, he tended to see it all as the vestiges of a primeval brand of feminism. Maybe that was their way of stating that just because the man was on top didn’t mean he was in control.Victor had known Amenya for all of two years. The first day he met her; he made her suck him off. Right there in his plush, new office. “So you are my personal secretary?” He had asked ogling the twin peaks on her chest, imagining them jiggling, dancing to the rhythm of her pelvic thrusts as she rode astride him. It all gave him a baobab-sized boner.“Let’s see how well you can receive my faxes,” he sneered, maybe more with his pulsing john than his thin lips. She obliged him. He on the hand carved Lamu Swahili stool; she, kneeling on the leopard skin floor mat.“Damn!” He thought as his wetness splashed her blonde weave, her hydrocortisone- bleached- face. “If this was back home, she would slap my ass with a mighty lawsuit, just for imagining her in my daydream.” So he slapped her ass and sent he on her way.This tour of duty would be the best yet. The relief agency he worked for, back in The States had wanted their own man on the ground. They had to have one of their own to keep a watchful way on the natives and their thieving ways. Here he was now, in the solar powered brazier they call Mombasa. Mombasa with its own easy pace; where a minute lasted an hour… an orgasm too.
//


The earlier excerpts are here.

6 comments:

Acolyte said...

I enjoyed your excerpts.Your writing style reminds me of some of the writers whom I read in Kwani and some works that dated before then.Do you have anything published in Kwani or any other anthology?

POTASH said...

I am utterly embarrassed to admit that I have never read Kwani? Yet everyone keeps throwing Kwani? at me so maybe I should complete soem of my stories and submit them.

I have had no African influences as a writer and it is only recently that I have internalised- or tried to- the subtleties of language as used by speakers of english as a second language; particularly to Africanise my style and idiom.

There is a dearth of African writing in my private collection but maybe I do not want to be influenced by African writers. I want to stick to my style which I describe as 'Mystical Realism' and still employ an African's turn of the phrase.
That you draw parallels to other Kenyan writers means that my recent 'Africanising Paradigm Shift' is palpable

W. said...

Hey thanks for visiting with me.

POTASH said...

Lol Keguro, now there you go throwing at me some guy I never heard of, and who is out of print anyway.
Experimenting though is still what I am about now. I have already estabished my themes, now what I am working on is a style.
I have been working on that prevalent style of African short stories- say in Ama Ata Aidoo's 'In the cutting of a Drink'- where the narrator and the audience are all over the tale. It comes from our Orature, and sounds great incorporated into contemporary urban stories from Africa.

Mindhunter said...

I think you really write well love it..

POTASH said...

thanks mind hunter