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By Ogutu Muraya
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0 [idea; a big number zero on the first page, under his name, to bring in the visual?]
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[second page:]
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ZERO
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[third page:]
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[i]Zero is zero but what else can it be?[i]
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Or
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[i]Have you ever heard someone say, ‘My favourite number is zero?’[i]
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[start poem from page 4]:
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Zero is a living word, a word that is self-moving, self-replicating, progressively complicating itself
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Zero is words heavy like prison doors, words stirring, words stinging, words stringing into unapproachable silences
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Zero is an idea, distant, distinct, distilled, fliting, flirting, fluttering eternal energies of entanglement
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Zero is a mirror of time, time unlimited, time interstellar, time intertwined, time undefined, time geological,
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Zero is nothing and in that nothing something, stories before there were stories to tell, music raising above overwhelming noise
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Zero is a mask that unmasks, a frame that un-frames, a tale that un-tells, a name that un-names
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Zero is lamentations, ululations, riotous, primal cries suspicious of identity politics and pseudo-liberations
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Zero is rounded, globular, spherical, circular, without a marked beginning or a definite end, uninterrupted continuity
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Zero lacks directional properties, a compass without a fixed North, it is multi-dimensional, equally sensitive and equally intense
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Zero is singleness of intention, undivided attention, watching the last flicker of life, eager fatalism
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Zero wages life in a time of war, a wave of poisoned joy, intimate whispers of free at last
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Zero is sonic restructuring, sounds of exorcism, echoing and evicting zones of non-being
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Zero smiles, transforms, transitions, transgressing even the iciest of hearts, subverting coldness
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Zero is fiercely vibrant, improvised, dynamic rhythm, a space of creative ritual
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Zero is a seeker of silences, retracts and retreats, dwelling in inner world, the under surfaces
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Zero is an alienated earworm, cracked, dogged, dislocated, fractured, fragile music
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Zero is palpable, pulsating, supple, simple, palm wine on a hot and humid day
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Zero is mystical, enigmatic, murmur of immaterial mindfulness nursing illusions of control
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Zero is a beat, the beat, the beat, the beat, the beat, the beat, the beat
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Zero is pure ego, inspiring uneasiness, fidgeting wind eating a dull cigarette
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Zero is a longing, a yearning, a desire, a need, an itch, an urge for warm, mental, steamy, sexy, soulful, remedial, subversive self-love
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Zero decomposes itself into the earth from which new life bud, sprout and grow
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Zero is the look of silence, what needs to be said has been said, what is not said is said without words, and there is nothing else to say
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