February 2012
17 posts
5 tags
5 tags
"Girl" by Jamaica Kincaid
hateshiploveship:
Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry; don’t walk barehead in the hot sun; cook pumpkin fritters in very hot sweet oil; soak your little cloths right after you take them off; when buying cotton to make yourself a nice blouse, be sure that it doesn’t have gum on it, because that...
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The Lament of the Banana Man
Gal, I’m tellin you, I’m tired fo’ true,
Tired of Englan’, tired o’ you.
But I can’ go back to Jamaica now… I’m here in Englan, I’m drawin’ pay,
I go to de underground every day-
Eight hours is all, half-hour fo’ lunch,
M’ uniform’s free, an’ mi’ ticket punch-
Punchin’ tickets not hard to do,
...
6 tags
History Makers
Women stone breakers
Hammers and rocks
Tired child makers
Haphazard frocks
Strong thigh
Rigid head
Bent nigh
Hard white piles
Of stone
Under hot sky
In the gully bed
No smiles
No sigh
No moan. Women child bearers
Pregnant frocks
Wistful toil sharers
Destiny shapers
History makers
Hammers and rocks. - George Gampbell
5 tags
Bermudas
marine to noon on AméricasAirplane First the dark meer
begins to breathe gently into green
into light & light green
until there are like blue
ribs upon the water. dreaming
and the ribs of water’s colour are the gills
of the first fish breathing
the first land the first eye
-lann
until there is what shd not be here
on the water
white
footsteps of sand from the bottom of the ocean
become the...
5 tags
Beggarman
That you should come
Crawling
Like a common worm
Into my yard
Ragged and odorous
Screwing up your face
In unimaginable agony
And with a gesture ultimate in despair
Stretch out your hand
Palm upwards
Begging
Go way, I have nothing
So much for charity
A barefaced slap
Dazzled and puzzled he stood
Waiting
Waiting as if that cracked picture of man
Could storm the barricaded...
3 tags
Island Man
Morning And the Island man wakes up To the sound of blue surf In his head The steady breaking and wombing Wild seabirds And fisherman puling out to sea The sun surfacing defiantly From the east Of his small emerald island He always comes back groggily groggily Comes back to sands Of a grey metallic soar To surge of wheels To dull North Circular roar Muffling muffling His crumpled pillow...
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BETWEEN ISLANDS
… went down to water- edge where gravel-stones groan, moan, on mourning ground’s intercession, waves’ incessant, white baptism of fire- less smoke; through sea spray, Sahara dust, early-morning Toco mist, squinting at distant horizon’s faint silhouette of hills… mighty midge with arms for wings set swim toward the Main Ridge, in shark-mail suit, swam and swam and...
TATTOO: The Sea Emptied →
andrebagoo:
i. Ms Jack’s Daughter Leaves Us in Rage
In this crystal drain a fish grows
Until we abandon all things
Drain water of conversation
Clear softness of petals and weeds
As sure as that mossy drain:
She was enraged at broken terracotta men
Who picked plaster with…
3 tags
Mother in the Morning
Mother sips tea in her garden on mornings,
abandoning the kitchen that echoes with breakfast,
lunch kits, laces untied, and the dripping faucet.
She sits on a cracked footstool in complete silence
as the heat from the teacup rises up
whispering warm, comforting secrets
only she can understand.
There are sharp things in the ground
and her hands are soft
yet she never wears gloves.
She is not...
4 tags
CHINESE LANTERNS FROM THE BLUE CHILD
1. [21/1/93 - 28/1/93] Tonight all the stars in the sky have gone out And I’m sailing alone In the ship of my body Upon the night sea 2. [28/1/93] I wander the world in search of my mother and father I wander the moon in search of my brothers I wander the stars in search of my sisters Then they dawn on the valley Lonely as God 3. [29/1/93] Once long ago in a village in China A boy cast...
4 tags
FROM WEST INDIES, LTD.
6 West Indies! West Indies! West Indies! These are the rough people, of copper, multicephalous, where life crawls with the dry mud cracked on the skin. This is the prison where each man’s feet are tied. This is the grotesque head office of companies and trusts. Here are the asphalt lake, the iron mines, the coffee plantations, the ports’ docks, the ferry boats, the ten cents… These are the...
4 tags
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oshun
(to michelle cliff) this morning i could have sworn i saw oshun rise out of the water – she who makes her people one. i needed to see her this morning after james byrd junior, our brother, was dragged to death by a truck in jasper, texas; for i need to believe this morning – i don’t want to be a tongueless bell – i don’t want to be burnt up like a useless limb by my own simmering hate. oshun,...
4 tags
BEAST
In Gibraltar Straits, pirates in search of El Dorado masked and machete-bearing kidnapped me. Holding me to ransom, they took my jewels and my secrets and dismembered me. The reckoning lasted for years. Limbs and parts eventually grew: a new nose, arms skilful and stronger, sight after the gutted pits could bear a leaf. It took centuries. In the cave where they kept me, a strange beast grew. With...
January 2012
16 posts
4 tags
There is a Country in the World (Hay un Paìs en el...
There is a country in the world situated right in the sun’s path. A native of the night. Situated in an improbable archipelago of sugar and alcohol. Simply light, like a bat’s wing leaning on the breeze. Simply bright, like the trace of a kiss on an elderly maiden or daylight on the roof tiles. Simply fruitful. Fluvial. And material. And yet simply torrid, abused and kicked like a...
4 tags
Tornado Child
For Rosalie Richardson
I am a tornado child.
I come like a swirl of black and darken up your day;
I whip it all into my womb, lift you and your things,
carry you to where you’ve never been, and maybe,
if I feel good, I might bring you back, all warm and scared,
heart humming like a wild bird after early sudden flight.
I am a tornado child.
I...
5 tags
Realarro
I love the
friday night
smell of
mammie baking
bread - creeping
up to me in
bed
& tho I fall
asleep before I
even get a bite
I know for sure
when
morning come
the kitchen table
will be laden
with bread
fresh & warm.
salt bread
sweet bread, crisp
& brown &
best of all
coconut buns
make me
love the friday
night smell of
mammie baking bread
putting me to...
“To him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people,...”
– Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera (via nitrojin)
5 tags
The Woman and the Flame
A bit of light that descends the springhead of a gaze
twin shadow of the eyelash and the rainbow on a face
and round about
who goes there angelically
ambling
Woman the current weather
the current weather matters little to me
my life is always ahead of a hurricane
you are the morning that swoops down on the lamp a night stone
between its teeth
you are the passage of the seabirds as...
4 tags
Islands
This is the low house in which my race has grown. Twisting and lifting, the road takes off beyond. Will it reach the weary waters beneath the distant mango trees? Smells of burnt earth and salt cod Wafting under the muzzle of thirst. A smile splitting the ripe coco-plum of an aged face. The vague prayer of smoke-trails. Lament of a prolonged neighing that scales the sides of the...
3 tags
Lust
your strut left my stray tongue tasting on tamarind in arousal’s pre-tang your body glistening in places I read about in social studies
… - Marcel Anthony Logan
6 tags
Me. Writing.
Stand up. Stretch. Crack knuckles. The cracks echo and bounce across the quiet room. Three day old beard itches at the jaw line. Nagging itch. Peek through blinds. Orange sky dyed pink. Sickly pink. Pepto Bismal pink. Walk in a circle. Left, then right, then left, then right. Trance. I need a trance. Left, then right, then left, then right. Small circle. Dizzying circle. Left, right, left,...
3 tags
Over Hawkins Hill
i.
whatever is dreamt of on this rock is never executed on this rock you gata go off
dreams like seeds thrown on rock or dried or swallowed up choked by weeds no rain no reign it just ain’t da season .
ii.
we dance to reggae in a rake-n-scrape nation we drown in the Caribbean Sea we drunk by the infusion from da bush, cerasee we bin in the sun too long da middle passage was too bumpy
...
5 tags
THEOPHILUS JONES WALKS NAKED DOWN KING STREET
On Monday, October 18th, Theophilus Jones took off his asphalt-black, rag-tag pants and walked naked down King Street. It was a holiday – and only a few people saw his triumphant march, his muscular, bearded-brown body, his genitals flapping in front. Theophilus Jones had wanted to do this for a long time. At Towner and King, three carwash boys shouting “Madman!” followed him to Harbour Street,...
5 tags
Fidel Castro: My Life
I also don’t understand why I’m called a ‘dictator’. What is a dictator? It’s someone who makes arbitrary, unilateral decisions, who acts over and above institutions, over and above the laws, who is under no restraint but his own desires and whims. […] President Bush is considered a defender of peace, a friend of the poor and the most democratic of rulers. ...
5 tags
Goodman’s Bay - Christian Campbell
Not even a chewed bone, a used rubber in the seaweed, cut glass smiling beneath the sand. We don’t see them.
He is my brother. Our hearts beat the same. I have bad shoulders, he has bad knees. We have given our bodies an atlas.
He breathes softly, on time, and we talk very little, the good things, gasping. I have long legs, one stride to every two from him.
We run the dusk at dusk....
4 tags
JAH MUSIC - Lorna Goodison
(For Michael Cooper) The sound bubbled up through a cistern one night and piped its way into the atmosphere, and descent people wanted to know “What kind of ole nayga music is that playing on the Government’s radio?” But this red and yellow and dark green sound, stained from traveling underground, smelling of poor people’s dinners from a yard dense as Belgium, has the healing. More...
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Beyond
Beyond the flood of sunlight on this sea,
Beyond the horizon line,
Beyond those outer and unknown horizons
Into horizonless and glorious landscapes of the soul
take wing, take wing; outward go singing. Not as stark men upon a drowning deck
Or on a berserk salient doomed;
Not as wind-driven wingers crying,
Nor lowing as lost ones from flocks;
Not as the hermit in his cold cell chaunting-
...
4 tags
Night Comes
Night comes to this land
Stealing over the windowsills
Of the world. Swiftly comes the night
And now have her bare feet touched
The dim terraced roofs. All beneath her
The streets lie
Like rivers of light
Curled. Night smiles
And soft is her breath giving thanks
For these her proofs. The white credentials of herself she wears
Her saried
Still
Unanswerable stars. - Roger Mais ...
4 tags
The modern man
I came
And laughed at my father-
He
with his sideburns
Smelling of bear’s grease
His coat
like that of the gentleman
whose image
is on tobacco tins
His watch-chain
And boots!
God!
how ridiculous he looked! I
With my moustache
like Gable’s
My sports coat
like Taylor’s
My blue suede shoes
Today
My son came
And laughed at me.
- Basil McFarlane, from Caribbean...
November 2011
6 posts
3 tags
“Yet is so things does happen in life. You work things out in your own mind to a...”
– - Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners
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Where Are Free Men?
O we have endured such absurd times
and waited so long, so weary with time.
Over the city our souls will fly like birds
crying in the night.
There will be wild cries in the still night.
Over the city they will sound like the cries
of the ghosts of homeless birds
flying to the forest
flying from the sea
And what in dreams we do in life we attempt.
But where are free men, where...
4 tags
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Elemental by Edward Baugh
I would have words as tenacious as mules to bear us, sure-footed on the mountain of night
to where, at daybreak we should shake hands with the sun and breathe the breezes of the farthest oceans
then, as we descended, in sunlight we would be amazed to see what hazards we had passed.
- Edward Baugh
3 tags
Jean Rhys, "Voyage in the Dark"
…It was funny, but that was what I thought about more than anything else—the smell of the streets and the smells of frangipani and lime juice and cinnamon and cloves, and sweets made of ginger and syrup, and incense after funerals or Corpus Christi processions, and the patients standing outside the surgery next door, and the smell of the sea-breeze and the different smell of the land-breeze.
...
October 2011
5 posts
5 tags
” ‘You say true, you say true. But you going see the town going choke up worse even. Whe’everybody going live? You see Shanty Town already down by Port of Spain people squeeze up worse than dog, worse than donkey. An’ when the women going wit’ the men what you think happen to them, eh? Answer me that brief, eh. What you think going happen wit’ them so? You...
4 tags
Kalah
In the narrowest of hours hold yourself together with the words. In the ache of the silent crawl to dawn document your blood feel the dirt rinse itself from your shins.
This is not a manifesto. These are not the trails of your banner as it dips in the shallow end of the lake. There is no bleeding heart, other than the one you tear from the breast of the stag, folded at your feet.
You...
4 tags
The Schooner 'Flight'
[…]Open the map. More islands there, man, than peas on a tin plate, all different size, one thousand in the Bahamas alone, from mountains to low scrub with coral keys, and from this bowsprit, I bless every town, the blue smell of smoke in hills behind them, and the one small road winding down them like twine to the roofs below; I have only one theme: The bowsprit, the arrow, the longing, the...
2 tags
“Certain things have to collapse for certain new things to happen. I think we’ve...”
– Earl Lovelace (via toomucheyes)
9 tags
Wanderlust And Fever Dreams: For My Mother, (May I... →
wanderlustandfeverdreams:
by Lorna Goodison
My mother loved my father I write this as an absolute in this my thirtieth year the year to discard absolutes
he appeared, her fate disguised, as a sunday player in a cricket match, he had ridden from a country one hundred miles south of hers.
She tells me he dressed the…
September 2011
2 posts
Apologies
Sorry for the lull in posts of late, I had some things to take care of and as I’m the only one posting the blog suffered a bit. If you’re interested in submitting posts please don’t hesitate to message me :)
4 tags
“They undertook vast hunger strikes; undid their chains and hurled themselves on...”
– C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins
August 2011
6 posts
9 tags
“So I had my last lunch at home, with my mother and Uncle Bhakcu and his wife....”
– V.S. Naipaul, Miguel Street.
(via sirdreamalot)
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“For us who are determined to break the back of colonialism, our historic mission...”
– Frantz Fanon, in The Wretched of the Earth, 1961.
(via nidieunimaitre)
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the air between us (for an expatriate)
the air between us is like glass
when we speak, our words frost as meanings mist over, i hear you
far off and muffled I realise that you were shouting
when you walked past you were shouting
your head bent was a scream
that question about coffee was a yell that choked your throat but you swallowed politely well, you been swallowing so long
the fire in your belly must be out for...