NaPoWriMo

Woo-hoo! It’s NaPoWriMo once again!

April 18

A Double Dactyl

Stammering, stuttering,
ringed by his enemies,
Burlington Colfactor
started to speak;

though they considered him
incomprehensible,
they still elected him!
God helps the weak.

April 17

First, you must cross many waters.

If by plane, you will land
on an airstrip whose tar
erodes into sand as it leaves.
No one will meet you.
There will be a cabana, cheerful red
against white, where a fridge and two toilets
may greet you.
There is bush round the airstrip. If you’re lucky,
the trees there will feed you.

If by sea, you will find
(if your boat is too large)
the channel still silted from a long-ago storm,
and you’ll wait for the launch
to be launched from the dock,
and you’ll offload your cargo upon her.

There are cars, but no roads.
Concrete pavement is brittle
its edges are sharp enough to slash through a tyre.

There is, though:

a town upon the hills that crown the island
salt pans neat as math patterns at their foot
a cemetery walled around a sandy bottom
a pink-sand-spotted bay behind a lover’s leap
a breeding ground for conch and whelks and starfish
a shoal of rocks concealing sand dollars
and sea eggs
a hilly arid land surprised by flowers
and sea and sky and sea and sky and sky

April 16

Iron Can’t Stop Us Now

The restless drumbeats thrum the blood
and forearms glisten with their heat;
the cowbells’s chattering brotherhood
salute the ancestral frenzy of the feet,
and consecrate the grand communion of the street.

April 15

Altlantis Rises
after Marion

Atlantis rises ……. a blood pink brick ……. a bridge fanning fantasy
a block a blot ……. a fat-lobster haven ……. a paradise fort ……. a watersport harmony
a ruin …… a port ……. a tollgated seabreak ……. Atlantis rises

towers above oceans ……. faces both bloodskies ……. enshadows the pinerows
engulfs the pines ……. engullets small hotels ……. engorges the cay
and towers and towers ……. and blocks the sea ……. Atlantis rises

bloodwashes horizons ……. pinkens the sky ……. retraces the skyline ……. the birds
they die ……. encircles the harbour ……. relocates the port ……. collections the revenue
commissions the boats ……. engages the tourists ……. replicates the town …….
enclothes the workers ……. they drown they drown ……. Atlantis rises

April 14

Lines written while watching TV and trying to fulfil April’s challenge

Flippery flappery
jiggery pokery
slipping and sliding and
seeking the mole –

zigging and zagging with
fiddlery faddlery
dipping and diving and
digging a hole!

April 13

Island Girl Watches TV with a Friend

So tell me. You spec me to buy
that whingy man could kill two folk
in one short day? And yet this say
this killerman bust out of jail this way:
he set a fire, jump the man
they send to rescue him, and then
he break the fella wrist, take all he clothes,
spray him with something that burn like stove oil,
and walk on out in the man own things?
From then, they say he call police,
then drag he wife from where she hide,
saw off she head, shave down a bone,
and stick the powder in a jar
to leave behind on a street phone booth.
And all before day end. They think I fool?
They ain?t never cut up chicken, hey?
Won?t talk bout nothing bigger — pork,
or mutton take good time, and I wouldn?t talk
bout cleaning bone — it take good time to boil.
Imagination is a thing. These writers?
They need take some time, and live.

April 12

Island Girl Learns Two Different Kinds of English

Bossman, talk slow. Us island girls
don?t use no complicated tongue.
You say this thing is aubergine, but
round the bend they tell me say it eggplant.
I?s call it gourd. It shape like gourd.
A purple gourd, but gourd. And this,
this frilly floppy green leaf thing,
you tell me rocket. The next name I can?t call,
but greens would do, or pepper greens
if you want be specific. I don?t know
how to name this one. I don?t even want
say how it look. Okay, it green,
and small or big, it look like man, or what
I call the best part of man. Bikini? Corvette?
Say what? Don?t mind that. How it cook?

April 11

Dive

In dreams the splash is hollow. In dreams
the wake is froth, is spume. In dreams
the water sloshes, slaps against
the pool edge, breaks, and swallows back itself.
In dreams, you fail. But still. Awake,
you balance straight upon the edge,
your toes your only contact with the world,
and then you arch, bend knees, and then
you?re flying crucified against the sky.
Awake, the splash is silent.
Awake, the ripples are your only trail.

April 10

Sevenling: On the Corner

On the corner where two Poinciana bloomed
the warehouse hulks, a tin betrayal
of beauty, style, proportion.

Not there, we said. We want the trees,
not trucks, not concrete block, not cargo.
We want our summers blazing.

The blossoms fell, their roots exhumed.

April 9

Sevenling: To Coffee

Smooth as an oilslick, dark
as a teat, clean as a teacup,
and sweet;

hot as a branding iron, thick
as quicklime, black as an ancestor,
as time –

Clean oilslick, black iron, sweet teat.

April 8

Moving the Container Port to the Western Esplanade

The harbour is a great blue tale
of sloops and schooners, tall ships, sails
and spongers, cruise ships, screaming
penny-divers, glass-bottomed boats. A tourist dream.

A pastel lie. And someone wants to tell the truth
and tell it badly; there, where God burned the water blue,
the humans moved that rusty tanker, two piles of fill, three cranes.
Dredged ocean, scarred land, linked chain,
and containers. They’re moving the port, and lying too.

April 7

soulmama

soulmama bend she back down
to the hardweed ground

soulmama sweat it roll
it roll

soulmama hand mud brown

soulmama born she baby
in the treefrog night

soulmama child he drown
he drown

soulmama fight she fight

soulmama slice she breast off
with the slicing thing

soulmama blood it bleed
it bleed

soulmama red soul sing

April 6

Julain: Sunday, before the Storm

The birds and guarddogs whispered windy tales
and broadcast hushy gossip through the trees,
while truth-addicted rain controlled the breeze.

April 5

Sevenling: Ocean

Ocean is spirit is secret is truth.
It is history, graveyard, remembrance. It’s cloth
of timelessness, mantle of memory, cloak

of iniquity. It’s maker of widows, it’s taker
of children. It strips flesh, salts wounds,
turns bones into coral, silts skull-holes with sand.

On soft night it whispers: I’m ocean, god’s hand.

April 4

Of Friends and Reggae

I’ve got a friend who writes of noise and car-lessness.
He claims and shames this city and its carelessness,

its narrow streets, its shady yards, its liveliness,
its reggae nights, its gunshot dusks, its lovelessness.

—

matocho
after nic sebastian

matocho
is a nonsense word

a man got up
and killed
his daughters
son their pets
his wife
and when he left
his house leaked blood

matocho left
and scrambled eggs
for breakfast

April 3

Claude Levi-Strauss Contemplates his Hundredth Birthday
a proto-sonnet

I know life is a duel of opposites, a duet
of contrasts, a dialogue of difference. And in this dance,
these oppositions anchor truth: the raw affirms the cooked,
the sun the moon, the wet the dry, the giver the receiver.
The shaman and the analyst are twins. In each one,
structure mirrors structure. In culture as in life.
As respiration is to photosynthesis, so shaman
is to analyst. Illusion’s turned around.

And so, to death. All death affirms a life. For life
is tension, balance, bricolage; and death’s release.

April 2

Sevenling: Life is a drying
after the Merina of Madagascar

Life is a drying, a journey
from water to dust. The skin hangs,
the blood slows, flesh hardens and turns

to wire and stone. And death is a drying.
The grave leaches life’s liquids.
Flesh leaks out its water, skin crusts to ashes.

We humans are nothing but gravedust and bone.

April 1

Abaco (200

Marsh Harbour to Sandy Point

The pines, the pines, and one straight road,
a pencil road, a graphite road,
and pines: stark trees that sanctify the marsh
and scarify the sky. From town to settlement
the road has scored the land. It’s ramrod straight.
It’s barrel straight. Gun-barrel straight,
like pines. At Crossing Rocks it twists
to fling the unwary off. At Crossing Rocks the sea-swell
rose up and claimed the land. The ocean swallowed down
the homes, stretched out a greedy tongue
and sucked them in. Their blocks and bones
now scarify the sand.

—

The First Day

The first day is the hardest one.
It takes you several tries
to choose your form and theme. Once done,
anticipating cries

of “try to have your words make sense”,
or “learn to spell”, or “this
is journal vomit! Hie thee hence,
avaunt! and take the piss

out of some other board, you flea!
You parasite! You dog!” –
you take a breath, and post, and see
if greatness comes from fog.

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