Just Like Jamaica
Like cocobread and patties,
Ting and Kola champagne
Tasting you sends crazy satisfaction through my veins
You suck the life out of me,
Like stubborn mosquitoes
I welcome you,
translating you like Bien Venidos
into stares and body language only we understand
You make me feel richer than a Negril suntan
You remind me of Jamaica,
as calm as the shores of Mo’ Bay,
As relaxing as Ocho Rios
The way you move through me
Like West Indian winds
The ease at which you make me fly like Hummingbirds
Smelling Hibiscus flowers—in other words:
You are like watching the stars on Red Hills
Like walking barefoot in soft mahogany soil,
running in warm breezes through Fern Gully,
Like sipping Horlicks or Milo
Or sucking mangos to the pit
If Utopia existed on earth,
This is it
because you are my Kingston.
And I shall never forget Jamaica.
Death
Leave it to me
To think so deeply.
Words come and go;
Breathe them in.
Write them out.
With a click of the pen
I slit my wrists
To bleed out my creativity.
I murdered notebook sheets
with a smooth rich ink.
In this emotional suicide
I gave my life
so that my words could breathe
and tell my story.
Life exists
among this bloody calligraphy.
They found my body
suffocated by my soul:
an empty pen that gave its life
so that my words could merely
exist.
Sweetness
I dream of times when I travel across hills of berries,
crossing rivers of sweet red syrups
passing through valleys of raw chocolate,
gardens of green apples, fields of licorice
and climbing mountains
of the richest brown sugar,
in search of the sweetness that i know lies in your lips,
looking for the taste that has arrested my tongue to its tip,
placed my tastebuds in shackles
and I just can’t escape
the prison of your flavor
so I linger on, lost like dorthy in oz
venturing beyond the land of cold bitter houses
and into this warm place of comfort and serenity
smelling your aroma in the air,
the anticipation of your touch heavy in the breezes
I walk, aimlessly searching for you,
your beauty manifested with every sweet second that passes
as I wonder how long this separation will last,
how long it will take to reach you,
touch you, taste you, embrace you
i dream of streams of liquid love,
of air condensed with the presence of your essence
allowing the echo of your voice to seep into my ear,
banging symphonies against my eardrums,
moonlight sonatas floating in my mind
I dream these lovely things as I sleep peacefully
traveling deeply into this newly found Utopia,
this land of mouth-watering sparkling Fruitopia
chocolate for dirt, mocha for sand
red wine floods the seas
blueberry-swirled vanilla spun into the sky
I fear nothing but the thought
of waking up to the bitter reality
of sour truths in my disillusioned youth,
bad tastes in my mouth from the foul-flavored facts of life
so I dream, I dream
of times when I travel across hills of berries,
crossing rivers of sweet red syrups
passing through valleys of raw chocolate,
gardens of green apples, fields of licorice
and climbing mountains
of the richest brown sugar
to find the sweetness that was made only for me
Lynch
Look up at the beauty of a fighter with no hope
Cut smooth by a thick white wire in his throat
Blackened by more than sunshine: fire’s perfect roast
Look how he swings higher than coastlines
This is the result of being tightened by the rope
He hangs like an ornament on Christmas trees
The smell of human flesh thickens in the breeze
Like strange fruit, with strange juice staining his frame
They only cared that he was hanged, didn’t care about his name
Back and forth sways his body on the branch
To the music in the wind, he does a solemn dance
Thousands have invested in this brown country crop
That’s harvested under a hot sun like cotton
In the sweetest fields swings a body grown rotten;
In the leaves fly the souls of thousands forgotten
In the pages of history and the passage of time
Shame on those who found disturbing glory in this crime
Murdered by dirty hands, without a trial or case
Hanged on account of the hatred of his race
Wish the occurrence of such a crime could be erased…
Wish I could cut down every tree limb that harbored such disgrace.
Rapture
the look in his eyes…
his gaze held so tightly
that I could feel his pupils read me
like his every blink could write me
as if he knew my every crevice,
felt like he memorized me,
disguised me in his thoughts
so he could privately recite me
He could solve my every mystery,
like a puzzle in his mind
He’d jumble all my pieces
just to see what he could find
Can’t compete with his stare
so my vision remains ablaze
as I am caught up in the rapture
of his mesmerizing gaze.