•••

(Performance Script)

A sex drive
Newly discovered
An inventive mind at play
Fed by radio and t.v.
Ready at all times to re-enact
What she has seen and heard

A little piece on the side
A little piece before lunch
A quickie after school
That’s what she is offering
And all it will cost is
A hot Guinness and a crack conch
Hell that’s cheaper
Than a corner motel
And a hooker for the night
Don’t think I won’t take it

She may not have
The refined intelligence of a woman
She may not have
Even have the allure of a woman
But her body
Shows no age
Her sexual drive
Shows no ending
Her inventive mind
Shows no apprehension
At the things I want to do

I mean
If that is what she wants
If she has been programmed to discount
the real value of her worth
and trade it for
a hookers girth
I am going to milk her
For all her discounted worth

It is no concern of mine
That the females in her life
Will not pull her aside and check her
It is no concern of mine
That mom and pop’s have to work three jobs
So she is living for herself
Doing what she wants to get what she wants
It is no concern of mine that
Church members and teachers
Hide behind the rhetoric of words
And their own mis-deeds
Won’t speak to her
Because of their own
Unjust seeds
It is no concern of mine that
The neighbourhood folks won’t
Report what’s going on
Because they have concerns of their own
It is no concern of mine that
The police will not appear
Because they are elsewhere
Some even getting
in some other little girls underwear

So what if she has the potential to be
More than I could ever be
It is not my concern
At least
Until Someone
Does the same thing to my own
I mean
All it will cost is
A hot Guinness and a crack conch
And that’s cheaper
Than a corner motel
And a hooker for the night
Don’t think I won’t take it

•••

Lyrics submitted under the title “A Hot Guinness and a Crack Conch”

•••

a brassy mouth.  a laugh spilled out like inverted mango,
slashed purple skin spill orange flesh.  and tart.
and sweet.
cuss and row, trombone inside out,
a scarlet saxophone, cymbals her lungs
a rim of gold about a tooth
a loud woman.

he comes by around nine,
the five-times baby daddy,
pulls Ericka out into the street
his knife making a dozen new vaginas
in her belly.

her slingshot voice spatters the house front walls
then stops.
a black nissan takes him away from her
neck slit

spread wide.
eyes open, bright as rain, she stays.
the street cleared quiet.
houses take two steps back.  the road opens,
waiting,

and Ericka’s throat pours red
fermented, sweet and rotten
and trails, washing the street dust down and
spilling out

rusted scarlet bitter
laughter at a festival,
fête at a funeral.

•••

•••

he is our king he is
sweet he sails
among us and draws rope
as we do gives many names to the sea
as we do

then he leaves us he goes up
to the mountains (we know nothing
of the mountains)

the mountain folk

he is our king he climbs
to us in snows and the eagle
names him as he names
our babies on the table-land

then he leaves us he goes down
to the plains
which are far from us
and not known

the plainsmen

he comes to us and walks
among cattle as we walk
the yellow grass
of the plains speaks
his name as it speaks ours he is our king

but he leaves us he goes out
to the sea which is wet and
storm-ridden and is not
what we know

the king

we have no wars
we have named
the sea the mountains
and the plains

the foreigner

the ships the sea shanties the courage
of your sailors
are beautiful your kingdom
is justly proud

the king’s mother

woe is
this kingdom

•••

Nic Sebastian
]]> http://tonguesoftheocean.org/2009/04/three-provinces-and-their-king/feed/ 0 http://tonguesoftheocean.org/2009/04/dolphin-diaspora/ http://tonguesoftheocean.org/2009/04/dolphin-diaspora/#comments Sun, 19 Apr 2009 04:02:24 +0000 webmaster http://tonguesoftheocean.org/?p=325 .]]> who would have thought
after all these generations
of being as smart, as clever,
we would end up making
pappyshow for people.

mind you it has its benefits;
no killer whale eating we
for dinner; we don’t have
to grieve we pickney them
cause they get ketch in big
net or worse yet, get kill
by sonic attacks. Life here…

well sometimes you do get
tired of jumping up and down
with these people; but at least
they try to be gentle with you,
and you can feel their reverence;

and we really can’t help
we self, being so smart
and all, to make them feel
good; for we feel good
doing this; but, every

once in a while, we miss
just swimming ahead
of a boat teasing it to catch

we. But we are not going
to have no babies, ’cause

it too hard to tell them
what we had; where we come
from; and we couldn’t tell

them. This is all:
this small little pond,
this jail,
these people feeding
us, thinking they loving
us. Yes; life used to be more
than, much more than hugs
and kisses from The Bahamas.

•••

Little Deanu Allen received the Spirit
that Sunday night, only three weeks past
his thirteenth birthday. The congregation
talked. His mother told my mother
what a blessing it was for Deanu to be
anointed, whom she admitted was often
a tad slow, not so good at his reggae.

………………………………………..Maybe
the Lord does have a calling for Deanu,
but I was fifteen. Wasn’t it my time?
On Mondays through Saturdays, I prayed
to grow up to play in the American League
with the Yankees. No doubt God figured
me for a pagan and so I wasn’t going to get
the gift. The thing was I had heard Deanu
praying and heaving and bawling like we do
at the altar after preaching, and his tongues
sounded to me like my little brother getting
crazy in the house, going Kowabunga, dude,
Kowabunga, dude — before Mom civilized him.

•••

A flower named for a bird.
A bird swooping like rain.
Rain the size of an island.
An island creased like my hand.
My hand hot as my tongue.
My tongue new as a flower.

A leaf white as a feather.
A feather drenched like string.
String to tie up a map.
A map smudged by my fingers.
My fingers in my teeth.
My teeth tearing a leaf.

Your skin furred like a flower.
Your neck aloof as a bird’s.
Your eyes like spirals of rain.
Your body unknown as an island.
A blush as hot as your hands.
A secret like your tongue.

•••

My father’s hat
flies through the wind
into the storm.

•

Haiku 2

The newspaper boy
cries Tribune Tribyune
stooping in the rain.

•

Haiku 3

A bird lives
in food store aisles
pecks at plums.

•••

In a photograph taken just days
after her fifteenth birthday
with my daughter and her friends holding
her aloft like some Greek heroine,
she would accept the dare
born from the fissure
between those whom she had loved —
the fault lines that unearthed fists
of pine that ringed wetlands, forests
of hardwood hammocks, and sinkholes
further north — and she would swallow
those hard white tablets, one
by one, while the pouis blared
their yellow trumpets against the Lenten
sky patched by a pale promise,
Azrael’s hands spread between his luminous
wings, as he gently squeezed her heart —
a bitter pill for every year
.
.
(ii)

There are evenings like this
when I understand why she slipped
from this life, desiring neither hell
nor heaven, no longer wanting to carry
the burden of becoming someone else’s lover,
wife, mistress, to just fall asleep
and let the dreams analyze
her choices: the bad ones
that in time would look like wisdom;
the good ones that led to the bedroom
pillow, the stifled screams.

Yet downstairs, I hear the gurgle
of my neighbor’s newborn, the thump
of my son playing basketball with some kid
from down the street, my daughter dancing
to “Habibi, habibi,” and I turn away
from the bathroom cabinet, chalk
pills and tumbler of water, the tap left running,
and welcome back my loves
to whom I had become a stranger, arguing
in the hallway, murmuring
in the living room, asleep on the verandah.

•••

I write because I owe you
who are so much
who give so much

you open yourself
and I am born
all over again

I want to take communion with you
if the Lord and you
would let me

•••