The Poetry Marathon

Poem 15

Soucouyant

A ball of fire flying through the night
Deep in the village
Causing quite a fright

They say it’s a woman
Perhaps the Devil’s wife
A witch perhaps
Something magical and powerful
All the way from Africa

Anyone waking up with marks
Black and blue it’s not a mysterious bruise
“She done suck yuh blood!”

All in an uproar
The villagers will catch her

Next night when she takes off her skin

If found by the mortar they’ll throw salt in

If not

they’ll protect their homes throwing a 100 pound bag of rice around and she won’t be able to enter till she counts every last grain

And if she’s still out when the sun appears

She’ll be destroyed by its angelic rays

Poem 14

Desire

Clammy cold evening

No raincoat in sight

ONLY

Steamy red thoughts elbowing through the fog

 FOR

one’s lover to decipher,

stroke by stroke, kiss by kiss…till the sun comes up

Poem 13

Reverse logic

Time rolls backwards
We start life from the point at which we would have had our last breath
With a wealth of knowledge as if having lived before
And gradually we become younger versions of ourselves
Until we escape
Until our atoms escape back into universe like we never were
Our very existence never having unsettled the atmosphere our presence never being here
All but a dream, foggy and fading as we awake into the reality of nothingness

Poem 12

I Am

The universe hides under my skin
But the secret leaks out
It can’t be contained

Stars in my eyes
heart of gold
smile like a rainbow
Hair like cotton
Black as pitch
Sappodilla coloured skin
sweet inside and out
Ancestors, they fuel my path
The echo
Reminding me there’s still much to do

Royalty
Loyalty

Chained but never broken

I stand because of their strength and virtue

Their Spirituality too a seed that grows within me
With every thought and memory that becomes me
I am renewed with each tick that sounds, never the same, evolution in motion

Sometimes colliding with uncertainty
I pause
I fall I cry
I scream

And when there’s no will to rise
Stories unfold
In ways too surreal to be anything other than signs from corridors of unspoken worlds.

Poem 11

Driving in the dark
Doubts haunting like the shadowy mountain range afar
The air cool and thin
Bumping along a narrow road punctuated by puddles and dirt
Going beyond houses barricaded by high fancy walls with bright lights and landscaped foliage
Into rougher terrain and corner shops and fellas on the block
Still my heart does not pop
For all roads lead somewhere and even in the dark

there’s light ahead

Poem 10

colours

Red flows from me
From the soft folds of a slit
A rhythmic cycle
That sometimes I anxiously await and most times a daunting curse

Brown skin a canvass
Of lines, of spots and art
Inked by needles coloured red, green, blue and black
Defiant expression of self

Black hair cascades in limp coils around my back dripping with water from a bath.

In contrast

when taken by the wind
It’s a mass of defiant dark curls, my inner gypsy 

My heritage, my sexy, my me stepping out with all the colours that that make me who I am

Poem 9

All in the DM

Block
Delete
Unfollow
Moved in haste
Not one pause
flicker of regret
With each tap of the screen
Erasing you from sight
And mind I do so hope
In less than a minute
After hours of conversation

Gone from my world

Nothing more than an attention fix
sliding into my DM with just a Hi

I’m stunned by the ease at which we spent the morn

But like much it’s gone

Attentions shifted
Tastes altered
Appetites grow and diminish

But wishing you well
DM guy.

Poem 7

                                              Becoming

Talking
Drinking
Hanging
Riding
Laughing
Sharing
Eating
… forming strings
…. tying knots
… making memories
….. my God!
What have we become?

Poem 6

karma

Crowded in
Stealing my space
Hurting my sanity
Annoying my comfort
They know
But they do not know
That I know
Karma rides with me, first class not coach

Poem 5

She was

She made it home
Despite the brewing storm
A smile in the middle of the madness

A drink of water
In the barren sands of the Sahara

She was more than she knew
So much more than she believed

Looking back
The path that was
The chapters that faltered
The sentences that didn’t make sense

It was there
She just didn’t know
And he left before he could tell