castaway

I did not want to write a poem full of corpses
So I wrote a sacred pink blue sky
Jewelled on the horizon
Laughter as the loudest star sleeps
Humour hugs every ache whole
How heavy heads lay after a long day in the humid heat
Caribbean moon size and joyous dreams

I did not wish to speak of what should not be spoken
So silence breathed into all the words
A haunting
I come from a language that does not write itself
Our ancestors speak hurricane
A thunder tongue shivering tides and a petty revenge
The Mid-Atlantic is a vexed auntie
Rattling rivers and roofs ready for reckoning
Knocking at the chest of men

On the other side
On the other side of now there is a door where we return
Every island is a hip swaying between here and there
A float in the dance to belong
Rocking in the arms of the edge
Where the sea is an emerald flag
And palm trees praise the air
Every shore is an altar of remembrance embraced on purpose
Pinckney of the sun ray

Where prayer trembles the light
Or how a storm retreats
We marvel and move eternal unfawned and unlost
Hips hollering, elbows flapping like fanning flames
Bare feet chant in the sand or in a concrete jungle
Love taps quake the nape of the earths neck
Where daughters of the diaspora dream
And inherit journeys of flesh
Where a smile is also a scar

Or how my grandfather came to see about us
Years after he died
Wearing my uncle's face
Dimpled and shining eyes like two wet black beans
Baptised by a spirit
Rum slapped on his breath
Charming man and all he was
Checking on his grand babies

Fear not death
Fear not death
We visit kinfolk there
Lingering in the blood where the ocean hums
Tribe of the great abyss
A not knowing from where or what we come
And still to arrive before they could conquer us

We came by shipwreck
By wind and wave
Pushed into the water splashing and shaking
The wound
The wound teaches us to remember where tomorrow glows listen

Listen to the animal clawing within
A rooster calls directions between this world
And the next there are roads that cannot be mapped
And there are streets that do not have names we ran
We ran
We ran away into the ochre tinted mountains seeking maroon hills
I was born borderless
Mounting a dollar van like an Orisha
Scribbling visions on a train or in an airport travelling

Ritual voice and time
I was born of distance
In between now
And then