Tag Archives: life

Introduction

Your love is a crystal waterline by a warm, sandy golden beach where the sun mingles with the ocean breeze and the fruits of the jungle roll into pools of water.
Your love is the mystery of an African summer set free as a bird on the Caribbean wind. Your brown body is as intoxicating as the mixed wine of Lisbon.

Your passions suddenly rise like the hurricane winds of the Caribbean and sweep across the islands in a blind fury of passionate ardour, devastating the fields of slave traders, throwing the Spanish treasures ships against tidal waves; broken by your whirlwind, freeing their cargoes of spices into the hot summer air. Oh to be in the
eye of you’re passionate hurricane and to be carried out to sea in your amorous storms.

The equatorial heat of your hands in mine causes earthquakes in my deepest soulful depths; undersea volcanoes erupt and give birth to new islands, paradises, filled with new creations, strange birds and wild animal calls, new scented flowers and new fruits to delight the palettes of sea-admirals in search of bounty.

Oh, my Barbados beauty, a shoal of dolphins are your limbs against mine and deep coloured jewels of coral are your words of love. Your body is like the date palms swaying over the lagoons of love.

Oh, my love, your virtue is like the wardrobes of Carib Princesses’ concealed in jungle pyramids until love finds its way to your secret doors, doors of strong metals, heavy to open, laden with gold plate, silver and jeweled, with mysterious ancient secret writing telling of El Dorado, the land of gold. The secrets of which you have promised to tell on the day you are wed, to give with hugs and kisses to the one you love.

Oh my love, you pour love into my cup like a mountain waterfall of pure mineral water and never ending stream of refreshment are your ways flowing into mine. My love for you is as constant as the sun of equatorial African lands, as glowing as the sunsets of Caribbean islands. As joyous as the lovebirds of isolated Caribbean islands that having never
known hunger. As deep as the trenches of ocean floors where fire and water are married and deep-sea light fish glow in the dark waters.

Your love like the fermentation of mixed fruits blended by victualers and served at marriage feasts. Like the water turned into the best wine and saved until last, that is the miracle of your love, the blessing you are.

I. The debts of winter

The debts of winter chain me to the sun.
Slave to the fire in the big blue sky.
The debts of tears, fix me like a sundial,
That shadows encircle all through summer.

A sun too far – I am frozen to death!
A sun too near – I turn to sand!
Oh to close the door and walk down the steps
To walk away from tears, to walk away from debts.

II. Staring at the sun

Staring at the sun
There’s no buying and no selling
There’s no trying and no telling
There’s no export and no import
There’s no exchange and nothing’s bought

There’s no exchange
You’re a victim of the rage
There’s no exchange
So you have to disengage
Staring at the sun
There’s no rifle and no gun
There’s no betting and nothing’s won
There’s no sadness and no fun
There’s no running and no where to run

There’s no ransom
You’re on trial for your life
There’s no ransom
When you’re staring at the sun

III. In love I learnt all about you

In love I learnt all about you
When love faded into friendship
The abundant knowledge was wasted
But I have learnt the lesson
That passionate love explores

In partnership with the sun
You remain my secondary light of night
The tides of my heart are dangerously tidal
For I have learnt the lesson
That passionate love explores

In partnership with the moon
I circle the lonely ocean tides
I fill the darkened night
I plumb the ocean depth
For I have learned the lesson
That passionate love explores

IV. Are we still friends?

Are we still friends? Are we still enemies?
Enemies of the love We did not sustain
Betrayers of passion Lovers of friendship
With feelings of guilt Over loves lost pain

So now stand and face the blinding sun
And truthfully say to a lost loved one
That we will still be friends
When the sun is no more

V. Her warmth is better than the suns

Her warmth is better than the suns
But as with a rose I hold a thorn
But as with a snake I’m bitten.

In a dream she’s floating in a tree
Branches like a windows broken pane
From hunter to victim she succumbs
Keeping her wide eyes upon me.

Hungry – she needs consoling,
Her disguise exchanged for love.
Tomorrow?
She’s been too hurt to say
What tomorrow wants from yesterday.

VI. I like to humiliate men

I like to humiliate men
I like to see them crying,
I blame men for living,
I blame men for dying.

This picture, who could foresee?
A woman who humiliates me,
She calls it – a game of tease
And brings me down, to my knees.

I am a grand defender on a wall.
He is the weak attacker on the floor.
There is a note of sarcasm in my call,
As to my door he crawls.

I am a woman who likes to humiliates men
By blackmail, love, so who can mend?
What experience taught me so?
To love, to hurt with body blow.

I’m a well-defended territory.
Taunting my imagined enemy,
Yet in the nights of loneliness
Beats a lost and lonely heart.

If only I could cast away
Those past losses, cruel lies.
Fighting for my pride is good
But as a lover I cry and cry…

VII. A feral pigeon was crushed today

A feral pigeon was crushed today under an aggressive tyre
(So I’ve died a little today), its feathers are its shroud.
If its wings could rise and fly to take that body into the sky;
If imagination could rejuvenate the love that was crushed today.

If, instead of dying – living! Love was brought back to life!
Alas only common sense and skill Can deflect the bloodstained knife.
Merely a cloud passing by like my thoughts unclear.
Loneliness returns in the guise of heat hazed anviled air.
Like a passing stranger how she changes in front of me
From a living love within – to an escaped born vision.

I loved her when she was a part of me; I loved her when I was part of her,
But like two distant feral birds we separate untouchable.
Upon a half travelled road she stopped and never was the same again,
Like the end of a hurricane our love affair blew over.
Like the feral pigeon crushed under the wheels of an aggressive car,
Red and crushed and mangled in a shroud of feathers.

What if those feathers still could fly? And took the body into the sky.
What if the heart still could love? And live again for evermore.

VIII. What I feel

What I feel falls into mists.
What I want is hidden in the mists.
Like a baby In swirling mists
I search for you In deepening mists.

Mists – Have the face of sorrow,
Mists – Have the heart of tomorrow.
Mists – Don’t remember the way
Through the mists of yesterday.

IX. The total commitment of her soul

Is eclipsed by the hunger of her hurt!
That men cared,
that men cannot mend;
What time writes,
time forgets to erase.

Time – be gone,
Time don’t ruin loves eternity.
Time – die;
time – cease,
Let lovers like her be free.

Time, stop! Stop your careless game!
Time, end! End your mindless search!
Time, finish! As of now, stop!
Love, your understudy, must have your part.

X. Clothed in the haze of the moon

Clothed in the haze of the moon
Fed by the light of the sun
Loved by the remnant of stars
Remembered by the eternal one

Oh to be like one of those ones
The stones of new creation
Oh to be like one of those
With pure hearts, strong hands, fair faces.

XI. There are gods who do good

There are gods who do good for the good that is done
There are gods who revile the goodness of one
There are gods who repay with more than just dreams
There are gods who will kill you as the payment agreed

So for the good deeds that you have done
Be sure they are sold to the honest one
And never reveal the secret you hold
For fear you’re betrayed by the hearts that are cold

XII. They have grown with her as their protector

They have grown with her as their protector
They will not let her go
Now they keep her captive
To make safe their conquered home

The children’s darkness is slow to fade
From their mothers life
Dependent on her, she becomes their slave
Always the mother, never the wife

All the others that love her so
Are turned away like dragons
And if she grows to love someone
She feels as if she’s in the wrong

Pride taught her to be strong
Produced immense courage amid
Loneliness she could not resolve
As she fought to rear her kids

They’ve grown up around her
Like a fortress wall
The children subdue the parent
While they grow up tall

She struggles to be free of them
To find a life of her own again
But walls are hard to break down
With children’s darkness all around

We’re trapped by what others do to us
And no one seems to see
We’re trapped by what others do to us
They stop us being free

Aug 25 95

XIII. OF ALL THE THINGS TO KEEP OF ME

Of all the things to keep of me
You keep my front door key
You have a gift for comedy
You keep my front door key

With a sixth sense you sneak in
When I am not at home
Desperate for privacy
To sit inside alone

My caricature you like to draw
Always makes me smile
A bittersweet kind of treat
Humour in my trial

I know you keep it secret
The engagement ring I gave
Among the glass and plastic
Something worthwhile saved

That and what you think of me
That and my front door key
An insurance against the slavery
To come and go invisibly

You like to keep me laughing
As my heart you break
To catch me off my guard maybe
To look for hidden mistakes

Laughing at our break-up?
But my mocked heart bleeds
To hear the fumbling in a lock
Of those front door keys

Fri Sept 22 95

XIV. I wrote to a loved one

I wrote to a loved one
“My heat belongs to you”
Like a bundle of swag
She took it and vanished

What do women do?
With all the hearts of men who fell for them
Keep them in their jewelry boxes?
Pile them up in their wardrobes?
(They overflow their dresser draws)

Hearts – materialistic keepsakes!
– Collectibles for kleptomaniacs
Women with hearts are like squirrels with nuts

Hearts are nothing to believe in
Give and take at our peril
If they beat – it’s just a clinical fact
And nothing to do with feelings

Hearts are bought and sold for love
Isn’t it a shame
Who will wipe away the tears?
Where you carve her name

XV. A LITTLE BIT OF ME

A little bit of me seemed empty
When I was going out with you
– It was my heart

You felt, to me, like a stray thing
That couldn’t trust a man

A little bit of me became empty
When you came round
– like a crime scene, taped off
It was my heart

But now and then, in fun
You’d smile and hug me tight with happy eyes
Then that little bit of me was happy for a while

I tried to make you comfortable
I tried to make you see
What had happened inside of me

But you were molded in the image
Of the things you had suffered and seen
Though my love was true
You still projected them onto me

So a little bit of me seemed empty
When I was left alone by you
It was my heart

Oct 8th 95

XVI. THERE IS A HOUSE WHERE NO-ONE SEEMS TO LIVE

There is a house where no-one seems to live
There is a home where no-one seems to dream
People stop and wonder who lives there
As nights grow shorter in the autumn air

There is a house where no-one seems to be
Yet in that house, there is one – there is me
A house where no visitors appear
A home that seems empty all the year

There is a house that grows dark every night
There is a home that seems ignored by life
Inside, it is cared for just about
Inside you hear the silence from without

Oct 12 95

XVIII. I SPEND ANOTHER DAY INDOORS

I spend another day indoors
As something grows inside me
I close the curtains and lock the doors
So no one can define me.

I lie down and dream all day
Thinking of a name,
At high noon as children play
The problems still the same.

I want a good name for my son
And the best I know by far –
I’ll call him Gary – after Cooper
My favourite film star.

I’ll spend another day indoors
As something grows inside me.
I’ll close the curtains and lock the doors
So no one can define me.

Somehow I must plan ahead,
Somehow I must prepare,
Someday I’ll meet another one
Who’ll treat me a lot more fair

I’ll keep this hope alive inside
To blaze unending fire.
Meanwhile, I’ll act wisely
Til’ a true love I acquire.

I’ll spend another day indoors
As someone grows inside me
I’ll close the curtains and lock the doors
And dream of things that might have been
and dream and dream and dream and dream

27 Oct 95