Poems
Tuesday 30 November 1999
De Survivors
by Nelcia Robinson
St Vincenter & the Grenadines
(October 1989)
Yes, we is real people
In this wheel of life
But we get squeeze –
Hurt real bad
By de people we trus’
An’ we ha fo weep
Wid all de pain
Inside ah we
Dat all dem curious people
Carn understand
No matter how much
Paper an’ book dem write,
Because it nah happen to dem
Dem nah experience it!
An’ dem curious people
Jump right into we skin
An’ fold we in…
De hurt begin to melt
An’ you know something
We begin fo smile
We feel proud ah we self!
How we get determine
An’ independent
An’ achieve in life
We mek sure
Fo show dem abusers
Dem lie, lie, lie…
When dem say
We no good
An’ try fo mek we feel
Dat dem is de victim
Not we!
We not hidin’
No more!
All you perpetrators,
Man an’ woman,
We nah a hide
No more!
Instead, wid de help
Ah de Maker,
We using we experience
Fo help odders
Break de cycle
Of abuse an’ neglect.
We is resource people:
De Survivors!
Soul on Icing
By Patricia Mohammed
Trinidad and Tobago/Jamaica
Just the right kind of
birth day
A religious Sunday silence,
white with mellowed
grey
Companions of the mind,
the chirping, chirruping
garden birds of peace
with distant traffic noises
and Haitian french creole
exchange.
Moth blinded by the day
lit office, fluttering wildly
under desks and paper
covered tables, too full
and overflowing.
Take time to feel in front
of a silver screen of words
the satin sheen of
Jamaican march winds,
draping
this forty five year old
body,
flesh and aging bones and
hardened arteries
around a velvet soul
Crying too young to die
and too old to be born,
anew.
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