Ozymandias

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

-  Percy Bysshe Shelley

Invictus - William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul

Morbid

I worry now that

every single day dream ends

in some form of death

Inspired

He tapped his bare chest
and the sound... it echoed in
every part of me

Theresa Ines tonight at the Beehive

O sonho é
Pra cada mulher
O que se faz
O que se quer
E vai
Vai seguindo como dá
Junta tudo o que se tem
E espera um novo alguém

All women
Have the same dream
To be true
To our heart's desires
And keep moving
The way we can
Gathering all we have learned
To share with someone new

Sounds familiar. Sounds like it could be true, but is it?

In Honour of My Grandpa

Is this grief I feel?

Or confirmation I've

not been sad before

Sometimes I don't even know what to do with myself. It was good that it ended, but that logic cannot fill me back up.

bed time haiku - I know i will never break , but...

I beg for tears now;
One drop to ease the straining
dam behind these eyes

Hospital Haiku (Brooklyn, summer 2008)

Pain sings like echoes
stuck rebounding between these
curving pelvic walls

Equal Rights - Peter Tosh 1977

If wars were to stop right now... If we had "peace"... would the problems really go away or would they just be easier to ignore?

At least I'd be a little less upset in the mornings as I listen to BBC online from my little cubicle at work. Maybe I'd would never have to be ashamed for not knowing enough about the world... for not even really thinking about or trying to, much less really fullfilling my responsibility to the other people on this planet

My conversations would sound less hollow. My problems would seem more important. My ambitions more noble. My education more whole.

But we would be worse people. Except we wouldn't even have the chance to fix it, because we would never know.

More importantly all those people, would still be suffering.

Let's do the hard thing and ask for the right things. We will all be better for it.

Listen

Everyone is crying out for peace yes
None is crying out for justice
Everyone is crying out for peace yes
None is crying out for justice

I don't want no peace
I need equal rights and justice
I got to get it
Equal rights and justice

Everybody want to go to heaven
But nobody want to die (father us Jesus)
Everybody want to go to up to heaven
But none o them, none o them want to die

(Just give me my share)

What is due to Caesar
You better give it on to Caesar
And what belong to I and I
You better, you better give it up to I

(I'm fighting for it)

Everyone heading for the top
But tell me how far is it from the bottom
Nobody knows but
Everybody fighting to reach the top
How far is it from the bottom

Everyone is talking about crime
Tell me who are the criminals
I said everybody's talking about crime, crime
Tell me who, who are the criminals
I really don't see them


There be no crime
Equal rights and justice

There be no criminals equal rights and justice
Everyone is fighting for equal rights and justice
Palestine is fighting for equal rights and justice
Down in Angola equal rights and justice
Down in Botswana equal rights and justice
Down in Zimbabwe equal rights and justice
Down in Rhodesia equal rights and justice
Right here in Jamaica equal rights and justice

i like your body

I discovered one of my old paper journals and it reminded me to look
up this poem.  It is honest. It is almost obscene. It is beautiful,
and  reading Ayn Rand's Fountainhead I feel in a particular mood
to appreciate it. So... for your reading pleasure:

i like my body when it is with your - E.E. Cummings

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite a new thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh . . . . And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you quite so new

Late night bad poetry

I plan to write everyday. This means that some days you will be subjected to filler. So here goes. My brother refuses to comment on how bad this is, so I will let others decide:


I measure time in displacement;
in fractions and time zones 'till i touch down on the island.
But more time,
breaking through jet lag,
from flight attendants and bus drivers,
quiet girls with straight backs behind counters,
mothers who borderline manhandle their children
and children who shut up
same time,
are the slow rhythms of not dialect, not creole
just patois without qualification.
The "Jamaican", understood
all by them
who don't understand a word.

Colonial Girls School

I was home recently right after hurricane Dean. I had the rare pleasure of sitting and talking with an old church sister of mine. She is now 15 and attending Mount Alvernia High. I noticed that in the 8 month since I had last been at home she had straightened her hair. What a shame. Once you start that it's hard to get out. But worst of all it wasn't really her choice. The principal of her school had said (according to her) that " We are black and we are proud but we don't have to wear our ethnicity on our heads." What colonial bullshit. As if the natural hair of a black woman isn't presentable. Her mother thought it wasn't a battle worth fighting; her daughter was going to graduate soon anyway. But things like that are not acceptible in a school in 2007, least of all a school associated with the Catholic Church. When my little church sister was telling me how they harrassed her when she had natural hair, I remembered how many times I was pulled into the principal 's office in my high school days for wearing my hair natural and in twists. I wonder what lessons she is going to take from school- what self-image, what idea of beauty. I know in my day, my English teacher was nice enough to let us know what was going on; we attended a colonial girls' school.

(this poet attended my school, and wrote this poem about it)

Colonial Girls School by Olive Senior

Borrowed images
willed our skins pale
muffled our laughter
lowered our voice
let out our hems
dekinked our hair
denied our sex in gym tunics and bloomers
harnessed our voices to madrigals
and genteel airs
yoked our minds to declensions in Latin
and the language of Shakespeare
Told us nothing about ourselves
There was nothing about us at all
How those pale northern eyes and
aristocratic whispers once erased us
how our loudness, our laughter
debased us.
There was nothing left of ourselves
Nothing about us at all.
(Studying: History Ancient and Modern
Kings and Queens of England
Steppes of Russia
Wheatfields of Canada
There was nothing of our landscape there
Nothing about us at all
Marcus Garvey turned twice in his grave.
Thirty-eight was a beacon. A flame.
They were talking of desegregation
In Little Rock, Arkansas, Lumumba
and the Congo. To us mumbo-jumbo.
We had read Vachel Lindsay's
vision of the jungle.
Feeling nothing about ourselves
There was nothing about us at all
Months, years, a childhood memorising
Latin declensions
(For our language
-'bad talking' -
detentions)
Finding nothing about us there
Nothing about us at all
So, friend of my childhood years
One day we'll talk about
How the mirror broke
Who kissed us awake
Who let Anansi from his bag.
For isn't it strange how
northern eyes
in the brighter world before us now Pale?