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BOUGAINVILLEA: SUPER 8 REDS(excerpt)
for my mother and father
1
KING CARNIVAL
HEADPIECE SO HEAVY
SO SLOW TO WALK
WITH THIS
COSTUME BEHIND
AS IF IT BUILT WITH
HIM IN IT
NEAR MEMORIAL PARK
WITH HIS
HALLUCINOGENIC
FUSS
IN SUCH MERCYLESS HEAT
AND THESE BLUE HILLS
THAT RIM THE CITY
TRUCK BORNE
SOUND
ICARIAN TRUMPETS
A REAM OF HORNS
A RHYTHM SECTION
BEATS IRON INTO
SOUND
IN WET VESTS
THEY BLOW ACROSS
REEDS OF
OX BOW AND FIREBRICK
RED
SUCH BLOOD, BEADS OF SERPENT
PURPLE
BEADS AND BELLS AND
TEETH
THAT SHIMMER BLAZE
DOWN
FREDERICK
STREET
THRONGS THICK AS
WET
GRAVEL
2
SUPER 8 REDS
AND BURNT CLAY
BEARDS
DIFFUSED AND REFRACTED
INTO LIME GREEN
LAMÈ
A SCEPTRE HE HOLDS
NEMO
SHONE BLACK AGAINST THIS
GLITTER
PITCH OIL
DIAMANTE AND FRIVILOUS
FEATHERS
GLIMMER
ON HIS FACE
WET AND
SUPPLE IS HIS IDIOM
SWEAT
AND ENDLESS TECHNICOLOR PRAYERS
O MOTHER OF PEARL WITH
SCENT OF FRESH PAINT WIRE
BENT SCRAPE AND ETCHED
WHICH EMBLEMS ARE THESE
RIVER GODS WITH
RAMPANT PLUMAGES
STARTLING IN
THE FIRESKY
LUMINOUS
EYELETS IN
MAD BULL
MASKS
CADMIUM OR
LILAC PALMS
3
THE MOKO JUMBIE
8 FOOT UP
STILTS OF
WOOD PAINTED
WHITE/WHITE
PAINTED WOOD
SLACK
BRUISED WHIP OF HIPS
THAT
KEEP TIME
TIME SLIPPED
AND ALL THESE
COLOURS
THAT DRIP FROM HIS FACE
HIS APPOLLIC BUST
MONOXYLLOUS
OBATALA OR SPIRITUAL
BAPTIST
SEWE WANGALA (A KALENDA)
robber man don’t get me
don’t blow me out down town
down shantytown
ravine
wey they beat silver fish
and wabeen
on the east dry river
riverbank.
we come like ripe
guava when it season
full it ripe
and it drop seed
like a 12 gauge shot that shatter
the wings of our mountain gods
young blood seep up on the sea and float foam
from brain coral
where my brother reel
reel so reel that the paddle broke
and tumble down
cliff and stony crocus bound
with the snakeskin mask and the kidnap
bush hid in Orinoco navel string
robber man don’t lock my neck round
Piarco airport
roundabout
hide
the
ma
gic
for
me
Robber boy don’t make mud clog the tracks I cross river bank
don’t sell my eyes for sand puppet teeth
don’t seed my seppy for ransom
don’t brug my neck with fisherman’s twine
don’t scope my ruse with barbed river time
don’t fix my suffer with jumbie symposium
don’t grief my root with rumours of wounds
comecomecome
le we pounce on wild quenk and gouti
make we shuffle in the jungles
of port
of spain
le we
lime
spic and span a comin
spic and span mama
hide the magic
for
me.
The Myst
Kandahar
My brother become the Myst that night. He put his boots on.
(just out of reach is a long way to stretch; outsider status is no string vest).
He fixed his mask. He slid a brittle edged gilpin cutlass into the hilt he pulled from
his belt. Nanobyte salt kept the edge well grim and his under arm grip hid his cow
itch pouch as he ran through the bush upper Kandahar hill.
He had been planning this arrival since May. And now his bulk was proper. His
gullet root tough. For months I watched, when he let me, and when he didn’t, see
me peep, as he assembled his implements. For the suit, he dyed and
synthesized tarpaulin - pure black with sandbox root - his gloves he proofed with
banga seed heart, his jackboot steel he sanded off sheen. Bois canon bush did
his dada head: dread. The mask made last with perforated pigskin leather,
waxed and molded on his sleeping head, with shallow holes for hooks and eyes
I saw him churn old iron on the riverbank morning. Saw when he swam under
floodgate with a single column of breath, and came back days later with handfuls
of armoured cascadura, whose shells he sharpened to blades. With calabash
milk he poisoned the tips. He sharpened his toes.
48
He drunk duck egg, nog and cowheel porridge till the muscle to leap in his legs
grew across the width of one of five rivers. His cryptic grip was wire bent, his
speed through jungle: elastic. His cutlass slap would spin heads around. His
battle stance was brute and bad minded. His slingshot was laser guided. Sudden
so the sky get dim and snarling, when he put his suit on, and mount the steep
incline like a lizard.
The Regal
At Regal cinema by the San Juan abattoir we meet.
In the market square with the pale scent
of cow foot fish and rotting fruit
and the slippery alley black with such blood.
Backroads of the red dusk, terracotta
in its high grim cruciform of tropic Alamo.
And the looming precipice of its heathen spire
smoked with subtitled Corbuccis.
No reels rattled there since my mother
used to steal away to watch westerns on its drapery,
years before this copper dusk we meet,
when she brings me her sad secret,
how she felt the earth shiver in her bosom,
left side of her breast like an arrow.
2wo Spaceships
Gravity has few practical applications. negative charge and the pro \\ tons
A positive] suppose I have 2 space ships
-direction of the radius suppose/
I have 2 spaceships
that's the thing about change.
hydrogen-
-foam carbon, 7.~2 million volts
-the source is a fil~~ent the barriers tungsten-
-geophysical prospecting in important places-
many experiments exist-protons and anti-particles in a box of gas/
physical law-2 spaceships
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