Best Conquistadores Poems
My family is everywhere like wild seeds sown
On the whim and bluster of a wind
Some left for Cuba before the revolution
Bring green stalks of sweet grass to sugar
And are still there, root sunken in the earth
Grafted branches without memory now
Or recognition of ancestral home,
Separated by language and new history
Thick as the depth of our watery boundaries.
Some in Panama built the canal, but no bridge
For home when their meagre cents were spent
Too soon. I met a few with little knowledge
But no anxiety for early morning mist of blue
Over the mountain, looking still to see them
Coming home like birds when summer is done.
Some went to Venezuela to see the oil
They said was black as Africa in the new world
Brazil: there football is more than economy
Gladiators: bloodless troubadors of the new army
And many drifted into the squalor of Costa Rica,
Nicaragua, Ecuador, searching for light
Amidst old civilizations brought to ruins
By Conquistadores majesty and Roman might.
The only one who report are those from Canada
Is it because of the language, because they proper
As they do in America. Is there nothing in them
That longs for home, to leave the Mexico to her Aztecs
Her cactus lace with golden strands of sun.
When I was in Germany, Austria, France, far away
As Holland, Rhine and Danube linking invisble
Heritage, I met them, distancing the old decay
"We are thinking to move to Taiwan or Japan"
They told me, poverty does make a barren land
So I understand the boat people, not lying
Like Columbus, they seek the same treasure
And yet for their truth reap some displeasure.
I could package it for them to sell, but cannot agree
When the wind rattle the wattle of desolation.
My family is everywhere scattered like wild seeds
In fresh forests fretting with the burden of the wind.
My father's abeng blew up my mother's womb
And I was chained there
Nine months in darkness drinking blood
Longing for my resurrection from the tomb
Longing to break the chains
Holding me before my birth to a carnal earth
Longing to stop him pounding
Pounding on the door of my bereft eternity
I carrying the weight of him already
The weight of them against the gravity
Of my life. My wings folded
Longing wield sword edge of flight against the sun
I burdened to undo what already is done
Have no finality here.
Look at me like an eagle flying in the sun
Blood dripping from my talons when the flight is done
O let me cleanse the world again
In the red flood that alters pain.
One day I was born screaming for a cause
I could not take kindly to tradition
Slapping black and blue a baby's **** ... laws
Must have been broken to beat the innocent
Unless it is a crime to come into this earth
To carry so much legacy
From maroon history to Jesus Christ, blacklisted
Like my my forebears: Shaka
Father of my grandfather's mother,
My other grandfather, Accompong warrior
Slain between the stones of Holland Estate and Mountain
Bridging the way for fleeing slaves
I come Cudjo less, Nanny less, merciless
Carrying on the war of generations
Calling no more for repatriation but reparation
Of human rights, human dignity, and racial sovereignty
Where Africa may find again its concord
Without false treaty and flimsy accord
Raping the Congo of natural resources and life
I come, the bushing through guinea grass
Tumbling kingdoms with wisdom and knife.
For this I was born, beaten at birth
Given resurrection from the night of earth.
My father sought to be civilize
Recite poems of Britannia's might and lies
And I, I was singing with the night
Reading a long history of pain to make write
Of my own proclamations, to declare
I shall not bend my knees, nor walk in fear
Where death measure us in dust
And vampires and conquistadores lust
For El Dorado buried in my disgust.
I am a man, and I will make my monument of truth
Upon the gravestone of the brute.
My island slept for years in the care
Of Tainos, Caribs and Arawak
Their canoes on the sea breast bare
Dreaming of milk from manioc
The swamps unscarred, trees secure
Batos and songs rinsed in the azure.
Then came doom laden caravels came
Prancing with Conquistadores
Their swords to slaughter, then to shame
The Ave Marias slutted by whores
Whose blazing balls of canons denied
The sufficient death of the crucified.
My island was the Mary Magdalene held
For ransome in the frying lust
For gold, the continental wars spelled
A trembling virginity in the dust
A lost of idyllic grace, where bloody men
Sowed the evil inherited again and again.
From Spanish to French, Spanish to British
How callous is all history
A spectre publishing the marginal brutish
Shrivelled glory of identity.
And still my Mary, her alabastor box a gift
This tropic wonder, this lignum vitae of thrift
From empty tomb to broken hearted disciple
Evanglizes the Mahoe dawn
Over the Blue Mountain where peace ripple
On the motto, still the fawn
In the forest brings the stag to court
This island stands ready to file a good report.
Aztec Empire
grandeur and splendor,
a great civilization -
conquistadores
Mexico claims part of Texas as its own
Calls to invade the Lone Star State have lately grown
Long-time Texans can hardly believe their ears
This issue has been decided for many years
But on Christmas night, Mexican gangs
roamed Texan border towns, seeking Texans to hang
They killed 2,000, then raped some more
took others hostage, about twelve score
Joe B., furious, ordered an all-out assault
He'd show those Mexicans who was at fault
Not so fast, progressive Democrats said
There was 'context' to the border assault, and the 2,000 dead
In fact, the Mexicans were the unlucky victims of systemic racism
not to mention decades of oppression and neo-colonialism
Since the 1850's the Mexicans had suffered, the Left said
'Twas a heinous crime for 'Genocide Joe' to kill them dead
So, Joe B. caved, and gave the 'conquistadores' their reward
Over their new border inside Texas, all their 'amigos' poured...
All day long I read but cannot tell
Which would I bring back
Or what moor's good could they do now
Who did not prevent the coming of hell.
Back and forth, back and forth
And always back again
We go to history and find no gold
Like conquistadores, only pain.
I want to call Elijah,
Or Jeremiah,
But not again poor Columbus
Stranded on a beach in his humanity
Not again the Inquisition's chain
Or Cortez insanity.
Cash for gold, cash for gold, cash for gold
Young boys in abbreviated trousers cry
And I could not tell the difference
Between the hunger and the plunder
Lost, lost everyone
And no Carmel to halt the blunder.
Villanelle : Who but Great Powers make World look like market place
Who but Great Powers make World look like market place
The crib courtyards of Russia China and US
Who reigns in the United States concerns all in space
Don’t tell the down-trodden rest they’re out of the race
Even sinking island states may hope for prowess
Who but Great Powers make World look like market place
Lebens raum’s an excuse for Conquistadores
Spices for regal banquets stolen art pieces
Who reigns in the United States concerns all in space
A hundred years of wars deprives Man of grace
Leaders thrive on gullible populace nonetheless
Who but Great Powers make World look like market place
The more the whine the more the fish-market brag place
What counts is the clout each Big Brother promises
Who reigns in the United States concerns all in space
What makes a nation great if not the populace
Can any man then replace what’s good in US
Who but Great Powers make World look like market place
Who reigns in the United States concerns all in space
© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2016
I left my class tonight full, exhausted.
Every joint aches and barely able to walk.
The trip to the car was barely mustered,
and I reflected a time on the talk.
I had completed a three-hour class
and felt as I had in a marathon.
I had left all that I am in a mass
back there in the class and I had truly won
their hearts and minds by truth-telling them
of Aztecs and conquistadores, Buddhist
monks on great voyages, ancient times when
there was romance, intrigue and a long line
of compelling moments were woven last night
into a history that was done right.
This sea's end on a misnamed shore
Is not the terminus of your sin
Nor my beginning in the dusky yore
But we can in false time begin
To ridirect the world from the whim
And caprice of self-lost to love
The best in us again. Trust is slim
Now, but surrender can prove
More worth than paper documents
And words that never stand so
To mean exactly all desire's intents
Leaving you in thin chiaroscuro
So let us not praise Columbus still
Nor Sea dogs' conquistadores
Mentality, I like Wilberforce's bill
But we new Crispus and Torrez
Were not impotent dole getters, since
We fired sugarcane and barracks
And by death and waste also convinced
The Great House to retire its racks
Since we salt of the earth accept it
That our coming was no accident
But from the convenant to pave and grit
A redemption for gentiles and truant.
Mirror melted, and I enclosed in solid space of ice
Intersperse images, direlict of other's maiming vice.
Mimicry is not a benign deceit as you would think
Incontestable illusions brought my race to this brink
Cramped with penury and self mutilations. The image
Rinsed in the shadowy world of water, watch it change
Yesterday's victim for the victimizer. I feel a strange
Intertwining of silhouettes, a sinister string, a damage
Suspiciosly hard to explain in the colonizer's world
My usefulfulness replaced by my uselessness, the shell
Upstaged, left in sand's silence for shimmering of pearl
Rude those conquistadores settling in the benign hell
Dangerous not to them who make us unreal in the real
Essence of fire, and by sly ambiguities cruelly conceal
Racial meanings, except where minstrelsy glimpse desire.
That day before I crossed you
I saw the Thames
Where Wordsworth stood alone
To pour his heart upon the wave.
And I open mouthed wondered
By the banks
Of endless history
For ever intransigent
On the Thames eternal transience.
And then I met you
After the bus
Had traveled miles beneath your tide
We looked back
And there this brown expanse
Of water wide
As the eyes could see,
Too brown to be a natural sea
I questioned your identity
And with a certain pride
My guide replied: "The Danube."
And I saw for sure
Tchaikovsky's peaceful waltz did still endure
But something more
A greater depth of human history
Buried under mud.
Here is where apart both still meet
All the earth in one retreat
One kaleidoscope of time
Through layers of cindered years
Burnt not by flame but heaven's tears
Through igneous fortresses and lime.
Here is the salt older than my blood
Here is the soil ancient as my flesh
Into rocks composed, I am superior mud
To all this to terror to my eyes
I am the king without my paradise
Did some slaver from these banks
Of tired wars slipped out to bay
To join the new crusaders ranks
Conquistadores guilty of Africa's decay?
I seem to see their shadow still
Moved by a tidal malignant will
Bringing the Caribbean rim to tribute
Before Urals and Caucasus and brute
And here my silver, gold and dream
Rose in the darkness like minerets
And from the chimney stacks did scream
The curse of islands and blue islets.
The years are gone, their burdens gone
Above each tide I sing a vestal dawn.
How do I begin
The litany of my praise
Where so much is wrong
And we in the haze
Of material focus
See not the spirit dripping
Into soggy souls.
We see the goals
Extolled by what brings to ruin
Other blind places
While around me throng
Two point seven million
Disharmonous songs.
How do I begin
To enthrone the humanity
Surrendered
To the modern love
Of foreign vanity?
ii
So here am I
Unhappy before I left
Unhappier now
Having seen things differently
And different for thirty years
Walked in prisons
That gleamed like human space
Compared to hospitals
That bring me tears
I cannot cheer the blight
Of fifty years
But I still believe
This land is special
More than sand castles
And hotel commercials
That mute
The red bleeding mud
Deep in a vision's blood
iii
Come Columbus help me write
The rewrite of your beginning of lies
History did not begin us right
Sea dogs and pirates, swarming flies
For commodity of meat, nothing great
If a man has no origin
No achievemment, he still can hate
The conquistadores sin
Against his patrimony and race. We
Are the expansion of the kingdom
Heirs and makers of a new country
We are history's vintage from the rum
The lies told at the borders and now
Laid to the blame of father's crying still
And bush overgrown yam and hill
O Jamaica, to you alone we make this vow
That we shall not about our state
We shall love you when all others hate.
Jacksonville, at this hour, tell me
Do you miss me where the river flows
Through Florida's tangled history
Where the Mocama cotton grows
Do you see me driving early
To teach where the clansman name holds
Such reverence in history
For black children midst fear's bright folds
Do you see me sitting slowly
Where the St Johns flows with strange name
Saturiwa gone, and boldly
Bedford Forrest here is proclaimed
I would revolt against Ribault
Against Laudonniere as well
By Seminole passion I fault
The harsh Conquistadores hell
Of France and Spain, and British rule
And that loathesome flag flying still
In the South where Northeners rule
In silence to the cruel will.
Left my home in Duval to breathe
Without the poison of the race
From white to white the land they cede
Timucua's will not a trace
And so may you erase me still
My love for river and landscape
The people that my days did fill
When I your children tried to shape
The bridges now I want to cross
Communion cup I long to share
My house left there to gather moss
And friendships my heart still holds dare
O Jacksonville, Jacksonville dear
My heart pants for you through the night
The Southern climate sweet and rare
Saturiwa by the fire light.
I came to find again the fresh fountain
With footprints of Conquistadores framed
In mud: residue of a brick mountain
From behind which white anger once had flamed.
The missing fort was not all time displaced
But cougars dying without an escape
From your history. Wrapped in me and disgraced
I saw the Caribbean full landscape
Wilting in the salt of mossy lakes. I
Saw men like cougars unwilling to die.
I found the seasons changed into bright cold
And the evening sun the only sure gold
Above slithering gangrene of jagged sea
I found birds strumming on the fret of glee
But nowhere could I find the thing I sought
Beyond the migrant men in a dream caught.
We are new colonists and we embrace
A hostile and unforgiving land. Lay
Claim to clay covered gold by grace
And the callous palms of tired hands,
But the weary lesson lidded, did not
Stay night's strife and eyes' sands.
We poor Don Quixotes have no Camelot.
\We left Paradise, the fruit still sweet
Like a piper's note upon our giddy eyes,
And edged our sugar hungry teeth
On gaudy claims the harsh day denies
Reversing us who came our fortunes to reverse
On windmills and the roulette of dreams
We had the upside down of the Midas curse.
Poor Samsons, we, in the litter of our schemes.
\I see land beyond forty acres ungiven
But I see no mules except for us
Who for fabled EL Dorado has striven
Conquistadores mired in the plight of dust
Our feathers are pluckt by the Atlantic storm
And I, here serches the spectra of Job
Amidst this new thing without border or norm
That consumes us like locust on a withering globe.