Best Patois Poems
The Language of Blue
Sinking into the lyrical language of blue
Prime layers of still solitude speak
With muted voices
In sapphire soprano rhapsodies,
Lines of bass blushes, electric flecks of neon fire.
Hear in dusky blue’s modal shafts of light,
The peaceful plaintive sotto voce
Set an indigo scene
In delft lingua for a pas de duex
With trebling hues lapis and arbot.
Blue chants a lexis, a cerulean chroma glow
Sung in tender tenor tones patois
To translate soft sky blue aqua idioms,
As minor phrases meditate on azure,
In prose text that wafts in periwinkle blooms.
Unhurried blue on blue in plain-chant paeans,
Whispers and bedazzles teal twilight librettos
Of cradle songs in soft celeste waves
Of cobalt midnight in the consoling,
And the mystic, language of blue.
11-3-21
Contest: Blue
Sponsor Mystic Rose Rose
Trebling = triple
Arbot is a shade of blue
Chroma means glow
~Patois of Yuletide in Yellow~
Yellow sings solos in soft folds of nativity
Satin strands of a radiant star’s light
Creation swaddled in clarity
Naked joy leaps up in golden delight
While hues of holy optimism flood night
Through the colorless stillborn manger ploy
Ecstatic shades of amber evoke joy
Gold rays serenade prophecy now seen
All creation in citrine mantles deploy
Glory’s color, yellow, in dazzling streams.
Yellow ribbons weave through angelic song,
Enfold night in warm threads of a bronze day
No jaundiced joy dims this heavenly throng
Nor drapes king’s eyes from far and from away,
To reveal a starlit path – to show the way -
Glowing lanterns seek the source of glory
Anointing redemption for Eden’s story
Heralds yuletide gold glory from above,
Glows in brilliance like fire forged offertory,
Yellow exalts the purest aura - love.
12/2/21
Contest: Y
Sponsor: Constance La France
Word Chosen: Yuletide
Written: December 09, 2023
____________________________________
solitary slope whispers below
by the vernacular aphonic
with a fierce wind and unbiased rock
bucolic vibe is ponderous
It's chameleon patois
In schizoid iridescence and fluffy sky
I decipher everything
while trudging uphill as blind
Into the mouth of irrational tempest
no reason to stay here
as haze covers the sky
crows excel at tracing the white trail.
Yuh come inna mi office
come tek out mi tings
yuh bright!!!!!!!!!!!
Mi nuh undastan yuh!!!!!!!!!!
Mi sey to miself...
"Lawd, mi a go forgive him....see di good side"
but nooooooooooo......
yuh come, nuff up yuhself and TIEF!!!!
Bwoy o bwoy....
ghost know who fi frighten...
clearly me a no one.
Come nuh...step in yah again!!
Me an yuh a go 'ave it out!
Tink seh mi likkle bit an caan mash ants...
wait likkle more...
King Kong piss up himself when me get bringle!!
An den yuh 'ave de audacity fi come laugh inna mi face!
Yuh no know who yuh a deal wid!!??
lata fi yuh...mi have betta tings fi do!
hhmmmmph!
NB: For those who may not understand the language the poem, it is written in
Jamaican Patois.
Staff Meeting
At my desk each morning,
over my first cup off coffee,
I call the staff meeting to order,
a gathering together
of my various bits and parts
that scattered in the night,
each to its own devices,
be they terror,
notes on that yellow legal pad,
erotic fantasy,
unrepeatable indecencies
uttered in an unfamiliar patois,
a mélange of whirs and clicks,
whooshing breaths,
mah jong tiles scattered in patterns
I don’t understand.
On mornings that don’t hurt
they settle gently
into orderly arrangements,
designs and lines of poems,
the fabric of my day.
Other mornings,
the more ordinary ones,
they reject my need,
become ash
that I scoop into the urn
of yet another
lost
day.
Dear fatherland
the cradle of races
you lie among the many
with great sight of differences
in this mulatto of western languages
Oh great triangle!
you rise and fall
like ocean tides
in landscape and beauty
in patois and culture
Tell me you're not corrupt
deny racial discrimination
country of peace
river of prawns, Africa in miniature
Cameroon.
We all meet Friends like these and sometimes we keep them!!
Written with a bit of Jamaican Patois thrown in.
Chatterbox
Some people when them when they start chat
Just cant stop at all
Not a word in edgeways
You are a fly on the wall
Just like a runaway train
You wish their mouth would stall
All the world revolve round them
And the echoes from their eardrums
Don't resonate, to their braincells at all
Impervious to the voice of reason
Tougher than a granite wall
Do they ever stop to think for a moment
That for every problem they got
There are many a solutions
But they never give you a chance
To answer them back.
Last time you were telling me
How you fall out with your friend
Instead of complaining to me
Why not talk to him
Continue with your chatter
Then tell me 'bout his mother
Sister, and a brother called Glen
But you wearing me down
With all your problems
I have my Water Rates
Gas and electricity to pay
Already got the final letter
And tomorrow is cut off day!
Not too bothered 'bout the cooking
Cornmeal mi know to turn
But if mi have no drinking water
Mi have no where to turn.
Cleanliness is next to godliness
ChikV on the rise
And keep spreading
Without water to keep clean
Pickney them will get sick
And Catch germ
Mi know Mass Bertie
Is a good and honest man.
He is not a borrower
But he will lend
So if its money you want from me
Don't look in my direction
Go and borrow from him.
My parents all use to tell me
Life is not an easy ride
As fast as you fall down
So you must try to rise
Same thing the elders told me
Same thing has just arrived
Same thing I experience
Same way you must learn
Once you suffer from laziness
Dollars you cease to earn
If you continue with your foolishness
And don't move up a gear
Same thing whey happen last year
Same thing will happen this year
Working hard is no science
Its brings its reward
Food on the table
And forges self-reliance
So if you have nothing further to say
Please get out of my way
I have a pressing day
While I bid you farewell
And wish you good day.
(A) brown skin girl from Kosciusko
now from the world of Harpo (is)
hubristic in determination.
Vitality is her achievement in Black America.
Patois she explores as she shares her vision that is
Apparent to listening to her OWN intuition.
Futuristic characteristic she deploys.
A mason jar of lighting bugs to bring forth
to revolutionize via innovation.
Ultramodern in her political activism.
Argots as she speaks.
She’s a trailblazer of ideas.
_______________________________________________|
Written February 20, 2016!
Un poème pour mon pays
Chère patrie
Le berceau de races
Vous êtes parmi les nombreuse
Avec une grande diversité de vue
Dans ce mulâtre des langues occidentales
Oh grand triangle!
Tu te lèves et te couches
Comme les marées océaniques
Dans ce beau paysage
En patois et en cultures
Dis-moi que tu n'es pas corrompu
Refuse la discrimination raciale
Pays de paix
Rivière de crevettes, Afrique en miniature
Oh Cameroun mon beau pays !
Boxing match in Patois
de warm blood splash on me face
me was startle
wid de blood all over
de place
me lookin out for police
man
but is legal (no disgrace)
ding dong de bell go wild
all dey people like a child
dem
shoutin and dey take dey booze
dey hit anyone dey choose
me get up to go, no want dey
boxin show, no more dance around the ring
to do dey blood splashing ting
me short,me glove,me tie-up shoe
up to attic dey all go
me boy no more dey boxing dude
now dey rum and pot of food
Poet: Ken Jordan
Poem: Jamaica
Edited by: Sparkle Jordan
written: December2014
Respeck Breddah
Whaad Gwaan
Mon
One Love!
Est dah bowy
en Jamaica
Mon
ridden dim
rid-dems
I - N - I
Ire
Rasta!
much Respeck
One love -
Yah Mon
Dis est
Patois
Mi have a serious problem with you young people that have no clue about our history or our culture.
"Mi nuh wear tablecloth like Miss Lou".... Dear Lord help the clueless... Send help father God if yuh nuh busy
Miss lady... Yes, you... how yuh fi call up the mother of our culture, Miss Lou name like yuh can walk in a her shoes?
Louise Simone Bennett-Coverley or Miss Lou, Jamaican poet, folklorist, writer, and educator
Miss Lou a national treasure and you are yesterday gone out of style fabric... "Gabardine" ... Here today, gone tomorrow... No one will remember you...no one will care... Kiss mi teeth... Get some knowledge... Only a dunce would touch an icon like our great poet, our first lady of our culture ... Classless... You need to come out of the Kardashian and Bling, Bling culture and understand your history
Pretty and dunce is not a qualification... History lesson 101... Miss Lou took our language to the world and made it acceptable so you and I could speak "Patois"...You classless girl
The fabric she wore is a symbol of Jamaica, our National Costume a part of our festival, a celebration of our culture... Yuh uninformed and classless girl... Pretty is not a qualification... Get a clue then remember to say the Honorable Louise Simone Bennett-Coverley you don't call her Miss Lou because you don't have "NO "clue.
To the North, South, East, and West...
Geniuses are lost in the jaunty jewels of rakish cads,
The hazard morsel palaver allot odium on idioms...
Rankle virulent mishmash wheeze addle chagrin jives,
Loosing a volley of expletives ordure waft charmed oafs,
Self-iniquity gull maven heresy when blighted wizardry jinxes,
Ticklish cynic infidel swindle dupe cozen duress...
Squall patois and whammy sham schemas wriggle hoaxes,
Charlatans and hoodlums melange to dunce vows,
A shyster unquiet quivers with jester gestures now...
Semi-sacrilege vitiate and endemic jargon raze imps,
This collides as a white energy as dolt hooligan knaves beget...
Colloquial bilge putrefy, the rascals soon flatter us,
Bollix of potpourri lingo wanes to tutelary tongues,
Harlequin coercion argot musical novellas in history,
Pray our shifting shrapnel of karma, varnish boor minds,
Erstwhile, live grenades made of better lives are unvanquished as they are
thrown by unsung heroes into the North, South, East, and West,...amen...
The chorus, a cacophony,
as gulls exploded
from the mudflats, on the estuary,
sleet, brain-numbing,
pelted a grey curtain;
with hands thrust deep, pocket jammed,
I felt like Richard Burton,
selling his soul to Hollywood,
not quite the same, though,
when all I sell is death
in Deadwood.
Here come my gulls, scavengers,
teenage patrons ever eager
as bad news messengers,
heads, sloth riddled beneath
baseball caps reversed,
their words, a streetwise patois
fluffed and stammered
badly rehearsed
but I always sense the gist.
There’s no excuse for me,
sedating kids,
passing bags of snow,
blank eyes fixed on the sea;
for all my delusions
cliché’s of market forces
customers, supply and demand
their snorting horses
once were wooden and rocked
not so long ago.
Within me deep
I know what I am,
no, I have no grand illusions,
I know I’m not the man,
not the myth from songs by
The Stones or the Underground,
just a bigger gull feeding
on the little gulls.
I’m no pharmaceutical saviour
in this seaside slum;
the man? I’m not a man
I’m just
scum.
written months ago commemorating
the graduation from a vaunted charter school
in Bend, Oregon of thy lovely youngest,
this papa could not attend -
geographical distance constituting the primary determinant.
* * * * * *
Soundcloud springboard no matter
what destiny each young man or woman
decides to pursue. Though accolades dedicated
genuinely (just my outlying participation)
special veneration x2c accorded beautiful
radiant daughter ecstatic gloating honestly jubilant
kindred made noble perseverance reaching
the ultimate write x zit that will usher her
onward toward opportunities sustained
by confidence gained thru academic ambition,
dynamic dedication, and gigantic germination
of maturation, whose individual future
* * * * * *
trajectory predicated with the rubric of essential
scholastic tools essential to gain positive
further education and thence employment endeavors.
So Punim (whom this papa does
love and miss) attempted to let the words
tumble upon the display screen communicating
in my patois, (a gallimaufry of mumbo jumbo
shrimp limp ping missive) at your success
attaining a laudable momentous occasion per
rejoicing, no matter the message possibly
lost amidst this cobbled gobbledygook,
which attempts to pass as acclaimed literary
endeavor. Okay, I experience tears of euphoria
and misgiving at lack of finances to share
in person how this dada daubs dribbling
tears ducts. Congratulations thy beloved Shana.