Best Placespeople Poems
O ther misconceptions of my
H ome of birth and where I spent some of my
Y outh is that
E veryone lives in mud huts and wears grass
S kirts as tourists are greeted at the airport.
B ermuda is a place of
E xceptions in that as of course the world economy is changing, that for a small island
it is still one of the
R ichest nations on the Earth!
M any of the people you might see on the street, if any, are not poor; but, because of the
U nbelievably high cost of living has to
D eal with finding a roof over their head hard.
A lso, while some things might have come to the
I sland a little later than the states, we are not a barefoot, backwoods people
T hat don't know anything and are in constant awe of the
S treams of people who visit us.
Y ou tourists are graced with an island and a people
O f beauty, Godly fear, and an
U nbelievable strength that has fought off one natural disaster
A fter another.
N o other island is graced with our beautiful pink-sanded beaches.
D iversity is reached with people from South America, Europe, the Azores, North America, as
well as
M any other islands and nations.
E ach and every house, as well as it people are "cemented in colour and everlasting pride"!
(The acrostic spells out a song that I used to sing constantly when I was little.)
Casualties of an enforced lifestyle shiver in the breeze
Along the rugged roads of old dust and ditches that divide
Rest a group of modest enclosures they call home
Built out of left over wood and delivery slates in 90 degrees
They seem content with their simplistic lifestyles and unsightly miles
Water is delivered in worn out trucks and stored in their homes in discarded tanks
There is no sewer system, very few working water systems are scattered
Yet, if you were to pass through for a visit, the women would be cooking with smiles
During the day, men are bused to work in factories and earn fifty dollars a week
Few people have the resources to receive a doctor’s visit and medications
“Anencephaly” a brain birth defect that their infants have, now significantly rise
When it rains there the roads become virtually impassable and unusably bleak
They are a hard working people with values and a drive to nurture their youth
Bathing their children in the same lavadora they wash their dishes in
Tijuana is among one of the poorest places in the world
With these living conditions, it’s hard to turn your back from the truth
EMPTY APARTMENT
Paid the realtor’s fee
Collected key and learned how to jiggle it -
Some lock problem - corrosion in salt air.
In the silence of my own thought
Previous life in these rooms speaks of
Views of the clouds and sea.
Nothing much else to see, just think about
Their own childhood memories.
Drawers with screws nails and nylon line -
That’s out - my own junk in.
Shelves with a few books
“Cooking Fish with an Electric Wok”
and “Teach Yourself Serbo-Croat”,
and one ice-skate.
That lot goes in a bag for the junk store.
Make room for my own geology maps and
Collected Thomas Hardy novels.
Cigarette ash, empty chip bag, crumpled chocolate wrapper.
These people must have had serious teeth and lung problems.
Kitchen cupboards with packets of soup and instant coffee -
And yet they used a wok ?! ( Like Jeckyl and Hyde. )
Chuck out their rusty can-opener
Put in my own rusty can-opener.
Table will be better under the window.
That round rug they could never decide where to put -
I’ll put it in the back cupboard - hideous colour.
Curtains have to go too - wouldn’t be seen
Dead with curtains like that.
Some people have the weirdest taste.
I smell the tar burning in the heat-wave
The cigarette almost lit itself
Spontaneous combustion pirouetting
Into stacks of smoke, rising steam
From the pavement like breath in winter
Travelling with half a name, on the road again
The crowds of people like flocking birds
Almost devil-red in colour
Meaningless mumbles, an applause of tongues
Forming like sheep into lines and rows
A fully formed dance troupe, they never learned
Showing half my passport to the hostesses like escorts
Foreign rhymes which they think I don’t understand
The cigarette writhing in the cold
Slowly turning into vapour, an eruption of clouds
Looking like bundles, the way the people dress here
Asking with gagged mouths for half my name
Half my nationality for where half my loyalty lies
If only half and half could make a whole