Joy, they named for themselves, the future's blind
Oyster to drink your sand. In salt tides love rises
Yearning to part the twinning shell and there resign.
Empress of the emerald seas, my ship for rich prizes
Listed its name, cargoing only your pure laden weight
Anchorless against the blustering report of bad winds.
I desired you alone, and for you I you alone I freight
Nature's nagging Testament jettisoned among the fins
Eternal glimpse of glee. O how my ship prized your worth
Well in tons delicious of my dreams, your sweet waters
Ecstatic upon the plunging foray of my keel, port
Leaning through tempting triangles, the pirate pesters
Lack speed's pursuit, and through doldrums I evade
Incessant wrongs, until your wild waves wanton decree
Numbed wind and sail in me. Flirtingly you delayed
Giving my ship to port, and then soon abandoned me
Tideless in a salt bog of tears where I logged deceit
Once in a while I come down to the sea, the old receipt
Nested in my mastless fingers, to wail my loss in you.
Categories:
mastless, education, lost love
Form: Acrostic
Where the water washes white surfs across
Sand banks porous with green dreams in our hearts
Where the sun surveys the wet desert of loss
The salt thread like blood stitching together our parts
Find me there wandering the wailing shores
I am a new citizen with ancient desires still
Living on the restless rim of of crinkled azures;
Watching history bleach my memory of will.
Here I pine to see my mother whole as I am
Here I pray for justice from the impaled lamb
This Caribbean sea that pens my rage in me
Water where my ancestors footsteps no imprints leave
Of vast voyages now void on the Atlantic lea
This Caribbean sea in modern voice I cannot grieve
My people sundered like a broken ship
Mastless, anchorless, drifting drumless on weed
My people bleeding from tongue lash and whip
And no Cudjoe, Tacky, or Boukman to intercede
I am a citizen of the rim, a place undefined
In the subtle representations where I'm maligned.
Here in this world of diverse languages and shade
Across the bloodless salt of shrivelled water we trade.
Categories:
mastless, historypeople, sea, water, people,
Form: Verse