Unfortunately, the Haitian people have everything to lose
They are very fragile, humiliated, vilified, and abused
My people have been suffering for years, for centuries
On the pavement, in the streets, in the harbor and on the high seas.
Our people, our brothers and sisters!
Their wicked leaders once in power, the liars
Change all plans to the detriment of the poor
Who are quickly forgotten in the filthy cans
Their spleen, sweat and blood flow are floating in the sewers
They are despised by hens,
By guinea fowls, by roosters, and all types of demons
It was yesterday that they were applauding like dummies,
Cheering, hoping to be awarded with crumbs and pennies.
These zealous brothers are on fire, they are now deaf and crazy
at the end. Even patience has borders and boundaries
Where greedy, covetous and corrupt officials behave like evil yeasts.
Copyright © January 23, 2016 Logerie Hébert, All Rights Reserved
Hebert Logerie is the author of several collections of poetry.
One could not avoid the putrescence clinging to every atom in every direction
Stoplights blinked caution in cruel irony
Racoons only emerging from city sewers at night had no instinct to return underneath such bounty
Tho power was erratic & petrol a memory radios still broadcast updates on weather patterns to avoid toxic ash-fall
People waited in long lines
Water
Food
Blankets
Protesting was useless
No one is listening
Life reverted to tribalism
Faces emerged from clouds speaking a language similar to Egyptian their message unclear
The clouds began to break-up spewing hordes of elf-like creatures with horrid pinched features if there was a message I guess that train left the station
This is war
Babies are being killed
No justice
For the innocents
Just injustice
No real peace
Deadly bombs
Blood painting the sad streets
Criminals
Are ubiquitous
Even in the sewers
Poor babies
Are summarily executed
What a shame
The truth is handcuffed
And shackled
Yet, we want
Everlasting peace
North and South
No justice
West and East
There's no peace
And yes, no justice
In the deadly bloody streets
Civilians are killed
Elders are baffled
No cease fire
Stop the injustice
The devils
Are roaming the streets
Bombardments
Are ubiquitous
Where is God
In this brouhaha
Stop fooling
The whole universe
Stop the lies
No democracy
It doesn't rhyme
With evil
But hypocrisy
Does not rhyme
Either with Hell
Stolen land
Is not an award
A reward
Is complicated
The Nobel Prize
Is unwarranted
Yet, we want
Everlasting peace
By no means
By any means available
And unavailable
We want peace
Friendship and justice.
Copyright© February, 2024, Hebert Logerie, All Rights Reserved
Hébert Logerie is the author of several poetry books.
Campo Alegre re-printed
Under the houses on stilt
That has no sewers
And built for whores
To service sailors in Curacao
A barren island
In the Caribbean Sea
Pigs live under houses
Grew big and ugly
When one is slaughtered
The meat tastes of a drunk
Seamen’s vomit
And cheap perfume
That hides
The grotesque sex
In the name of need
Gentle tributary
of a hill-born river
suburban lake caressed
acres of fertile land -
paddy rich, growing fields
Schools of fish raced at depths
water-birds, herons, egrets,
warblers, mynas, pipits,
swallows, shikra, barbets, owls
Bowl that held varied lives
The surrounding city
rapidly scales cloud- heights, as
skilled strategists, land grabbers,
investors, policymakers,
now take her on a ride
The silenced birds, once family
to the lively-living lake,
their provider, now watch
from a mile, her being led
like a lamb to the slaughter
chemical sewers, toxic algae
rotting froth, foam, fumes engulf
volatile, fire-prone, wasted,
water body stands scrapped
A stilled lake, beyond repair
(“The Big Wave”, 2023, original encaustic)
Mayday, Mayday!
Mayday, mayday, Captain,
The ship is sinking
The ship has capsized
While everyone was sleeping.
As governments around the world are falling
A lack of confidence swells the tide
Those in power, corrupt and scheming
In panic stick their fingers in the dyke.
While on the streets the crazies crawling
The good and brave are tried for trying
To stem the swamp and sewers rising
As everyone just prays for rain
What was, can’t hold
On a ground that’s shifting
Once bitten, twice shy
The people learning
Awake, awake, the captain’s calling
As I roll in my bunk still dreaming,
Beam me up Scotty,
Quickly mate, I fear I'm drowning…
(12/8/24)
("Creation Myth - Anthropomorphic Nebula Merit Badge” #65, 2016, original oil)
Rumors of War
War, war, rumors of war,
Whispered on the winds
Screamed from the rooftops.
Who does it benefit,
What is it good for?
I can tell you this as someone
Who has known it in a million lifetimes
Hand to hand, across trenches,
Behind ramparts and within
Tanks and Hellfire missiles,
It’s not the soldiers, or generals
Nor even their countries
Who ever come out on top.
It is simply humanity
Willing to sacrifice one band for another
So the germ can spread,
Steeled in conflict, hardened by fire
Purified in the sacrifice
Like a virgin on the crest
Of a mighty pyramid.
And when it comes to us
Where will we be?
Cheering in the crowd
Or running for the hills,
Or perhaps hiding in the sewers
Laying low
Waiting for the perfect shot.
(11/27/24)
The Unforgiven
In a town where even the law rests
and thieves do not break out of prison
Oh, this bonny night washing my feet
in the pool in the square where
fish die for lack of oxygen
This is the moment when the unseen
the population appears,
banished as they are to the sewers
eternal darkness.
Ah, the plaza bathed in white moonlight
and they dance so tender, fur to fur
noses to noses.
Inhaling the perfumed air of their existence
The sacrifice of living underground
makes sense when,
on a night like this, nature greets them
in their heroic effort
to keep lessening the waste humans
have left behind.
Sewage Breath’s Birthday Wish
On his 21st birthday,
Sewage Breath made a wish.
And to his great shock it came true in the depths of the sewers that smelt like and piss and fish.
In there he bumped into an abandoned Sewage Woman named Trish.
In love they fell. They really did.
Enjoyed each other’s ugly, worrying, strong sewage breaths they did.
One year late they wed
and had a kid.
The kid they loved.
They named him Tad.
He’d worse sewage breath
than they had.
From the morning papers
We read the woman, a former actress
who stole a prince and was hated by the kingdom
is a duchess selling jam and pottery
Her husband, the prince, looks bewildered
We also notice the woman who was
prime minister, for a very short time found
crawling things on the carpet, given
its former occupant, this was not surprising
The woman with her short reign has
written a book, in the hope of being regarded
as something more than a misses Bean
laying her awkward talent bare in The USA
My view
is that homegrown failures
should not be exported or bought up like
water, to foreign investors
as rivers and lakes belong to the people
to swim and drown without
interference from speculatants who
muddy the water and turn it into sewers
You skulked down the hidden backstreets of rationality,
peering through the keyholes of human decency,
and crawled in through the sewers of thought,
to whisper your name to the unsuspecting innocent,
filling them with the fear of discontented oppression.
“We are America, So up Yours!” was your battle cry
and the naive jump aboard your pretentious parade.
Fake news…
Fake hair…
FAKE TRUTH!
Maybe we should have ‘read HIS lips’.
Wall them out, or wall us in…that is the question.
Oh yes, my dear friend William,
we are truly suffering the slings and arrows,
of outrageous buffoonery.
Do we now take up arms and light the battle fires of resistance?
Or do we sleep…
Perchance to dream.
Be careful what you dream for.
Written 3/10/2017
A night like no other...
Oh, for the holy night alone in a town where even
the law rests, and thieves do not break out of prison
Oh, this bonny night washing my feet in the pool
in the square where fish die for lack of oxygen
This is the moment when the unseen population appears, banished as they are to the sewers' eternal darkness
Ah, the plaza bathed in white moonlight, and they
dance so tender, fur to fur, noses to noses inhaling, the perfumed air of their existence.
The sacrifice of living underground makes sense
when on a night like this, nature greets them in a heroic effort to keep lessening the waste the humans have left behind.
In the sylvan sewers of Fritchy's tombie
the Pottawattamie beavers play
deep beneath the verdant pastures
where dead skunks and possum lay
Circling skyward glowing wierdly
jackal-birds sharpen their nails
those brainless fowl still don't get it
Pottawattamie leave no trail
The point, my friends, is whoever writes
such utter trash compounds our misery
Would that he fire up his rotisserie
and fry the buzzards in sympathy
Anon I hear supplicants, lost their compass again
Pity that out-of-water, they won't get deap-sea bends
I
If I could share this picture with you
I would, my dear writers, Beloveds -
Because Earth births us again & again
Long after burial, giving back, post-death
Nature in majesty: birds at play in scores
II
I see egrets commute to & from, my abused lake,
Here where plastic is king, adorning flora
Even fauna, sewers overflow, trash at waters edge
But egrets, & soon the comorants return, & declare:
We overcome, can't complain, we still have fun. Be!
He slept in the bath when he was drunk
Slept so long he went and shrunk
Down down down to such a size
He couldn’t be seen by human eyes
His wife saw the bath and with a shrug
Slipped in one arm and pulled the plug
She didn’t do it with any intent
But down the drain he silently went
He’d never ever learned to swim
So that was the last she saw of him
Gone for ever that unhappy soul
Swept out to sea down a plug hole
After a while she married his friend
So for her his story had a happy end
There’s a moral to his end if you think
Be careful when and where you drink
Or you could meet such a bad end
Down the plug and round the bend
Through the sewers on a bumpy ride
Then out to sea on the rising tide
Maybe to provide a succulent dish
For a shoal of hungry hunting fish
Perhaps the the irony of such a lost life
Served with peas and chips to your ex-wife.
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