Senna Pod

The gall
to believe you have done right by me
after you used what was offered
and flushed it smartly away
you sit atop
your high horse
and look down on me
What gives you the right?


You came with your buttery words
wrapped in confusion
saying one thing
and then doing its 360
you've branded my wall with
putrid bile
I regurgitate your falsehoods
in a vain attempt to cleanse my soul

Yet you stand there
pillar of innocence
unaware of your abuse
branded a canine of the lowest form
I regurgitate your deception
to wash my spirit clean

The bitter bile
of your presence
unsettles my stomach muscles
I retch at the pain
of trying to remove your essence
I regurgitate your guile
to make my essence vanilla again

Burned Chocolate

I wrote your name on the tablet of my heart
wore it proud because in those two seconds
I believed you had potential to be my vanilla essence
I listened to your tablet
all the things you did not say
and from it, I got all the things I wanted to hear
The harsh undertones of you male fallacy
never imprinted across my psyche

I wrote your name on the tablet of my heart
and wrote the things I wanted to see
My desires confused the essence of your truth
as your pen wrote real truth in the sanctum of my space
the blood tinge on wisdom shades never allowing that truth in

I wrote your name on the tablet of my heart
and watched as the shards fell to the floor
the knife of sudden wisdom could not break
those fickle words fast enough
the heart I once knew confused my cocoa essence
warm sugar burned to bitter chocolate
a taste reminding of your confused nothingness
your insufficient swirls of words
trapping my heart in a sweet fatal concoction

I wrote your name on the tablet of my heart
and erased it with real love
the slate cleaned of confused words that had no meaning
the heart free of selfish hands
clutching at empty straws
sipping the bitter bile of an untrained soul
lost in its own loveless mockery

I wrote his name on the tablet of my heart
who are you again?

The Great Pretender

We are all human
This I understand
What I cannot grasp is a love that presented itself as perfection
Turning into the very symbol of imperfection
Real love does not change itself
From dependable
To Unreachable
From Devotion
To Absence

For all intents and purposes
That is not love
It is a mimicry of the real thing
A masked assailant
Out to steal the hopes and joys
Of an expectant audience

Love does not morph from never too busy
To never has time
That is not love
Irrelevant excuses aside
No matter what change life throws your way
Love gives the assurance that
The importance of a loved one in the scheme of things bears merit

Love does have to ask
Love should not have to beg
That is not love
Rather it is something else wearing the clothing of love

Love does not
Love should not many things
In truth if you have love then you should already know

A Nix Rising

A Short Story

Life started like most do, filled with dreams, hoping for the future and loving those that loved me.  Surrounded in a cocoon of love I experienced childhood hurts, a pet dying, a grandparent passing away. As children, we start life so beautiful.

Then at 14, I died. I still remember his hot chocolate breath whispering "tell another soul and die" (Must be why I don't like chocolate). His fingers clasped over my then tiny lips and I believed he would kill me, I believed I would die. But I was already dead, he plunged in and took out my spunk, my joy but most of all my heart.  I was dead inside, cold, bitter and very jaded.  I blocked out the hurt and never spoke of it (probably better that way).  Fifteen years later, as I told the person I thought I could trust, he dismissed it (I guess because too many of his friends had told him stories similar to mine).

Blocking out that event, I almost never remembered, I never identified myself as an abused woman or a woman with a scarlet 'R' on her chest, but I was.  I had become so detached that I would not allow myself to be loved, only starting relationships with people who were unavailable, emotionally and otherwise.  I could not and would not let myself be loved.  Love was for fools who wanted to be hurt.  I thought I dreamt of finding the right soul, but in reality I did not want to.  I would 'love' a man who was married to his work or who was never in the country and I just loved men who had complicated relationships.  I kept wondering why they did not give me what I needed but in truth they did. They gave me the detachment that I needed, but I could not see that.

Nine years later, the same thing occurred again. Different man but once again, someone that I knew.  You know,  our mothers and elders tell us all to beware the stranger, the one lurking in the darkness, waiting to pounce on us when we are not looking. This evil man, waiting to take what we hold dear to us. So we walk around with mace in our purses and whistles around our necks, ever on the look out for the stranger in the bushes.  No one tells us about the neighbor next door whose children we play with, that cousin we see at the family reunion or that guy who has always been just a nice friend to us and who has no designs on us.  No one tells us about the stranger that we know, the one who could violate our very being and leave us shadows of our former selves.  And as this one lay on top of me, I was 14 again and as he stabbed, the dark circle widened...they grey matter spewed, broken into a million pieces.

This time I spoke out, not to the police as you would expect but to one of the unavailable ones who did all the right things, threaten to kill him and all that.  For me, it was done and it was over.  I would never be that girl who dreamed of being a fireman/journalist.  I would never be a beautiful girl because all i am and all I ever was, was an object to be used for the gratification of men.

Still I kept on with men who were always 'complicated' wondering why I could never find what I desired most.  Then, the Knight came, cleverly disguised in another complicated mess but he said all the right things and did all the right things, until he stopped and became what he always was (an unavailable one). He became the Dark Knight and I decided to wake from the nightmare that began seventeen years ago, when one teen decided that he must have what he shouldn't.

I decided to stop dealing myself the short end of the stick, I decided to get help because no matter how I look at it, I was abused, I was raped and no amount of pretty words will fix that.  I decided to take myself up from the ashes of my former life and begin to carve out some measure of happiness which I have not seen for over fourteen years.

I decided to live.

Those Drums...

I remember as a child looking on at  Sesame Street and if nothing else stuck I recall "Those drums...those drums...they're saying TAXI!...I tell you it's a jungle out there".  This crossed my mind as I observed the undercurrent of discord and rumbling throughout the country as mini race wars flare up and die down and then flare up again.  We have been called a rainbow republic by many and a melting pot has been used as an avid description.  But does that description fit?

Melting pot would leave one with the idea of a melding...with no definition of where one starts and the other ends.  Can that really be an apt description of this nation?  Are we so well meshed that our unity is thing that bonds us together?  I think not.

  When those in high office can look at a current disparity of ethnicity while blatantly disregarding the History which caused that disparity I think not.  When we as a people vote in tribes and not on issues, I think not.  When the ethnicity of the nation's new leader can bring cries of "Is we time now", I think not.  When those who are reprimanded by people who take umbrage at their statements can then turn around and bash an entire political party based solely on that fact alone, I think not.

For all our forward thinking pronouncements, we continue to labour with colonial time thinking.  We judge a man based on his skin, on who is father is, on what his station in life is and not on the make up of his mind...the making of his mentality and value of his thoughts.

We have been described as a Carnival people.  Thinking only of partying and having a good time but I dare to say that beneath this mentality is the real one...that of anger, rage and racial divisiveness.  We have had more uprisings than neccessary, two of the major ones being the 1970 riots and the 1990 Coup. But what have we learned?  Did we really learn anything from them?  Or did we go back to our partying when the rioting was done?  Or is it that we mask how we really feel with all the good time vibrations and talk of unity and when the dam can no longer be held we have a large display of violence...only to go right back into our party mode.

Can we even fix this? Do we even address this?  How can we when chairmen quote statistics and then make implications of discrimination.  How can we when those in government defend this statement and equally denounce this statement at the same time (A house divided against itself cannot stand).  When calls are made from the upper echelons of society to cast aspersions on promotion boards and those who sit on it, where do we start to address this disparity?  

Why have we descended into a "one ah we" mentality?  Where does it say that I cannot be served fairly if the man who serves me is not of my ethnicity?  A senator asked this and I find it pertinent: If the police service is mixed equally of both Africans and Indians, then does this mean that the crime situation will be better solved?

If I am stopped by a police officer who is not mixed, should I as a mixed person fear ill treatment?  I ask this since a chairman suggested that Indo Trinidadian population could not feel entirely safe since there were not enough Indo Trinidadians on the police force and Indians represented 50% of the population (I am not sure where he got that statistic from).  My question is where will this end...do the Africans have a right to feel safe only with African officers?  Then what of the rest of the nation, the people the chairman conveniently left out, the mixed people like myself.  Where do they fall?  Should they also clamour for their own to have proper representation?

Those of us who have decided that the chairman is correct simply because he is quoting statistics and statements from a study, I urge you to be proactive and take another listen to the chairman's statements, not just the statistics, but also the implications and insinuations proffered.  I urge you to logically think about what is being said and where statements like this can take an already tribal nation.  Put aside the fact that support is coming from the Opposition for this man's removal...look closely at what this man has said.  Look at the genesis of his statements.  A letter written by a man who feared the make up of the promotion board would affect his ability to be promoted...this same man who is president in a place where he claims gross imbalance...then who would have voted for him? Not the very same people he is claiming cannot be fair?

Yes I have been reminded of drums over the last few days...drums of discontentment, drums of tribal calls, drums to racial divide, drums of racial tension, drums of ethnic divide, drums of violence and impending doom.  My real concern is what happens when the drums go silent.