To think that Jamaica would come to this
is torture to the imagination
Beautiful paradise,
Oh! Land of wood and water
The breathtaking view of the
sunset
The illuminative nature of
the sunrise.
The home of warm, translucent
emerald beaches in all the
Caribbean
Once an oasis, now mocked by
crime and other social
impediments
To think that Jamaica is now
a hard sell
No longer an attraction to tourists.
Tourists have been forced to seek
other destinations to take
their vacations
This serves only to add to the
many frustrations
The gruesome murders of its
fathers, children and
especially mothers
Leave an unbearable pain that
only justice would help to ease.
But, where is justice? It has
been taken out of the hands
of the relevant authorities
And placed within the hands
of these same murderers,
And so the question is, who
will be the avenger for Jamaica?
It possess no ability for
self-defence, for if it did
This oasis would have no end.
- Nicola Powell
----------------
Honesty
Why do so many of us hate that
we are black?
Don't we know; to properly go
forward, we have to look back?
Only by seeing the lives of
our ancestors can we know who
we are
Only by examining what
they were, can we know
where to go or even how far
Don't blame yourself for
your ancestors' past.
Why all the hurry? Take time to
know yourself, don't move
too fast.
Use the tools available to you to research your history.
Study hard
Work hard
Be ambitious
Be tenacious
Dig deep; keep at it; find
and unravel the mystery.
Don't worry about it; you'll
get there one way or another
You'll find that comfort
zone where you love yourself
and your brothers and sisters
And I mean honestly
Not like some people
Dwelling in hypocrisy.
- Norris Fisher
----------------------
Intergalactic
I loved once.
But we were from different
worlds
So I loved him from the
shadowed corner of his universe.
Our paths crossed at the full
moon and
I gave up my infinity
to revolve around his finite
became
Enveloped by his space and time
cloaked in his cosmic existence
he became my axis
my gravity
my solar system
and
I became a fleeting nebula.
---------------
- Athaga Ross
Straight from the heart
From deep within, it came,
bubbling forth
Like a spring that runs
from under earth
Unheeding it rushed,
No warning was first
But it sent forth warmth,
from a heart
That seems to burst ...
Ah love, that's what it is.
I never knew such feeling exists
Over and again, I have heard it said
But no such thing I believed,
instead
I stayed, unhappy, forlorn and cold,
Too afraid or timid to explore.
This has taken me by force,
I had no plans for such, but
cupid's arrow found its mark,
Now I say, straight from the
heart ...
This is all love.
Helplessly I stand, mesmerised
At what I am receiving,
Afraid I will awake and find
That I am dreaming.
Now I know what it means,
To be captivated, desired, loved,
With your wind, my wings are
flying,
... Ah love, I'm deep in it ...
I'm loving it.
- Marlene Raffington Lambert
At the Seaside, Boscobel
Time with my thoughts by a
seaside wall
watching the tide overtake itself
while the rest of the world shifts by
cloaked in whatever it opens
itself to.
Time to absorb the
everlasting chant
of water, each breath beyond recall
on a full moon night coaxing out
the first spatter of stars over a land
worked up these days all the time.
I stretch my mind to
capture a scene
of 200 years where those
ships came in
to this very spot in the dead
of night
where uncertainty passed body
to body
leaving what it will to incubate
in the warmth and silence of
a dry sandbed
in the script of a scattered
generation
to be passed from future to future.
I fill my lungs from the
natural belonging
of an empty space, away
from the city,
away from the one who
rejected me
trying to take in everything at once:
the intense chanting waters
I admire
from a distance, like love.
A deep breath in - a deep breath
out.
- Delores Gauntlett
