we are living in the past
cause the past is not yet past.)
Welcome to a paradise
that never was
true, except for the privileged few.
Hammock of knitted knots
and rocks strung
between the old world and the new.
Chain of islands, coves and caves,
once haunt
of buccaneers and pirates,
now haunted
by restless duppies
of Morgan and Blackbeard.
No nine night, forty night,
hundred night rite
will appease curse,
the spirits
of the damned.
No longer spawning wars,
your grimoires, now
daily horror
stories of mindless
murders,
grim noirs
in the ghettos
and shanty towns
of Kingston,
Georgetown,
Port-au-Prince,
Port of Spain.
Survivors
coexisting with the lions
and the roaches.
Echoes of duende, perched
proudly, black-
plumaged cockatoo
on shoulders
of Cristobal Colon
and his wretched lot of seamen.
Echoes of duende, Las Casas,
like a black
plague, ravaged
and decimated
house
of Hyarima.
Echoes of duende, corbeaus
disguised
as seabirds,
raucous, discordant
song, circled, hovered, black
cloud, over the Zong.
Echoes of duende, Nanny
Maroon and Cudjoe,
black
resistance,
freedom fighters,
from plantation, grave-dirt,
tilled and toiled
in seeping
blood, escaping
to limestone hills
and caves and gorges.
Vodun,
beat the silent, spirit
drum
for Toussaint, Christophe
and Dessalines.
Insatiable thunder
of hurricane,
earthquake,
Shango.
Soufriere bowels
erupting,
belching, sulphuric fury
and sound
of a thousand giant conch shells.
Caribbean, my Caribbean,
your cradle was my casket,
oh Atlantis,
your swizzled sea
my Atlantic catacomb.
Bottomless black
basket of unburied
woes and bodies flung,
like fodder, to the sharks
and shadows.
Oh that a cup of lemon
grass could cure
this roasting
fever, scourge of scurvy,
in your Jolly
Roger bones.
(Living in the past,
we are living in the past
cause the past is not yet past.)
©2012 by G. Newton V. Chance
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