fall to earth.

White lace cloud sewn to the rim of a maya blue sky, dusk of her day folds around the earth, wishing dreams and prayer would permit her fly from, so in its place she stands still letting bygones be well on their way, but this hibiscus blossom is for you, heeding in your sleep her confessionals as they spill to the wind, the echo of him is still in her thoughts, did he once breathe to think that she forgot
what lives inside of her?
In her chest is the spirit that submits to his fire, consumed upon the altar of her self-sacrifice, to sentence self to death because, he is her very life, and he will never know it.
Call it normal, name it loneliness, christen it suffering, baptize it worthless, but she understands the depth of his rareness,
heaven calls him poet.
and this
is the centre of her universe.
She orbits in silence, cursed daughter of eve,
who by the sweat of her brow will toil tears and eat her own words.

Copyright (c) 2008

-Arielle John

none.

Directing the needle of my hopes towards a true north star,
The dart in my pinned flesh,
Supporting anticipated danger
In living as we do.
A dagger hinges on reality and displaces truth
And a sword shall pierce her heart..
I cyah recruit anymore salt-water to fall from meh sky
The storehouse empty and de whole dam dry,
The whole damn thing she lie about..
South is to sink and suppress and drown
My own fears of somebody to love
A non-requirement?
Anon requirement?
Unrequited?
A nun being quieted in the fading of a call she once expected to be the only voice…

..on the wall

Something is wrong with the mirror in my room
It recklessly confused the image of my smile,
And instead returned the sublime of my thoughts,
Thinly caught between the glass and the pane,
Shards of sincerity are plastered away,
Because apathy never had face-value.
I probably become more see-through every time
Someone cracks open my insides.

Copyright © 2008.

Her steps trace the contours
of a familiar space
pacing the beat of ignored cramps,
but she
would continue to dance,
tapping across the cedar floor
of a hollowed room,
and the core of her body breathlessly consumes-
Rhythm, and each of her movements are measured
By time,
Twisting fate around, spinning circumstance to blind
Pain, to remind her again
what she lives for,
Spiraling in turn and this cure doesn’t burn
Her insides,
Absorbing instrumentals up from her stride to her spine,
But now she cyah find
Her balance.
And then her eyes, would sometimes
Drop so far from their focus
Her gaze grows a little more anxious,
Then I get extremely nervous,
Because (pause)
the doctor insists that she came with a ‘best before date’
printed somewhere around the same place
that they make the opening to insert the tube,
giving her until December to live,
and that date didn’t include,
when she decided to stop taking treatment,
stop making payments for medication,
stop storing her passion for living,
and sometimes her breathing
stops for too long
and her two lungs, begin to shut down, and
soon the ground meets the discreetness of her steps
and second-guesses her compressed-
stare
but She’s losing her hair,
remembering how much drop-off dis morning…
Sitting
at the edge of the bed strumming each strand in the light blue of her hand,
Unsteady, so it shakes the hope off of her ‘awareness’ wristband,
Looping a green satin ribbon
Around the frail of her fingers,
Unveiling her flesh that peels off with the fever
Her skin colour is changing…
And the blood under her thinning- skin
Never had such a rush within her vessels,
My only wish is that frustration didn’t make her so doubtful,
That she still have a chance in all of this,
Choreographed remedy, therapy for her illness,
That God would will this
madness away,
And that she could learn to trust Him one day,
Because dancers don’t die…
Their music gets cut-off.
And while she coughs- up blood
To wash her own self down the sink,
My prayers are stained red,
Too little time for me to think
of being at ease,
The cancer is taking over her kidneys,
And her steps are slowing down.

The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.

skinned

Skin is the only thing that bonds back together,
After I interrupt its brown cover with a blade
Smiling open sensation
This exhilarating raise of
mini-slopes standing for my fingers to stumble over,
Slitting open the continuity of this mask,
Quenches questions of this reality,
Or did he really steal the last
Of me, the last time his own body
Pierced my flesh,
And this is the gutted cut that made me the hopeless
Hemophiliac,
Bleeding open a gap that
No woven fibre of scab could ever try to seal,
And these skin scratches are the only way for me to feel
If I really am who they say,
And these scrapes across my skin only
Takes the sting away,
So that I don’t numb myself to sleep.

-Arielle John copyright 2008

In unsolid stare to heaven, my forehead rests alongside hers, temple to temple. and the ruffles on this bed-sheet might only resemble snow angels without their wings, but she might think that my fingers in her hair is the most relaxing thing for today, leaking some of her hurts away for a while, and her short wild hair never bands together, faulting the feeling of rain stabbing the ends of my fingers, goodness, she is so beautiful a human, and quietly she tries to listen to me breathe so she could mimic my patterns, perching ear against nostril, inhaling her essence, I swear she smells like the rain trying to brew the nectar of earth’s flowers, but the scorch of her sun only makes her blossom brighter, and true to form she was born a fighter, and this is one war where she relishes in a victory that I cannot understand yet.

Sweetest thing I've ever known...

baby cousin on the beach.

...where my scratches came from

She’s afraid of needles,
And the mere thought of it cripples her.
She’s here
Standing, staring, wearing a daze,
Tearing
at the flesh of my stomach,
..she can’t stomach it.
Swaying and moving uneasily
I’ve gotten accustomed to her
faking immunity
Inflammatory tragedy
That can all but stabilize
This fragile life,
Left hanging from the centre of this room,
From behind the bullet-proof
Of these green curtains
And behind the uncertain fixing of her face
…she can’t face it.
Neither can she erase the hitting out
Of fathered palms,
He injecting her,
Slowly, deeply, to force her to a calm,
Almost too dead to feel,
Her body
I wonder how he feels,
Thinking that nobody
Else knows
What he does to her.

-Arielle John

copyright 2008

She hugged me.

She’s not accustomed to letting air pass by this way,
and she doesn’t notice
that even I notice the difference.
Embracing an old part of herself
that she refuses to let go of,
no perception of love
what so ever.
But I never wish this on any human I know.
Then she grabs at my back,
ripping like my own fear at torn consolations,
“That’s him.” she whispers,
and I look forward ahead
and there he sat waiting,
in uneasiness creating
an anxiety for his own self,
and her belt is imprinting
its buckle into my un-expanding womb,
and she moved, slightly,
so I unheld my breath and inhaled,
and it worries me that she’s female
and so close to my own body,
probably it’s because she told me she can’t show affection
and doesn’t understand that the position
she has me in,
makes me uncomfortable,
but she’s all but predictable,
and paints a placid smile
she has learnt to wear in public,
turns round to watch him,
walks to the car and all she collects,
is the scolding she expected,
for taking too long.

- Arielle John
copyright 2008

These slits were forcibly cut into this land
And it bears the scrapings of a gash too deep between soils,
A gap to keep our toils apart
But from one exodus to another part
Of this earth
It starts
To seep a story too different
A single significant factor,
Living, present and hereafter
Between connections and beyond water
But her son is her
Bloodline.
And with eyes bovine he watches as she leaves,
Tears falling concrete pellets as he screams,
Promising a better life for him I suppose,
But she and all of Korea knows
A mother must carry hope,
Even beyond borders.

-Arielle John

copyright 2008

Rain-flying

The violent smell of this acid rain
Knows my name
And how to find me,
So from behind the quiet of my hiding place,
Comes a whole year since I last entertained
The thought
Of this irresistible dance of a season,
And so my flight finds reason
Beyond the wickedness of curious
Little boys,
Beyond snapping jaws of dogs I do avoid,
I must be too quick,
Too fragile.
Then my agile unsteps
Become patterned and parallel
To the dodging of rain-drops,
And whenever the rain stops,
I will still be there.
Either alone or less alive than this frail body
Might be able to carry against air,
So I lose flight from too-weak wings,
And I come across a morning
that brings a different tone
To most Saturdays.
You know where to find me-
Always outside dead, on the floor
This rainy season, I’m sure.

Unearthing a different form of you.
Soaking up your essence from the bottom
of an ink bottle,
blood poison didn't delay itself either.

Grey

Through words uttered by infants
we would come to terms with black and white,
but on any given day,
grey to me is more than just
the threat of a rainy season sky,
grey is the reason for me not wanting
to understand why
there sinks this gap between the both of us,
grey doesn’t depend on any emotion motivating us
to remain still,
grey is the colour
that I want this to remain until,
I feel I could swallow it all.

Trinity Sunday

"Holy Trinity, One God

Have Mercy on us."

Spec-tacular

Three strokes and a pull, me lookin in a little closer only to see where a world would form, for eyes a global swarm of quick thought, two eyes to see dreams appear, but eye for one could always find it there, settle at the base, round-bellied rims collecting exhausted visions, iris detailing the mission patterns, lashes batting ideas hitting the air for a six, breeze is what he makes of this free-flowing remix- of a silhouetted spirit, he has the drive that creates it, so he persues it, so that all I end up seeing is the beauty of a struggle, so intense, the world view sits there in his inner-lens, lids draw fleshy curtains from an old hiding place, darkened ovals holding purpose right in place, he writes in the place of any wrong energies, so at the end of the day the whole world could see, and eye believe in boys becoming men when they could build their dreams.

Keep up the great work ballo,
God Bless yuh.

Prep..

He give meh a spirit of boldness,
So no retreat, no surrender,
He take care of meh before,
So he have meh back now here and after,
I bless His name, because he blessing meh, so I could now bless others,
This bold-faced, west-indian, woman, time come now to fly this nation's colours,
So let the red, white and black, blow-out, and blot a foreign stage,
Till the whole venue runnin ink from this pen-to-page, lyrical rampage!

Characteralisis

Pulling courage and even coverage from stored-up graces,
Crushing in disgust at all these unrelated places,
But now things suddenly seem more connected,
And just like they do, my other self becomes disbanded.
All have fallen, but I see them wearing stilts,
Me, forgetting laws of gravity and principles of balance,
Rolling off the back of parables citing the then talents,
They intend the science, so wait ten years and you’ll understand meh distance,
I can’t walk a road that pelting rocks aimed at meh conscience.
In parlance, I swore that we all sought for a divine perfection,
Finding mehself trapped in a den with ten hundred thousand demons,
And even if I make the mistake of meh life to look to one of these,
I make a promise to mehself that I won’t, and I pray that on bended knees,
I think that I now know exactly where meh place is,
Sanctification, away from these, they all have this character-sameness,
At this stage,
I don’t want a part of this anymore.

-Arielle John

copyright 2008

old diary entry

“October 12th 2007,
Dear Diary,
This evening I felt the soul of the world speak to me for about two minutes. Everything natural had become exaggerated, explosive, exciting to my senses. The flowers, natural lighting, a nearby dog and a dark-grey sky trying to decide its place between rain and night time, a fresh mid-green grass with sooo many light flies, looking as though the grass lining the road became lit runways. Blinking and flickering all in a fading evening. The coconut trees looked even more welcoming, my sneakers against the pitch reminds me of some extensive journey, the razor grass standing straighter than usual. All in a fading light. No shadows and I silently think to myself that my body seems to be glowing, illuminated by the growing darkness, ironically. Then she spoke in a breeze, lightly, then more strongly against my face, against my chest, till I close these eyes, inhaling everything around me, smiling (probably stupidly- the neighbour might think) in approval. I slow my steps down because my house is right there, and so in trying to delay time, I walk even more slowly, taking in her last few words. I look down my street and recognize how dark it has become, then to my house, where my dog runs out barking, though I were a stranger. I stood at the gate, looking at him, him at me with an easing approach, then I enter.
Too many British breezes have made me cold-hearted towards him, he came to mind too. It was one of those single moments that had so much in them. Truly I felt it. A universal conspiracy to put me back to my rightful place of thinking…”

If God wills it...Amen.

laporte

this is some more photography. The door and bookshelf in my room, I always thought that there was more to the woodstains. Negative night image.

Abort

Struck between pressures like hydrogen gas,

Oxygenated hydrogen for tears and unparted lips for a collecting-flask,

Post-partum, catching water for lies,

For sighs,

Emanating from her,

From him,

For her,

But no longer

A seed she was supposed to bear,

Syringing foetuses to form fodder for nightmares,

She sometimes would hear,

The child crying,

And feel the baby's corpse for a pillow,

A pool of blood for a bed sheet

And all else that runs cold below

A hardened face.

This hardened place

Where no education, no car, no music and certainly

No Man

Could ever compensate.

3's...

Been trying my hand at some photography in my backyard. I saw the quotation once "Real Art is a thin breath exhaled amidst a struggle in the mind." I fell in love with it.

Sunday Seeds

Mustard Seed Sun
Amassing my midday sky
With a warmth
Spreading across skins,
Sasso-borro Brown
As they might be,
Pelo a causa de mi
Identidad Negra.
This Caribbean sun flavours
My thoughts,
Swizzle-sitcked and stamped
To my source
As these moments start traveling
Beyond yellow-walled boundaries
Of this bedroom,
Bounded by mummy’s Sunday food,
That traps some of my senses back here,
Black hair, twisting madly
Into brown ends,
Brown bends of my body,
Stretched across this bed,
Outside light strapped across my forehead,
For to spend just two more minutes
Soaking in my laziness,
Would only make me
Miss another Sunday…

Amandla!

This was a project I had to do back in form 6 (as though that was so long ago...)

Rivonia, Pretoria and then to Robben island,
Seven of us- the promised ones, so now I know that I can- begin to hope,
But we had better learn to cope, with rations of mealies and sips of coffee, apartheid to make sure my daily bread is taken from me, a life sentence, they try, thinking they could cure me- of this sickness. This eternal, internal, uncontrolled weakness, for my stolen rights, to turn against countless wrongs that turn themselves into the frowns, of my children’s children. Because this system filled them- with hopelessness locked inside melanin, locked inside the adrenalin that fuels me to dream, and though right now I just might feel- powerless, I must never let this cold arrest-get the better of my passions, I ride on the wings of the ANC and so my mind is fashioned- for freedom. We come with clenched fists to deliver a blow to their souls, freedom! Power! Amandla!, For the people, we stand bold. Four hundred and sixty-six, slash sixty-four, political, physical, prisoner, but mentally secure. Long labouring hours we spend working in this quarry, days that take years to end, but all this only adds to our story. Freedom chants, call and response, booming from cell to cell, Sell my liberty for your culture? Never! So naturally I rebel.
The island becomes a University, a place for universal thought, political ideologies shared and new strategies are sought. Each man having his story to tell, we are all lecturers and students, with our own faculty and curriculum, as warders would watch our movements. Family comes occasionally, but my mother, she soon died, my wife being watched by the police, so now she’s being forced to hide. June 16th 1976, the school children protested, by September of that very year, some young men were got themselves arrested. They came over to the island, and they put them in isolation, we now feel immense relief, for they are the new revolution. Stories I heard soon enough, the people form solidarity, the campaigning had begun again, now they demand that the government free me. March of 1982, I was told to pack my bags, my wife had been in an accident, and I was taken away by armed guards. “Pollsmoor Prison” he said, when I asked him where we were, but on February 11th 1990, my life was again familiar. Freedom was found.
"There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find ways in which you yourself have altered."- Nelson Mandela

- Arielle John copyright 2007

Wrote-ee-

Wrapped up in the thought of him like a roti,

(but a veggie roti though, cuz I still refuse to eat meat),

Safran for a midday sun and

Breezes collecting the scents of spices,

Intices my tastebuds,

but stingin' meh nose

(because I'm still alergic to masala).

I had a whole one today.

Make-up for breakfast this morning,

Wake-up round lunch time,

With a yellow-bellied bird bawling,

And the north-east trades calling

out the one-fifth east-indian in me.

Saturday was just meant for curry.

Curry was just meant for a Saturday.

-Arielle John copyright 2008

The Wind

This village now is silent.
More silence than I, for myself ever heard before,
With nothing other than the wind, to make her signature across a dirt floor,
And me in the middle of meh front door, waiting like a fool for something to make sense again.
Silence as the ancestors bathe themselves in ashes,
Bitter tears, screaming in an infinite anguish, but still…silence.
Silence as the land swallows the blood of those who lived,
Of those who died here.
Here where these rebels come on horse-back,
Their skin was too, but ours were the darker of the two blacks,
Not armed with atomic weapons, or sophisticated machine guns,
But with machetes, knives, blades and clubs,
And a dark greed hovering above
their consciences…thaz if God did make them with any at all.
So I sit here on the earthen floor,
Hands squeezed between my knees,
Just as my thoughts are compressed into forgetting hope.
Then as though to mock meh, I feel a slight breeze,
Coming as a gentle reminder of things not so gentle.
The dust here rises, circles, and rests again,
With the years of this soil, swallowing the ambitions of our men and women, …and children…our children.
Dead.
History taking us hostage, but who to pay the ransom?
Our days to be stalked by these merciless phantoms, fantasizing daily about,
Virtual cash - flowing below our bare feet,
Forming thick black rivers that all anxiously meet
At the intersection of foreign investments and human life,
Economic development and human life.
Human greed and human life.
Our lands are fertilized -
With these bodies, bones and blood,
Until these too are forgotten and they become fossils to flood
This entire continent.

-By Arielle John copyright 2007

Carnival 08'

Is a unnatural energy ingrained in dey bone marrow,
Deep inside psyches but remarkably shallow,
From humans to ‘party animals’ so the whole species change,
Is now ‘wining season’ so goodbye to trini hot sun and rain,
The sons of Cain and A- bel-ligerent spirit,
A different kinda rebellion, that not so legitimate,
De kind that make yuh best fit
For d infernal ending,
Garlin have nothing on this one, cuz this fire have no pretending,
Masquerading these pagan ideals and dare to call it a culture,
Mockery to the God of creation, assassination of my character,
Where d place of a performer is to command crowd behaviour,
Eyes wide shut so dey can’t see the creature-
Who wearing d mask,
Face to face with the devil like is ole time mas’
So put yuh hands up in the air and pass yuh soul over,
Cuz is a all-inclusive level that we taking this soca,
From minstrels, to Minshall, to naked angels,
And jab-jabs, to jumbies to a tripartite Machel,
Giving yuh an experience that yuh could never forget,
Jamishness to turn yuh girl chile into a first-class jammette,
To make yuh sons lust their souls straight down into hell,
And if we get the young people right where we want them well…
Business fix for the next ten years down d road,
Soon enough d remaining values bound to erode.
I say they bound to erode,

We have them bound to the road,
We have them by d thousands and by the shiploads,
De values bound to erode,
We have them bound to the road

Raising hell in Trinidad,

So de country bound to erode.

Copyright 2008

Arielle John

Cannabis counterfeit

I used to think wisdom to be green,

Something tangible

To be grown,

picked at,

rolled up,

and lit.

I used to believe secrets

Told by ones whose Twelve Tribes never thirsted for promised lands

and Black Stars that never touched even the brim of these Atlantic sands


and whose hopes couldn't even steal them away.


I used to believe it was okay


For sacramental smoke,


Where these men and women-folk live in community townships,


But now its


a saving truth that breaks open mysteries,


A truth to prove the failures of so-called imperial majesties,


Haile Selassie means nothing to me,


So in his immortalized vanity,


I renounce my Christ-less past...

-Arielle John copyright 2007

Stickers

These are just some nice stickers I came across...erm hmm...

Happy New Year to you and yours...God's blessings for 2008.