40 days.

I came to miss your mischief

Like it wasn’t morning anymore,

Like daytime settled lazy

Among pillows of cloud.

There is no pillar shrouding the sky for me

To predict the walk of my wakings

Wind would hush the dreams in my eyes,

Down the sheets of collecting lids,

The wilderness would wish for rain like today.

Tapping everything in me awake,

Till my colours come back.

Till thunder returns to my chest,

Until memory learns how to sing again,


I will wait.


© 2010 Arielle John.

Performance piece- Caroni (1975) Ltd.

A silent mob of shadows,
slicing the dew of ah early morning haze,
grazing against fragile moments,
a savannah now laid waste in atonement-
for our skins and theirs,
for hours ah skimmed-
through history books with tired spines,
and still they couldn’t hold the truth I had set out to find,
but they can’t withhold my story from me,
for I was born the-
descendant of a woman of the cane fields,
and like medicine, the vaporized scent of it heals,
and fills meh empty spaces filling up,
Caroni could cup- my destiny in her veined hands,
in every riverbed encircling sunburnt grasslands,
that would harvest and invoke some memory that ah had inherited-
with a scented freshness for a Saturday at dawn,
a violet robe that nature put on,
bambooing itself through the grass,
and so too would cane also come to pass.
But this central wind have a rhapsody,
and these purple stalks trap a certain melody of brustles,
but in a violent twang that we never understood too well,
and to tell of it almost taboo to a westernized tongue,
but to the rhythm of a drumerless drum,
I could translate time into being a relevant reality-
and the sweetened tragedy stood as a smoke-screen to filter out tobacco,
die-versify de trade,
and to see the face of a people fade
between crops,
Taino to Kalinago to Amerindian to what
crocheted my conscience to these fields,
to Africa where they would steal
labourers to work for the life of sugar,
cutlassing through the feelings of a disconnected granddaughter,
but remembering to mehself that blood thicker than water
would ever be,
in dreams I would see the plantations all being set on fire,
ravaging a landscape, a colonial empire,
sending the warning up and over the hills-
Haiti, Jamaica, Mexico until-
even my Trinidad coloured and starched a night sky in red,
see, these cane fields bled-
the voice of a voiceless people,
in harvest, in war, in rebellion, in the dance of a festival-
and to the bajhans and mantras of east-indian labourers,
20,000 falling unemployed one day because-
of the crossed priorities of a rum republic.
So we subject-
these promised lands to breathe a different air about us
that come like a cursed memory verse
to mock any advancements we might make,
either now, or later.
But we have made an-
uncertain step carved by anxious feet in Caroni’s soil,
too fertile to care about these anticipated spoils,
the children of the cane,
and again the familiar episode of the innocence of a child
ruptures and cuts this country straight down the middle,
see
because- Sean Luke was only 5 years old
and only if these fields could talk then
they would silence the world,
but they would never speak
because our ears not ready to hear their story,
and so a battered king sugar descends from his glory,
never to raise his head to a red sky
again.

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.

Blog Action Day

In commemoration of Blog Action day, the issue I have decided to highlight is that of illegal cell towers...an environmental threat. The photo shown in this post was taken this morning while sitting at my bedroom window which shows the close proximity of this cell tower to my home, moreso, my room.

In the efforts of taking legal action against the erection of this tower, the courts are yet to call the case, which shows the efficency of our legal system...

Below is a list of the risks that are faced by persons in my neighbourhood, myself included... the human/animal environment.

Internationally acknowledged experts in the field of RF research have shown that RF of the type used in digital cellular antennas and phones can have critical effects on cell cultures, animals, and people in laboratories and have also found epidemiological evidence (studies of communities, not in the laboratory) of serious health effects at "non-thermal levels," where the intensity of the radiation was too low to cause heating. They have found:

Increased cell growth of brain cancer cells(4)
A doubling of the rate of lymphoma in mice(5)
Changes in tumor growth in rats(6)
An increased number of tumors in rats(7)
Increased breaks in double and single stranded DNA, our genetic material(8)
2 to 4 times as many cancers in Polish soldiers exposed to RF(9)
More childhood leukemia in children exposed to RF(10)
Changes in sleep patterns and REM type sleep(11)
Headaches caused by RF exposure(12)
Neurologic changes(13) including
Changes in the blood-brain-barrier(14)
Changes in cellular morphology (including cell death)(15)
Changes in neural electrophysiology (EEG)(16)
Changes in neurotransmitters (which affect motivation and pain perception)(17)
Metabolic changes (of calcium ions, for instance)(18)
Cytogenetic effects (which can affect cancer, Alzheimer's, neurodegenerative diseases)(19)
Decreased memory, attention, and slower reaction time in school children(20)
Retarded learning in rats indicating a deficit in spatial "working memory"(21)
Increased blood pressure in healthy men(22)
Damage to eye cells when combined with commonly used glaucoma medications(23)

Taken from: http://www.cyburban.com/~lplachta/safeweb2.htm

Another dimension of population control maybe..

Backyard Blessing

My heart beats together with the earth’s biorhythms,
My back against her soil and my hair is interlocked in- this grassy surface.
I look fearlessly up at the skies but the blue bewilders me and so shrinks my eyes,
But only to behold it better.
For today I received a letter
Written with the penmanship of water,
Dotting my face, falling from my mother’s flower bucket.
I inhale the green, the overpowering freshness, of this
Paradise in my back yard.
Where these suns set stages for birds that glad-ly and so effortlessly
Call the evening to its close,
And my clothes are made into passage ways for these evening breezes.
For when she breathes it’s- The very air of life
That stifles the day, to usher in the night.
This air that now creates a chill and its constant flow sometimes is spilled
Into my nostrils, filling my senses with her essence.
Mother is here and I feel her presence.
Only Naturally.

-Arielle John