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.

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!

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…”

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

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

Glory of Suns...

We were on the way to a dock yard in Chagauramus (sp?) about two fridays ago, when there was a beautiful sunset along the highway.

Hug

A little tighter and our souls could make contact,
Whoever lets go first would always be the one that-
Tries to be more careful,
Since both of us are too fearful of what could happen
If dreams attained fruition,
Being a pair geared by a similar mission,
So this hug is all that can cushion-
Reality’s blow.
Because though
We’re free to choose the way we can go,
Human longing begs yes,
But Marx’s opium pleads no
So
I am somehow always the one to first loosen my grip,
Though you embrace me up to this minute, because
I
still
hold
You
in
thought.

So we remain caught- between yearning and wanting,
And this hug goes on for seconds and counting…
…you inhale…once…and again,
Yes this hug does mean something…

-Arielle John

copyright 2005

No reclaim

In the days when Men were not afraid to cry...

Lead us not into temptation but deliver his mind from frustration felt even now.
Long-term memoirs of how often we fall short of perfection, and how we get caught when we change our direction, with road signs remaining pointed at us… but within my disgust-
I find fragments of forgiveness so I mould them into a chrysalis, to encase his wounded soul.
I extract the iridescent nectar from his tears, and combine it with the wisdom of his seventeen years, and I turn them back to alchemy’s gold.
Emotions control- all that makes us vulnerable, like shaolin blades it makes pain inevitable, and karma makes the cycle go round.
Though some things remain regrettable, and my double-dosage of pain means that his must be trebled, I replace his lamentations with a crown.
May the birds still announce his footsteps when he walks, may nature in consolation return him all he has lost, and let him divorce- himself from the past.
For presently life presents a new morning, he hears, sees and feels it, for it quenches his longing- because I believe... I see to his heart.

Copyright 2007

Three Short Pieces

Trapt
Caught between in the net of a passion on death row and a distant devotee who I should be loaning my thoughts to, but this is something I forever knew that my grip should be loosened from these penetrated desires that cause this miniscule fire to rage within the restrictions of my capillaries, but this inflammatory appeal tends to heal as it flows through veins, through god-made lanes that maintain the traffic of life as it surges and creates urges to want to, but forgetting to remind you that possibilities are drenched with the libations of the impossible nature of the matter and that focus should be marked on the latter part of sentiments and the former that represents my reality. And so, this one takes the spotlight on my stage and with lights in focus and curtains drawn, I- the anxious patron applaud the performer's standing that he can still love me despite my demanding mentality.

To Zion we go
Wandering Israelite, cast into exile from some unfamiliar terrain with scorching suns and swollen rains and sweltering warmth and blistering cold, elements of this foreign land unknown, where seeds are sown in infertile soils and thorns choke and weeds destroy good intentions like widespread pretensions of false gods and pagan culture makes way for my exodus. Lost- from birth, no fault of my own, I seek to find back my home, over seas, over sands, the promised land- Alkebulan.

Streetlight called desire.
Jiving Jazz that adds a special touch to the soft light loaned by the lonesome lamppost that stately stands to guide travelers of the night, that reveals the passion of lovers daring to become lost in each other. The cool, breezy, air ever-moving and intruding on a congregation of dried leaves that scrape the pavements as they exit into the unknown. Of the weeping piano that sobs for lost lovers and the bass that somberly uncovers the grief of some bar-ridden victim, who allowed his emotions to trick him into its fatal folly, Coloured blue and verb-less lyrically, but still expresses this misfortune and anomaly.

Copyright 2006

Let him write

Brown school shirt and khaki pants,
Rubbing his left eye with his right hand
Picture him in a forward movement,
Hesitantly, with legs straddling across a pavement,
Grazing cigarette butts and a city dust he can’t see
Because his eyes, wet and swollen shed what he
Only wished a father could understand,
But his tongue would never dare to explain it.
Because on the other hand,
Their ears are shut tight to the silent pleas
Of ink across these pages.
For he wrote with the ambition of Kings and the wisdom of sages,
Who could promise us better tomorrows.
But in the hollows of his nervous stomach-
He digests their scorn,
And in the torment of this mental havoc,
Rebellion was born,
Not only to warn
Us of who he will become on the day after this one,
But to have his feet drag and his heartbeat to run,
Into a place, and at a pace that that caused it to stop.
Not only to stop, but to erupt- into a cold silence.
Because dead souls make no noise…
And so his silenced voice harmonizes with a Charlotte street breeze,
Picture him, distressed, stumbling and with weakened knees,
For in his hands are manuscripts that recorded every semibreve,
Quaver and Note that echoed the arrangement of his life story,
This young, dreary face intensely worried- about losing himself.
See the books and pages as they cascade into the bin,
One by one,
You need to see him for who he is
For he is your own son,
And you have punctuated his dreams with a full stop.

Think!

Headache

My head slowly turns in a languid orbit
Balancing my thoughts on cerebral density
Trodding on echoing pulsations of fluid
Pain administered in a building intensity.
Hair strands I let loose left to flow over
The smoothened cliffs of these rounded shoulders,
Plunging downward to penetrate the air,
My thoughts mimicking the sound of crashing boulders.
My head laying lower than my hand on this page as I write,
Reason for poetic verse has guided my pen for the night.