Castaway

I did not want to write a poem full of corpses So, I wrote a sacred pink-blue sky jeweled on the horizon Laughter as the loudest star sleeps Humor hugs every ake hole How heavy heads lay after a long day in the humid heat Caribbean moon-size and joyous dream I did not wish to speak of what should not be spoken So silence breathe into all the words A haunting I come from a language that does not write itself Our ancestors speak hurricane A thunder tongue shivering tieds and a pity revenge The mid-Atlantic is a vext anti-raddling rivers and rules Ready for reckoning knocking at the chest of men On the other side, on the other side of now there is a door where we return Every island is a hip-swaying between here and there A float in the dance to belong, rocking in the arms of the edge Where the sea is an emerald flag and palm trees praise the air Every shore is an altar of remembrance and braced on purpose peak knee of the sun rain Where prayer trembles the light, or house storm retreat We marvel and move eternal unford and unlost Hips hallowing, elbows flapping like fanning flames bare feet chained in the sand or in a concrete jungle Love taps quick the neath of the earth nack where daughters of diaspora dream And inherent journeys of flesh Where a smile is also a scar Or how my grandfather came to see about us years after he died Wearing my uncle's face Dimpled in shining eyes like two wet black beans baptized by a spirit Rhum slapped on his breath Charming man and all he was checking on his grand-babies Fear not death Fear not death, we visit kin folk there Lingering in the blood where the ocean harms tribe of the great abyss and not knowing from where or what we come and still To arrive before they could conquer us We came by shipwreck, by wind and wave pushed into the water splashing and waking the wound The wound teaches us to remember where tomorrow glows Listen Listen to the animal crying within A rooster caused directions between this world and the next There are roads that cannot be mat And there are streets that do not have names We ran, we ran, we ran away into the awkward tinted mountains Seeking maroon heals I was born borderless Mounting a dollar van like an horcious scribbling visions on a train or in an airport traveling Ritual voice and time I was born of distance In between now and then