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