Vex Poems

Vex-Poems-FB edition

"vex"-poems published on facebook 2008-2010 

Word-Smith

 Tuesday, December 21, 2010 at 3:42pm

We grew up on dishes of television sets
laid across a table of family suffrage
cause children should be seen and never
heard, learnt disappearing acts
with superman skills of flight
breaking skin, cancelling cartoons
tunning into news reports of mothers
screams, and wagging fingers of Lord Jesus
beginning lessons of fear for these were last days
But first nights meant you never got a rewrite
just more lessons tied up under placard disputes
and you learnt cynicism from words at 7 and 8

now these words have Hiroshima effect
turning life into still photography
have no commercial base
no censorship,
no pultizer prize to recognize
that these words transform
these pages into death pellets
heavy doses of structured language
organizing riots for this poet
is the pawns sent into the front line
hand tools that tear at guts
of the onlooker these stationary
rifles and knifes. With our words
we are your new aged McGuivers

Cause you never see us coming
never understood that brains
is worth more than brauns
those well trained studs shaped
by a speech written to keep our brains
away from pen and paper for they
knew that if we mastered pen
it would do more damage than fire water
and their gun powder, for we might
tilt this crab barrell walk out reddened
by anger and clamp our way through history

And we know we will die but not again like dogs
mated out and tired. We birthed our arrogance
of neglect and hunger and brought to our presence
wrapped up like Santa's gift this talent meant for Television
took it to the streets and watched it feed us with
the piped piper rage and watched you dance to it

Cause this is the way the world
carves wordsmiths
with memory and life beating words out of us.

29-downgrow -

 Monday, December 20, 2010 at 1:05am

my birth was scheduled
too heavy to enter
the only child she would bear
constanty developing habits
of looking up at adults
from growing smaller
than anticipated, teased
into believing the myth of down
growth, soon to learn of oppression
hidden under skin colour and class
lessons unscheduled, unplanned
mother coaxed them away with training rods
bible and songs that hid these burdens
from eyes, no surprise I now see
the path lined with puns and ridicule
suppressing all desires believing in no regret
but timid enough to never try many things once
to walk away and wish I had
completly trained in the path of no part
but raised with opportunity
and 29 years later
the journey takes me to the days
of your poetry that connected dots
between the distance of our general gap
for time was not the only difference
but thoughts and lessons learnt
you would trade dollars for my colour
and we looked at different images
dissappointed because we both
"downgrow".

Revisted

Tuesday, October 12, 2010 at 2:25pm

in caged
bright birds
looked like
angels fallen
unable to
ever ascend
heavenward.

DEAR GOD

 Sunday, August 15, 2010 at 1:20pm

I walked before I crept
always did things
in a different order
caught on the game
faster than the road runner
made my mark
played my part
failed a couple of times
but made up with three or more
hotter but definitely crazy brods

Heard about my life
through other peoples eyes
seemed I done slipped away
From the divine order
Randomly giving my sou
for another taste of that loving
and while I say this I will turn away
so that this temptation wont pull me away

So let my frame show
how very sorry
I am cause my flesh
and my mind just don’t
want to relate tied up
in some dream of being
like my father a dead beat
dad with so many women
he can’t remember which kid
got money last week

I aint here for excusin
g or accusing my conscience
of a wasted life
All this is is a prayer to God
just thanking you for this angel
I think I will call her wife.

Step Softly

 Saturday, August 14, 2010 at 11:16pm

stepping gently
to avoid broken
wrist legs
or even silent
river of sweat
to give chase
to a handkerchief
storing the evidence
of labour toiled against

stepping gently
to save flesh
from piercing
through like needles
and swords to break
through and hasten steps

stepping gently
to hide tell tale signs
that reveal
that though his soul
was gentle
he still couldn’t
avoid the harsh
burn of a woman scorn

practise run

Saturday, August 14, 2010 at 7:34pm

because he has a wife
throwing the keys
into grass blindly
into the night
will serve to
ignite his anger
so she knows
that she must quit
teh habit of his lips
and touch before
she releases these

To Haitians living abroad (unedited)

 Saturday, January 30, 2010 at 12:02pm

A young lady pulled this poem out of me when she called Haiti the land of her ancestors called America her home when her mother and her brother and sisters live on the Island:

she poked her head into her ancestry
dismissed the reality of the barefooted days
exchanged them for malls and higher education
forgot the days when the fruit of trees warmed her lips
trickled down her skin teaching her that with eyes closed
she can feel pleasure like little bubbles dance on the ends
of her skin. she forgot that America came only after
she had learned the dance on the streets the moans
she would later use in the sheets. She discarded
the way anger lingered in her stomach when the heat rose
through the cracks in the slab dragging her brother
out amongst the boys heavy with curiosity and dreams
and how he layed wet in the streets his blood rising
with the water that made his body like a cast
a frame waiting on a soul to refill it so he could race
after her with stick and shouts determined to make her cry

she poked her head into her ancestry for a trip
and met bodies that used to say hello
stare at her ass and whistle about how she has grown
just swelling from the heat. Reminding her of the faint scent
that graced her dreams. And she called America home
said I am glad to be home to these malls and higher education
I am glad to not be sleeping on the streets
plugging through this valley of the shadow of death
I am glad to be home and no longer afraid
no matter the way it holds me the way the dream
of her food used to hold me. No matter the way I no longer sleep
she poked her head into her past and knows what she will see in her future.

nailed and weeping

 Monday, December 21, 2009 at 9:40pm

Nailed to this position
eyes peircing
through her opposition
she watches the daunting stare
meant to cure her cares
pull her into remission
teach her submission

But to pull these nails
is to leave pieces
still pinned to this stake
as a sacrifice to sanity
to grip normalcy

to pull these nails
that bind her to the sweetness of you

to pull these nails
is to loose you
to sacrifice sanity
for a grip of normalcy

So she wept

OASIS

 Saturday, October 24, 2009 at 11:57pm

sometimes when there is no one around and the room is small and private
i see you looking back at me with bated breath and outstretched arms
and i believe, So i run to you opening nerve endings so as to not miss
a trace of your touch just to feel u, smell you and taste you
Its always then my eyes open and my mind awakens to remind me
that i am alone and u have long left me here in the wilderness

in nights

 Monday, May 18, 2009 at 6:53pm

Memory chants these incessant pangs
heavy like stones on roofs with
no stone thrower in sight and prayers ascending
to remove this constant headaching that touching
the spirit forcing you to never close you eyes in sleep
looking for the one who is lurking in the dark
the one who rhythm sound different in night
the one you wear red to ward away from the baby
stoping them coo coo- sounds from maiming them
wrap them in red make it look like blood a run.

In this night when your voice invokes
no other sensation but this corrugating fear
I cling to pillows doubled up under chest
twisted into the position of birth

in this night i sometimes fear to take breathe
fear to take stance
fear to evolve
but somehow i emerge
for morning comes
dashing fear and mobilizing dreams
to will a way

metaphors to an ex

Saturday, May 2, 2009 at 7:39pm

Grabbing metaphors I heal my pain with salt
seeing my thoughts on paper is third degree burns
distorted reality like a jaged knife makes me question the past
from the day we met when our eyes was the atlas
to this meandering futuring this try our one chance

our only dress rehearsal
and though the costume fit you, the director, drive home the idea
that this does not work the whole concept is wrong
and we theh night before the grand performance sit waiting
expecting leading ladies to go home weep and begin again
with no reciprocity, no renumeration, no reward

But I have learnt patience, seen longing and found a woman
in places they should be extinct, in this dungle heap
I have raised up hope in my chest felt it extract
all my dreams, unearthed my soul
because i cannot see life without you

But here in this handful of metaphors
gripped tightly i remember you as sand
slipping away with every touch
every whisper, every kiss
for each is a grip on your heart
and you would prefer to leave thru lope holes
than to believe them to be held
in a cup pulling you into safety

now i long for skin on skin
like the warm pleasure of fur
wrapped around my body
loosing my heartbeat to the rhythm of your clit

now i long for whispers
for laughter
for your smile
for moments
for no other lovers
for honesty

now i long for this pain to end
and i write these metaphors
with my souls ink
squeezed out of memory
these past tears rent my soul
and i wish i had not met you at all

JAMDOWN- I WANT TO WRITE YOU

 Friday, April 24, 2009 at 10:19am

Tight lipped I hold up my hands to you as if in worship
to beg for words of understanding or a sign of presence
Holding in my fears tight within my womb, squeezed beneath
my sorrow, and i am ready for some version some song
to resound through me and blast me into knowing me through you
so these hands can write it down in black and white

These hands want to speak your song share it like painters
whose vision rest on canvas, outstretched hands desires
to be your mirror, your eyes your breathe borrowing your memory
tasting your pain sprinkled with some joy. I want to write you:

Your muddy streets and dirty feet married in joy
Your round women with life tied up under their chest
Your peoples searching for hope through garbage piles
some finding it in each other's eyes some hiding their joy in small
treasure chest tided up under their groins
For the moment it is revealed they have lost
thier right of passage through the streets,
they who become victim in second

I want to write down your history
I want my hands to speak your story
The ancestors to tell you to listen

to my mother who taught me to love my girl

 Thursday, April 2, 2009 at 11:57am

Jealous of the way i pass time with women
U introduce me to ur man
Christ, forget ur errors you bellow

with silence and dont eat from my fork
chants and dont sleep in my bed and dont you hug me again
Dont call me mother call me by my first name instead
And dont stop by with your women friends
Cause i see the way she looks at you that the two
of you have already gone to bed

but christ and I have already met
Once before on this ur road to Dam
all -a -us and the scent of hatred
hangs on me heavy still.

In the same way you would straighten my nose
Quarrell about the thickness of my hair
And talk about my white genes
which inspired in me this need for garvey
you have tried to make me hate her
but once again you have failed cause
I have never seen you with a man
and behind closed doors you gossiped
with friends
and I imagined what those stories entailed
and dreamed of days when i could
hide myself away in secrecy of a woman

And I have lost myself for days in ur scent
and it seemed as a child i loved you first
through your absence and presence
and now have learnt that I love now
The way you have taught me

But still you try to push through and still I
try to show you that
"if you aint never seen me with her then you aint never seen me alive"
Cause now in her arms i breath
and she pushes to anger the way my teenage years
pushed me off edges and kicked off ur doors
stormed through hatred
and opened those doors that evn now
remain wide shut away from viewing eyes

Mother I love her cause you loved me first
and i will hope to forget the hurt
but loving u is difficult if you try to make me forget
all the things that make me

Dear son ( written for lesbian mothers everywhere)

 Thursday, April 2, 2009 at 12:25am

dear son,
I know you have heard you mother sleeps
with women and she loves it, and women love her back
dear son I can not impress upon you my need to be
honest with and let you see that this life is mine
and as uncomfortable as the streets makes it for you
have a mother and another mother labelled family in this dark
uncompromising world, first thing first I love you
I love you the way the sea loves the sand
I love you to the depths of the ocean and beyond
I learnt this love from a woman whose hands caressed me softly and though
She did not directly contribute to ur birth
I birthed you for her so that I could love you
And i gave you the opporunity to live life differently
So dont get too caught up in the way the world sees things
Cause they are blind to the kind of love it takes to have you
and her in my heart

Dear son I love you
Eventhough your tongue taunts me with hatred I
love you, because that fire we eat up and spit out
is my fire burnt and changed to fit you
a fire i got from her

Dear son if you cant see the way that the world fools you
to believe that my love for you and her arent real
remember the bed time stories
the changed diapers the bad report cards
the many days of drama that u unleashed on me
and the arms that held you
these arms held her first
these lips told her i love you first
and son

all you know to be love
i gave you
because
she first loved me

smoke

Wednesday, April 1, 2009 at 11:21pm

So when the smoke clear before You know the battle is won
whne filt and sweat permeate the air, and all is disregarded as fear
a rumour arises in the souls of men that they are invisible
they are angels gods sent here to take life- give life-them
drown themselves in the pleasures, learn little lessons,
drag down who fi get conquer and rise like man
cause man a man

but in the mist a few eyes sight the sorrow and the despair
cause everytime the smoke a clear vision blur
and even the light get dark, but the few that a sight sit
on a "now"-ledge and a disperse the news across the land
Man a man because dem believe that nature make to help I an I

So that when the smoke rising heaven word dem know
the youths dem a bus the gun dem bred the girl dem
chase the hustle and a turn fool and cyah catch the wise.
Dem loss inna a battle whe the words dem inscribe in backs with blood sweat and tears
long before them mother understand birthpang
before the chinese know fi say yes man

in the smoke man an man nah realize that this freedom
to talk freedom to write was granted them in a disguise
it was to teach them bout christ so that the trick them use pan Africa
Could work here- i give you christ you give us labour and land
It had nothing to do with any mule and forty acres of land

the thing that surprise me most is how when the smoke rise in backyard
from chilum pipes we no realize that the black race is syphisus
upward struggle downward success

So that as the smoke clear before the battle is won
We think we did it with a few youths ready fi revolt
But what is revolution with reform
and what is reform without thought

So while the smoke clear recognize that the civil fight for equality
was a war, that traversed gender, sexuality and race
Stop send out the juvenile when we all need to be here
cause when the smoke clear and the battle is one
is the one with insight who will live this life

romance verses

 Thursday, December 25, 2008 at 2:28pm

hey there romance I have a problem

I have no letters to write down the way she makes me feel
The three words that you have given dont seem to suffice
They seem to drown me with tears and slowly kill me
this me that I have lazily become, this "miss my father to death
wondered if everyone has forgotten the rapes as yet" -me.

Suddenly at a point in time when i should be slowing down
I am speeding up and it cause i want to drown myself in her smile,
Cause I am suddenly breathing the air that makes my life worthwhile
And i am suddenly intrenched in a feeling that seems like I am selling
my soul to taste her last breathe. And I suddenly feel like i am alive

Breathe.. now i want to work overtime. Drown my self in must do
And no longer in self pity or sorrows. And she moves me with those eyes
that look into my soul as i feel her breathe heave and its only then my soul hides

Romance i have a problem cause I love her beyond loves and above trust
I love her into her own existence even bought me a bottle of patience
I love her into a silence that says I am way older when you ready give me phone call

And i love her
with no other
I desire no other see no other
Forsake all else and indulge in memories
just to ease my lonliness

see romance i have a problem
I feel this but there is not enough time to show this
romance i need her
but she holds back as she creates a dream of her future

Romance i have this problem cause its not the first time
I have been loving her
beyond my own time

If my heart could break

 Monday, December 22, 2008 at 1:30am

I woke up one morning knowing
that the laziness of an era
had found itself into my life.
This era where we order
food instead of cooking,
we put the clothes in the machine
instead of washing it with our hands
or we ask our friends to write the paper
instead of struggling over it for ourselves

I woke up and found that it was easier to say I love you than to do it.
I admit it. I am in love but i would rather chill than do it.

I wonder if the same would be true if my heart could break?

Just my luck

 Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 3:09am

So u have heard my heart chant down babylon and raise fury over
things backra did when he in his financial state, bred woman and set
man to have dominion and by extension weaken black when he dubbed
him stud- horse bredder, not brother. Then woman shall in her glory
lift leg in sterrups and give birth to a nation unaccustomed to love
that to beat and inflict wounds is as sure as breath. Now children lay
headless and amputated in make then shift graves. Found buried miles from home
this restless spirit romes, from africa across oceans and onto lands.

Yet still you see no comparison in this fire that consumes my soul when i see u.
I have moved from poet purposed to state the newspapers reports
chant insight into bedrooms after poem was heard on stages. I move to: this woman
lover, who chants a fire on you, who will not accept this love. On you
who would much rather run, than stay wrapped up in my arms and bear these
ignominious compliments on your beauty.

You see this fire not as you have seen this fire silently desiring
to undress and caress the very string that forces forth poetry
from your soul onto this my paper. You have become my voice i your canvas
I burn through you. Through me your spirit reluctantly romes, restless.

but I hear you complain about ur inability to, I hear you complain about
your desire to and amidst this confusion i waited
amidst my confusion i suppressed
and now i lift hand and white flag look to the hills for the coming
of the one who in whirlwinds shall lift the sorrow of ppl and mend broken hearts
For i want now to forget my love for you, and live above

goodbye and may jah guide

goodbye

Sunday, September 21, 2008 at 12:42pm

so i fell in love again and the funny thing is at sixteen i was adamant that this would never happen to me now this looks like the 40th time i have taken this trip and god i am so tired.

When i saw the potential and the possibility of love
I walked in, predisposed to the possibility of the end
coming much quicker than the beginning
but I strot in head first and feet kicking that i would
do this right and nevr write another sad poem again
and when the lights were about to come up
and the curtain were to be drawn it became apparent
that there would be no show, no grand finale
to this musical, just a program a "coming
soon" note. I hate being right.
Damn this gift of experience and wisdom

There is no lines like the show must go on
just life and i wanted you in it

but life will go on
and I shall write no more sad poems
cause i hold the memory of a smile
and i love you still

ahh bwoy- what more can i say

 Saturday, August 30, 2008 at 3:54pm

There is no poetry in these lines to be writ
No sweet metaphors, no heavy trut
mixed with spices of the literary, just a despise
carved into my brown skin and slippery tongue
for once agin uptown you have done me wrong

the poem you all requested (stop use white ppl strategy)

Thursday, June 19, 2008 at 5:05pm

To write this i had to close
my eyes to the fashionable smile
the uptown demeanor
the pretense that lure us into
your passion.

to write this i had to disown my politics
adapt fathers and say manley is right
the class-ism that permeates us
eats at us filling their bellies.
yow we starving, and i see why
young guns laugh at the sound of uptown

to write this i had recognize my power
that I am your Walter Rodney your GArvey
I am the reflection of good upbringing gone
harsh and my presence lingers on your lips
so u must make early morning phone calls
paint your smile to concentrate, other wise
i will squeeze you into submission
you see my fire and fear its burn

to write this i had to whisper to the ancestors
to tell them i know whom i don't want to become
the woman who subscribes and reads manners
but they only apply to those behind

to write this i now praise my mother
i now wear my pride and laughter
cause you are truly stupid
to think that to ban is to conquer your fears

I will be here, since the only right i have
is be black
and to die
and your requests cant change I

lol
Rasta have nuff power
over those who dont know themselves
find your solution in a book marked self help
rasta listen to the ancestors
cause we are the dummies on their laps
and they talk through our pencil holding hands