After Cain

Silence of blood
Stains earth from harrowed veins
Piercing night as it exhales
Finality of breath
Erasing its redness
Midwives cropped out of cane stalks
Bear witness
To a passage of birthright
Delivering labour pains into the night
Profaning its peace
And on this rock mother Trinity conceives
Embalmed in a silhouette of nature’s embrace
Where dawn conceals
Birth pangs behind space…
Of a morning’s glory
This crimson veil could silence the story
Of a nation sustaining
Dialogue of salt waters
And the North East trades
Bring dreams of outsiders
Dictating a free-form dance with ancestors
Massaging their spirits to shape hill tops
And clay pots
Never weaned of a Creole hand
So too was Trinity defined:
Cosmopolitan…
Syrian,
East Indian,
Chiney,
African…
But not one
Could escape the sand of hour glasses
Refineries coughed out the scent of molasses
Where broken hearts
And a still-born promise
Are left to ferment within memories
Of sugar
And we still looking back
To the vile slave master…
Cain
Calls me “son”
And unto him I say “father”
But Trinity herself ought to know him better

This man was made exile
From the grit of his soil
And for hours he toil
Outside his hometown
But earth bears only the frown of his labour
So upon this land he charts his plunder
Where ship-wrecks are molded from steel
Threads cut from the seed of outlaws
And the crime-waves he brought to shore
Lines due south
Mapped out
His course from the tide of Atlantic
So christen him pirate…
But roots don’t break ties
With the ground it was bred
And from this fruit
A nation’s offspring is fed
For it is here that Cain settles
Down
Between bed
Sheets are stained…
First Soddom,
Then Babylon
Now Trinity profaned

Eve could harness love
Inside her crooked veins
But after Cain…
There is only
Heartbreak
This victim of rape
Counts more coffins than blessings
And only her breath
Gives its fragrance to winds
Blowing east
Where a tortured soul
Finds release within silk
Cotton trees…
Were prized for the secrets they spilled
But grass blades of Laventille
Can’t stomach this filth
Can’t
Heal the madness
Can’t
Stifle this carnage
And between these years
Old man Cain
Remain
Savage.

‘Cause on this page
Time-keepers have written
That crimes were carved out of islands
Born west
But even the guiltless
Were given to slaughter…
Houses built from the grain
Of gun powder
For the April shower
Only cool down the rage
Until Newsday front page
Cultivates another story
Pressed-out from the Cain…
Fields of war
Torn graves eroded
Flesh decays
Bones are harvested
Grief is vaporized and
Twilight consumes it
Night brings cover
And behind this blanket…
Trinity forgets
Farewells are left
For the sun
To settle in
‘Cause when gun smoke fades
We soak up this wreckage
A nation left in the pits of bondage
Life…
Lost its bearing
Since Europe made landfall
And a backyard drain
Could only recall
That its courses were carved out of blood
Streams never to speak of its making
Choked in
Phantoms of fear landscaping
This womb that clutches maternal grief
Into hands that contour the face of forefathers
Relief constrained behind children’s laughter
Where peace lies broken before mistrust
To mis-place memories
Behind clouds of dust
But our roots will never depart from the earth
So mangrove mops up defiled after-birth…
After Cain.

Copyright © 2009 by Brandon Sandy

Trans-mission

A mission vaulted actross the stars...channeling our voice in song and script:

HELLO!?

Are you out there listening?

Can you hear me calling out?

Can you see me through the rain?

If you are…

Then please tell me what’s your name

Are you human like myself

…Or not?

HELLO!?

Do you comprehend my words?

Are you searching like I am?

If you are…please let me know.

*PAUSE*

I’ve been waiting 20 years

And i still haven't got a clue

Is it fear that keeps you silent?

Perhaps you’re speechless…is it true?

Have you travelled all the galaxies?

Have you found the source of life?

I'd give anything to hear your voice...

Tonight.

HELLO!?

Do you know the God above?

Has He made you in His image?

Did He show you how to love?

Can you tell me where you are?

Are there planets like my own

Or do you ride a shooting star?

Is it worth being called your home?

If you hear me crying out…

Would you even care?

Are there others in your company?

Or…

Is it just you out there?

If you’re not sure what to say…

Then just give me a sign

And should i pass away tonight

Then tell my kids…sometime

Do you ponder on the past?

Do you worry like I do?

Does the future of uncertainty

Mean anything to you?

Perhaps you’re just another guy

Searching for something more

Perhaps I’m just not listening

Perhaps you’ve spoken before

Or perhaps you just don’t want to know

And you just won’t lend your ear

Or perhaps you stand beside me…

Right here.

HELLO!?

Can i ask a little more?

Are you staring through the night sky?

Have you seen the planets fall?

Do you know what lies far beyond…

The shadows before my eyes?

Are you laughing now because you know

That it’s only a matter of time?

Are you tired of my babbling?

Are you asking yourself why?

Or does my voice find only deafness…

Of the sky?

HELLO!?

This is Joe transmitting here

And It’s lonely on this planet…

Please answer…if you’re there

Are we a million years apart?

Are you just beyond the sky?

I’ll be waiting for your answer

Till the end.

HELLO!?...

Science/poetry

A grieving scientist takes his fisrt shot at the word. The outcome, perhaps to the likeness of this:

SPONTANEOUS DEPRESSION DISORDER (ie SORROW)

My lips quiver rapidly
In sway to reflex neural induction
As my lens now accommodates, bringing your cadaver into focus
A faint rubor coats my bulbar conjunctiva as scleral vessels dilate,
Spontaneously
Eyes grow sodden as lacrimal ducts secrete copious amounts of saline solution
Bowing to all gravitational force as it trickles down my zygomatic prominence
Thereby irritating my hypersensitive skin.
A postnasal drip cascades my soft pharyngeal tonsil
As my nasal mucosa profusely ejects mucinic fluid of low viscosity
Again descending to gravity’s whim, flowing along the maxillary cleft.
A neurogenic shift now arrests my cardiovascular system
As my vagal tone appears to increase, thereby inducing a state of bradycardia
Perhaps in sync of skeletal stature
Conceding the tension of hamstring fibers
Bringing my patella to par with earth.
The recurrent flexion-extension of biceps
Crafting longitudinal waves as my clenched metacarpals exert force against
This casket meld of steel-chrome alloy
And behind this transient anomalous demeanor
Lies the intangible flux of serotonergic stimuli
Intensified upon this convection cascade
As enhanced kinetic output staggers the delicate phase equilibria
Giving particulate stimulus to vapor’s ascent
And casting my retinal field in vertical incline
Witness the darkened hues of towering cumulonimbus clouds
Suspended against gravity (for once) by jet streams and frontal pressures
Cast over this imminent logic
In explicit accord to empirical data...
Your intercostals no longer distend
No breath to bathe your terminal bronchioles
Naught but the static stains of plasma
Pooled beneath your cryogenic dermis
In oath of quantum existence
Where only the crecarytenoids quiver
To fashion now my vocals into sobs

Spoken Word

Whipping threads of nonexistence into being

Plaiting words from whistles and waking

Breath behind sleeping scabbards…

Culling Spirit and crafting flesh from

Sonnets...

Working bone with vocal splinters

And wrapping…

Veins around these acappellaic arches

Where liquids currents carve their way into courses

And breathing plasma crosses rhythms

Of harp and trumpet sounding pulses

Tapering free staggered verses and

Pronouncing…

Sharp notes and sharper edges

Giving way unto rock beds that buckle and

Bow to sunken spaces

Where gene pools assemble to count generations

And the wake of contoured faces

Do resemble spoken words

By whose greatness threads of vowels wrapped in…

Phrases finding meaning

Rest upon His voice alone.

Copyright © 2009 by Brandon Sandy

Alice and I

Content to be alone,
I had zoned myself an island
Shattered by swash to stain resonance
And…scattered pieces of rock, my footstool
Speaks of conscience, battered by tide and
Splinters of driftwood spill
Upon slate of dissected shorelines
To still whipped froth of solitude
Yearning within my soul
…mate.

Then horizon east had conceived,
Given birth to she, though deceived,
Would persist in serene gesture
And stream forth to rest a bruised cheek
Upon a rugged shoulder of mine.
Eyes like craters bordering lakes,
Bellowing, and breaks enclosure to pour
Gaseous plasma condensing to pearls,
I endure…her nature fragile,
Paradoxically sterile by law
That should I flinch
And a tear strike the floor,Her soul would shatter.

Exhaling deep,
Breath, asleep within chambers of a castle…
Grief, aged in mist of “love”
Countless doves, released to complex
A search for Prince Charming
Never to come
Restrained gag reflex, failing
Shut my eyes to blind witness to a dying Alice
Who regurgitates rotting fragments of she
And should the stench of it speak,
It would only cry “innocent”.

Surmounting the strength,S
he concedes, to confess the source
Of her distress...
A rabbit hole given dimensions, dug deep
By desires…metal wires that bend to regress
And suspend a surreal chess board
With knights to guard the brittle heart of a
Crimson queen
Whose gameplay would seem to be
Fan-fares driven by dreams…of a mad hatter.

I shrug,
But her grip fixed, precision,
Fingers making incisions
Upon a toughened skin of mine
To infuse a potion sublime in truth, yet fiction
IV route, setting motion a chemical trance
And enticing my soul to a dance
To unlock a world of unknown,
Toes tapping a séance of her obsession…
The rabbit hole.

She has seduced me,
Trap, stacked by wit
I awaken, to witness myth unfolding of her
An exhibition of art that appears to incur
A Da Vinci essence between us.
For then, perhaps, my soul were a canvas,
And a brush of her choked innocence
Would submit to a rush of her…breath again
Tapering unsteady strokes to unhinge, with power
A greater meaning to her words alone,
Undulating tone adjusting font size
And gestures giving colour.

To prove herself, even greater
Her vision, spectacular
Eyes glistened heavenward
Leaping toes of imagination
Toward a sky whose womb gives birth by will
And still, be her steps upon icebergs
That fill to brim a floating castle
Harboring mixed intention of wedding feast…
She and IBut accursed be a turbulent sky
That aborts a fetal marriage,
To spell m-i-s-c-a-r-r-i-a-g-e
And then, love within a womb
Crashes…to earth again.

My soul, shut tight to screen a canvas
And she would no longer speak
To paint portrait of ourInfatuation state and sever ties.
Never again do eyes meet to seek
A clogged rabbit hole, that conceals
Memories of the weary and weak.
In finality of time, she is contented
By pyramidal vision through glasses of wine
And my soul be at rest by allegiance to none
Though her tears cannot help but dissolve my indifference
In the battering blink of an eyelid…
My dear Alice, perhaps, had too much to drink.

Copyright © 2009 by Brandon Sandy

cArD gAmE

White clouds flowing over the hills,

Parched earth, barren with age...in lifeless bliss,

Fields and plains, rivers and valleys...

Await, await thy thunderous voice.

Then trumpet sounds! The lion roars!

A voice! a voice! the messenger cries:

"Arm thy friends, shun thy foes...blaze forth your deck...lay it straight."

Summon thy crowds, make it quick...battles await. battles await,

Again, the lion roars..........quiet now........be still thy foes and friends.

Now harps engage thy peaceful prayer...

Tick Tock, Tick Tock......

Red fluid oozing forth,

Reviving the hills, thy river's life,

Upon the valleys, transcending to dust,

Beyond the hills, and turning to rain,

From barren earth, an army springs,

Red as diamond, a king and his queen,

Pour forth in riches and rage.

"Thy victory impossible...no glory...no glory!"

The enemy's voice, eastward rising,

A red queen, challenged in greed and envy,

Bearing a heart, battered and bruised,

From within which love and betreyal intertwine,

Her sorrow, thy enemie's immortal cup,

Her kingdom's goblet of delight.

But spades can pierce thy heart,

Rising from the hills, an army of darkness,

The Reaper's spawn, enemy of enemies,

Consuming the heart of a tortured queen,

Her army, vanquished...her battle, over,

And all resound in awe:"Not even a king could save her brittle heart.

Now clubs with axes make their mark,

Who dares challenge a red king and his queen?

Three can play this gruelling game,

But spades return to the hills of birth,

"We have pierced the heart of sorrow" says he,

"From whence we came, we return again."

Now two stake heads...decks apart,

And clubs do batter the soul within,

Where riches and thrones reside,

More power than jewels and jems can create,

A red kingdom, crushed and conquered,

Over the hills, descending valleys,

Red fluid receeding its deck,

Defeat sounds for a king and his queen,

And the crowds will bow...and the crowds will bow.

A voice! a voice! the messenger cries:

"Fold your deck with a crown of glory...to black be victory...to black be victory."

Judgement is passed, the lion roars,

Now harps engage thy peaceful prayer...

GAME OVER.

Copyright © 2009 by Brandon Sandy

Space

Steuuuups.....this world too big, and yet rediculously small.
They say a call to one is a call to all but...
Please gimme some space in this place.
Somebody untie d red, white and black bandanna wrapped around mih mouth
And let me breathe...out into the open so ah could expell mih frustration.
Tell THEM to stop buryin d reality of an indifferent society and for goodness sake,
Let mih SPEAK...for once...or twice....
Thrice might be too much for too many to handle,
And four will make things even, but the reality is odd.
Ah could lament the whole of human civilization, and lambaste God's creation
Till thy Kingdom come to take mih away...and salvation could finally numb mih flickering tongue. Tell mih how long ah must wait for the lungs of society to heal, so they could finally exhale
...Mih innocence?
And consequence is a conditioned reflex to experience...
But ah tired wait on the pretense of a backward system to dictate times and dates....
Ah could debate against a wall of false integrity
And get them to change mih identity
But why should i change me?
And if yuh silence mih voice then ah have no choice but to mime...me....
So i'm quittin with all this gameplay,
'Cause i'm breakin d stone tablet that forbids me to say...what ah have to say.
Mediocrity is sin, but for now i'll bear it
As of tomorrow, i'm having none of it. ah done.

Copyright © 2009 by Brandon Sandy

David

His footprints deep
Gashed into cliffs cut steep and hanging
Brief stops at the edges to weep…
A grief-stricken heart of his
Could speak
Of society, shaken
Perhaps taken too far to redeem
Awakened by winds of mistrust
A sense of worth adrift, by immoral gusts
Invisibly tossed by spells of pride...
And lost…in the eye of beast that creates
A history of riots,
A Goliath who regurgitates
Splinters of mankind, too broken to ride a storm
Of swells.

Perhaps our fallen ancestors
Do create this mist, enfolding humanity
And blinding our tracks to eternity, with
Clouds of cataracts...and our only hope is through
A David, looking past
Untainted cracks of glass
To visualize our pain
And reverse damage done by a bloodstained Cain
Whose marriage would only spell…
Miscarriage of integrity
And he…stripped humanity of dignity
So he…fathered iniquity
He…dissected harmony
He…is prince of gluttony
He’s vanity
He’s tyranny
He’s apathy
…insanity.

He…is David’s adversary
Goliath of society that chars
Bits of our innocence…into ashes
And a kiss of fate perpetuates perception that we’re…
Locked in a war between deception...and redemption
Holding our mortal breath,
To erase painful memories, so we forget...
That greater is He who holds the key
To our salvation
…but regret stirs anger
That brims upon a future of ours
And hours spent in battle with a beast
Who devours and feasts on morality
Wears, and tears a fabric of culture
In check-check mate on chess board
Of global affairs.

We are descendants of a David
Whose war cry is a sentence that outlasts
The fabric of time
So let our ear become a canvas,
And his tongue, a brush
That whips by the hand of justice
And may a thrust of his words feed
A mustard seed of faith that becomes
Our projectile rock to lunge forth from slings
Of truthfulness…
And steps of patience be our harness
To channel the crosshairs of hope
Retract and release, with precision
A rock of faith in flight…
Strike to spell death of a giant slave master
And ripples disperse, thereafter
Through depth of a gene pool
To salvage, remnants of a trapped generation…
Regeneration by He whose victory
Brings liberation…from an epoch of slavery.

Copyright © 2009 by Brandon Sandy

Breaking her in

Break…of dawn
Heralds morning to begin
And mourning within, a furnace of passion
Speaks, a blacksmith who seeks
To meld alloy of man and beast
And heat that radiates from compact sheets of asphalt
Ascends with incense of mud mas, J’ouvert
Giving way to haze of putrid masquerade
Foul stench of human desire, untamed
On the streets.

Takin a wine and brushing a slate
To agitate, the two-third animal in yuh waist
And exfoliate morality by friction
To expose a skin of original innocence,
Indifference preserved, in a layer of saline trust
Sinful lust…
Sinful lost souls of carnal feast,
Carnival.

Drops of passion like sweat beads
Sputter, infused desire and spill
Down a gutter of free will
And vaporize to mist blinding conscience
To silence, a spirit of self control
Brim filled, and overflow with vengeance
To dispense, the Obeah man’s prescription
With a cauldron teeming sensations of “love”
…potion preserved by infatuation
And stir, to sweeten for consumption by
A couple that stayed
A couple of minutes together.

Wicked eyes of a man’s temptation
Deceives perception of her,
And blurs judgement, swayed
To diminish restraint of a predator
Stalking prey
And watch a body of her’s gyrate
To a drum of rhythm sections
That summate a deceptive infusion of
Anesthetic to entrance and create
The animate images of her in a box
With trap doors of mirrors to envision
Satisfaction, and rolling the dice
Will reflect how you played surgeon
To fiddle with her life
And she with yours.

Tossed onto a bed of lies
Carved into a coffin that sets,
Her dignity, undressed
And you request, an instrument of incision
With ligatures for tying consequences
Of your decision to inoculate this patient
And seal, scars of a lost virginity,
Unhealed by seconds of pleasure
Ending in debt
And death by non-sterile injection
Of your soul into her’s, to beget
Infection of perpetual connection to disease
Perplexed by STDs eroding the fabric
Of a social womb at stake
And a culture that menstruates a tomb
To gestate a poisoned future…

Generations decay by grit of seeds
In polycystic ovaries, brewing death
From a graveyard of premature consent, stained
Fertile weeds of sexual vice
And taint repute of a nation that feeds
A prostitute paid by the wages of sin
…And a pill, the morning after
Doth help to conceal remnants of she
Broken apart…
Broken…heart stirs regret
And a broken her
Elevates to a pew, front row
To play Wednesday Mass
Slip silent nods to a homily
That alas, condemns her soul
And bold reception of cold ashes
Have sealed patches of innocence…broken in
…and broken down.

Copyright © 2009 by Brandon Sandy