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