Atonement

1. FELLING

Godless...
In dust, even, is found the humblest of images. That i am not. Of me is neither dust, nor ashes, nor cinders, nor soot. I am, and most dreadfully so, the likeness of dirt. Quietly must i lay, scorned infertile, refuse of earth and despised of creation. Onto me is offered the flesh of swine, thick hide of mastodon figures, forcing structures through my substance. Baptised in the gutter, indwelling of lakes, residence of clotted drains, confined, here. Stench unbearable, sight ungodly, host of rotted, putrid carcass, purpose...lost in slough of silt-forms, muck substance of soil minus worth. My God bears not the image of dirt. But manure, perhaps, dignity of soil and ash, even dust to him, pleasing. Of dirt my image was not made, but rather became what i am, for sin, for world and flesh, and festival and fame. I dirt became, and shall claim no likeness to my divine master, detach now mine from His being, sacrifice of life and limb, for sake of Him and His infallibility, don’t tell me, i’m His. For dirt is not of Him.


2. ASCENT

Found
Guilty
Repentance
On grace return
For dances speaking
Nought but love
Twisted heels
Backward bend
Back is douen
Forward is Christ
Yet
Few are chosen
Of grazing men
Wiping the sky
From the grass
Grieving storm
Of past...
Convictions
Sending prayer
Upward heaven
There
Focus
You
Sin-ner
Sin never
Again

Character (Election '10)

Life theatrical
Plat-forms a world of actors
Campaign now playing

And you, Trinbagonian…what are you looking for?
Entertainment? You’ve got it
Excitement? You’ve got it
Bacchanal? You’ve got it
An experience of a lifetime you’ll never forget? You’ll get it.
The election campaign is geared to meeting our whims and fancies
And we are a people of festivals and fantasies
Of J’ouvert mud stain melodies
Of Tuesday masquerades
And of Ash
Wednesday Mass
Of Dimanche Gras
And grandeur
Of costuming kings and queens of carnival parades
Of reigning monarchs of steel and soca
And calypso fiestas
So we swallow theatre, and force characters down to the pits of our stomach
Digesting bacchanal as crab and callaloo
It’s almost culturally fit that our politics preaches
Of playwrights we’ve all seen before
Actors on platforms who pass through a different door
To take the same mic-
Stand
Gesturing crossed hands to cross out villains
Of heroes born and bred to save us
Of a dawn of motherhood, to rising “girl power”
Of an abusive father
Who repeatedly raped his daughter
Then lay her festering corpse in bondage
Beside her love and his bleeding
Hart
Pillow of thorns and dollars and cents
Do So to ex-it
To scene of shredding a scarlet promise
Lyricist begins to juggle his vowels
Bending words to shift their spaces
From truth
So we never discern that the jargon had its root
Set deep into this fruit of lies
We’ve all seen these actors die
Only to rebirth as magicians of another kind
But still of the very same mango
Seed
A play on diversities
Beggin you to either switch over to curry
Or simply keep suckin red pulp
Till dry
Stain teeth if you may
Both are lies
Artificially flavored themselves to entice you
Sweet talk served with an ounce of honey
Anchard masseured in thyme or shado beni
To leave us a people in drooling tongues
Twisting deep in this irony of culture
My only fear is the poisoning of theatre
By politics
Or rather is it
Of politics by theatre?
That we have grown so deep into their characters
That we don’t speak issues
Anymore

The Price of Blood

What is the cost of blood?
Simply...the cost of life.
But what is the cost of life?
Simply...the wage of death.
But what is the cost of death?
Simply...priceless.

There are some things money can’t buy;
Far less return
Like a little girl’s dignity stripped
Off the face of her soul when daddy injected her...
Molested her...
Imprisoned her...
Profaned her...
Defiled her...

Or the rustling echoes of rusted hours
Slipped so neatly between vacuous moments when you
Once thought you knew who you were, say
From then till now you’ve changed
Better or for worse your outlook
Your dreams
Your vision
Your soul
It’s all rust when you’ve lost it, then
Cash be futile here.

Master Card has nothing on this one...simply
Who can purchase life with pennies, saved
Or worse, hoarded?
Say, the earning of life by sweat over brow?
Falsehood!
To purchase life is to have purchased divinity
Or to have at best conceived either as possible
Spent soul searching litany of wastelands
To have...
Built your ego of bronze and fine gold
For worship, say, to have purchased yourself
From yourself
Thus becoming the irony of your own slave
Trade yourself in repayment for silver
And have lost in loss
Like rich man’s bid to back-purchase entry
Through fierce and threatening needle’s eye...
Better the camel whose humps amass in graces
Stored forgiveness
Pent up piety
Grossed uprightness
In wait of drought or guava seasonalities.
There are many gods
To which you may offer your debt
By your death...
But solely one God
In whom your death is transfigured to resemble naught
Of what it was before you began living within
Him
And His blood
You drank in thirst of cancelling who you were...
Drunkard
Prostitute
Adulterer
Murderer
Thief...
Sinner born of Eve’s ungodly womb
To re-create, or translate your death into His grace
To life, unscathed, of purity nestled deep into Eden’s Earth
Flowing from the reverent sanctity of her offspring
Of Euphrates meandering courses round foliage
Of Tigris enveloping tree of rooted knowledge
Of life giving itself back to Adam’s rib
Back to flooding breath back to lungs
Back to undone...agonies of unsteady childbirth
Reversed transfusion of His blood into ours
To His plasma pouring and gouging out vessels
Pooled mercies into still venous caverns
And death making backstroke to back-course timelines
Giving back life into red marrowed bones
Ad infinitum, bounty beyond my purchase
In awe transcending crucified image of He
Of bleeding skull and sides and wrist
Of dying He withholding my debt...
To risen He who restoreth life
Not of my earning, but of His within me
Ad infinitum; forever am I in debt to His love
Forever am I in death to His love...
Ad infinitum; death into His precious blood
That my life into His love...
Be measured in pints.