Poems

Rise

What are you waiting on?

Why don’t you open the door?

The shiny knob craves for your touch

But your hesitant heart cripples your eager hand

Why do you allow the beats rattling your chest to stop you?

Just a turn of the knob will give you a full view of the road

A road stretched with endless possibilities.

Yet you remain unmoved, unwilling to take a step forward

How many days will you peer through the key hole?

Wishing you had the courage to open the door

Can’t you just push yourself

Why is it so hard for you to let go?

Yesterday’s events are already gone.

You cannot touch the memories from last year

They have already evaporated into thin air

The moment you deny yourself of courage

It is that time you have lost self-direction

And the desire to hold back yourself grows stronger

Because you continue to nurture the timid version of you

So rise up from your bondage

Wipe the FEAR from your mind

Hello, get up.

Do you hear me?

I am begging you to let the true you come outside

Yes, that version of you that is boiling over with potentiaL

That you - hungry, ready to burst out of the tightly wrapped box.

The doubts and fears have stifled your growth far too long

Let them go.Cast them aside

Replace them with boldness and faith

Are you ready to move forward?

It is your hour to shine.

Rise. Move ahead.

Embrace the Powerful You

– Tadeen Winter-Williams

# # #

The Mist

the morning broke through the mist

defogging, bringing in the new day

cloudy, hail in the hills of any rural Jamaican parish

not always easy to regain what is lost

nature is so happy go lucky

limbs chopped by hurricane

or man’s hand or machine

fight back

without roots or barely

defying the odds

new branches

shooting leaves

human lot is not so easy

to keep fighting

when you have lost everything

so much

the mist has turned into

Jello like bubbles

bubbles burst

the washing ones

in the tub

and in the cup of coffee

we analyze

the meaning of the weather

we were happy not to go

but you instead

have brought winter to my front door

Yes Miss

they say we miss you Miss

it was a close shave

a miss

another missile

no more walking down the aisle

I prefer the shivering

the chattering of lips

the blistering freezing

double layered

socks, blankets, tears are health in my paradise

hail...

Greenland is you taking us over here

U arctic unrestrained

Your way of saying no way…? shoving your snow

Eskimo, Seal, Penguin, Happy feet, Igloo

Missing, Missed, MIA… Misty Blue

My My My Miss, my eyes are misty

Missing you

– Helen-Ann Elizabeth

# # #

How the Big Boys Write

The critics said, sit down and watch

An Evening of the Arts

Because maybe if I listened

There is much it could impart

Listen to the Big Boys

And then I’d learn to write

Because my lines and verses

Were way past juvenile

So first up was poetry

And I started to take notes

Hoping in the process

I’d learn much

And take it home

So the poet was finally through

After 40 days and nights

But when he looked up for applause

There was not an open eye

So I said to myself

This is how the Big Boys Write

And I wrote down on my notebook

“Write one piece a lullaby”

Finally it was time for short story

And the Reverend played his part

Where all mi can hear pon di mike

Is bombo di elephant an him claat

Den mi look into di audience

An see some people start depart

An mi write down pon di note page

“Cuss two Jamaican claat”

The play reading section was as

Predictable as I thought

Cause di only ting

Jamaicans come to play for is fi laugh

Wi no waan hear bout child abuse

Incest, rape or crime

So mi write down in mi notebook

“No serious issues at this time”

The next up, were

Excerpt readings from the novel

Where the authors discussed slavery

And the ‘geo-politics of sugar’

The intellectuals sat up

And were the only ones in tuned

And I wrote in my notes

“The critics doan waan Mills and Boon”

When they started essay reading

I decided to call it a night

An’ decided creative writing

I wouldn’t toss without a fight

So the critics can expect me

Blazing guns in 2k9

Cause now I know the art of boredom

Knowing how the Big Boys Write.

– Lisa Gaye Taylor