Poetry: Echosightings Vol II, WHILE THE RICE COOLS

"People like us, we don't eat our rice hot"

God has
a claim on
vengeance
But knowing that does not put a
Cap on
The pain
The sorrow
The rage seeking
A safe place
To paint and write its manifold
Litanies
So we rub in
the balm of dreams aspirations and
selected memories
to remove the blade
from the whetstone
While the rice cools
and the
Scales
are rebalanced

Poetry: 'Neita and Junie

She
in the way of
Jamaican girls
had a fondness for
pet names
Junie
Malungu
and doubtless many others that have not
entered into legend
He
long since preferring
Notes to names
scarcely mentioned hers
not even on that
fateful night
The air still redolent with the
breaths of a new nation
the clatter of
Morgan's Independence boots still
echoing in the stillness
Oh if only he had clutched
the instrument
and not the knife so tightly
If only he had come to greet her
with a new song
than with the old
rage
A distemper well known to resound
and even overwhelm
that Wareika hovel
But there would be no more artistry that night
and in truth not
ever
For a glorious if troubled career
lay near-impaled upon a
blade
like the fishmonger's daughter
a legacy left hanging
a tantalizing tragedy
luring many in the ensuing decades
drawn by the eerie luminosity of
what might have been