From Clips

II

Plantation

Dat harf-assed inherited plantation
left as his benefice by some disgruntled guilty massacouraman

was up to wreck and ruin
weeds were killing the cane waves and there was no one to pull
them out

bury them then or burn them

but the fires destroyed auras and auroras of unpaid-for-sweat
contours of flesh that had been shaped by love

in the middle of the trash bone sticks when you stepped on crackle
the shimmering landscape ignored you

take the boy from school

and so years after dust silverworm cratered but hardly dog-eared
i found your latin primer quarter touch unsteadied

you clearly would not understand
those regular irregulars like do.dare.dedi.datum

the archaic algebra the undernourished shakespeare
merchant of venice and surprising cymbelene

you spent months with soot on your fingers (the black
would not rub off) not knowing what to do with the asp

that was itching your eyes. your pants were slack
and baggy often too long frayed at the heels

sluggish with yard-dirt and hurt or
sometimes too short: showing the skin where the sun

didn't torch through the holes of your old fashioned shocks.
the buggy that you loved and played at driver in was

sold: the horse, thin chestnut stallion with the bruised and bony
haunches
slipped and broke a fretlock and was shot . dead .
cold . by your insensitive half-brother

he who talked with his mouth full a dumplin
who ate with his hat on at table except sundees

you remembered feathers a broken pillar in the wind and the sad
drone of flies

if you had liked the bottle you could have started drinking from
upwards to now. and why

not: there were rumshops everywhere: ambivalent as chapels: their
captains

would have trusted you: there were two elder brothers at the
mount gay factory

had you liked women you could have had them picked and
pregnant in

no fuckin time at all. they black-eyed ex-slave smooth-thighed
giggles

passed by you slowly strong-necked sweating softly head-
ing cane or ground provisions: balancing their water-buckets with

their doom

cast eyes. stopped when you spoke, their voices like a cloud across
the canefields

yet when they laughed you heard the hair-springs of their ecstasy
their scythe shaped backs and buttocks of the goddess

and they were keen on brown-skin fathers. for them plantation
wreck
and ruin still meant pride and prejudice and certain in-

grained customs and a relationship and attitude and distance use
of eye
they called respect. and of course there was the house and horse

and buggy

and the treasure-chest of money underneath your father's door
while they lived with their mothers in those one-room huts of
wood and thatch

and shingle rut

man: had you liked women: wow: but you were careful. sir-
cumspectacles your tie-head great-aunt called it: one or two little
tings, you know, from time to time, korblimeman

but not like the brothers

for you no squealing bastards hugged-up by show-off patient
leather mothers
their wet-nose nipples jerking juice at clinics

no pay-day pilgrims at your debtors door no loud-mout would-be
breddas

bawling out how they gine lick you dung an leave you tangle-up

upside-down in de eddoes

Papa Cock & Papa Cane

1

The sunrise was his cock and throttle
throat of a new day his old woman
conceptions taking place sometimes between midnight and creaky

dawn

midmorning with his sons on sunday
out walking going for drives
just sweating around and reading playing games

teaching them how to make windmills from cane
bone fly
kites sail

paper boats milk
goats wash
dogs drive

stakes around the wounded fragiles of the flower garden

at noon his hat hot look/ing backwards up to heaven his
achievement
he sits and smiles

oil merchant bank balance
health insurance premiums secure
his...