Neptune's call

Hot is the Caribbean night
with added stars and the moon big as a Swiss cheese
on a velvety theatrical curtail.
I stood on deck leaning on its railing
dreaming of Jamaica as the ship slowly ploughed
white crested black water aside.
The ocean sang to me I listened intently and before
I knew it the sea had tried to drown me.
Had I fallen among sharks and see the fading lantern,
would anyone but Neptune have heard my screams?
I lit a cigarette, thought about my endless voyaging
from port to port jaded I was Neptune had read my thought.
This had to end before I got lost in hollowed eyed boredom
there is no place to pole-dance on as hip

From your neck
Crawling its way up to your head,
Like a river cutting across soft land
The pain follows upto your brow .
You squint your eyes
And shake your head,
The pain taps your mind.
This is the pain from hopelessness
There is no escape, feel it,
Embrace it.
Pray that it busts your head open
And your brain splashes across your bed.
Pray that you evaporate
That you disappear,
Leave back a stain
For that is what your life has been.

You lay on your back
Silence broken by the blood
Running around in your otherwise limp body,
And you hear a screech, a whisper
A mocking?
You turn your empty
But strangely heavy head,
You see the creature
whose children you killed that evening.
You had hunched over the broken egg,
Its insides now spilled outside,
And the other one still lay across.
You had nothing to do,
You wiped the goop that could be life
With a torn bit of paper ,
Haphazardly poured water
And wiped again.
Who would say
The floor had seen death today.
The other egg you rolled to the side,
You knew the creature would cry tonight.
You went about with your life.

The creature is swelled up again,
You noticed
Life would get a chance again,
That is how it works you wonder,
But she must be furious
You see her staring at you.
You are sorry you say.
That's all you had to say
Until today.

Today you are thinking of striking a deal with her
Today you will ask her
To spill your head open
The way you had spilled her egg.
You will ask her to give you peace,
To give you your awaited escape
And in return she can have her justice.
Tell her you can be killed,
All she has to do is drop you
From a height
The way you had dropped her egg
From her home, your rolled mattress.
The only difference you had no intention
Of taking away someone else's life
But your own.
So today ask her to correct your mistake.

My blood will be wiped
My stain will be removed
Someone else will take my place.

There was a storm today,
A tree older than me,
Taller than the walls of brick
                                          Broke.
Why can't I stop thinking about it?

From mud walled homes
these remnants come, artifacts of shell and bone
leather shoes and deerskin coats
woolen blankets and woven rugs,
baskets for storing grain and corn.

Grinding stones and sun bleached bones
antiquities and memories found in fields of sand,
necklace beads of finest hammered silver
now forgotten and lost, and too the river's water.

Came a sorrowful war with bullet guns
that pierced the heart of every man
no match for shooting arrows.