Down in the bayou where the mangroves grow
There's talk of black voodoo, like Marie Leveau
The Swamp Witch, is legend, she has magic so black
That those who have seen her, have never come back
There;s tales of the noises that come from the dark
Of werewolves and zombies as rough as the bark
The mangroves are sentinels, to where the magic resides
Where even a longboat has no room to glide
Bodies go missing from the graveyards most nights
And there's always a fog shading the fireflies lights
The Swamp Witch is ruler and Queen of this world
Where souls are all taken and spines can be curled
They say that she came here from Canadian lands
She was a metis they say, from the Western Tar Sands
A mystic by nature, a dark witch by blood
She lives deep in the swamp, protected by gators and mud
The gators respect her, they do as she bids
They keep watch on the waters, they're her reptillian kids
She keeps zombies as gendarmes, collecting bodies to turn
Just how black is her magic, no one can discern
The Swamp Witch is legend, she is as old as all time
The air in the bayou is as thick as the slime
The cajuns say voodoo is the core of her heart
They avoid fishing where the mangrove trees start
The Swamp Witch, a legend ? or is she truly the Queen
She's the Louisiana Witch, no one survives once she's seen.....

I am here, risen up
from dust
and I sit in the sand
beneath the mangroves
as fruits fall around me
thudding softly in the
strewn leaves.

We sit here,
where I am,
these fruits
and these insects
and small reptiles,
watching the clouds roll in from the east,
where the ocean sprawls,
lavishing the beach with delicate hands
under the phosphorescent moon.

We all sit here,
the fruits,
insects,
reptiles,
the ocean,
and I-

We watch dense clouds roll in
as distant flashes of light
and gongs of thunder
grow more frequent-

we sit-
we watch-
and we wait-

for the rain.

Weave through the roots
Mangroves alike.
A foxtail, catch it quickly.
The birds sing for you help.
Grapes fall from their vineyard.
You have run too far.
Don't give up.
A cacophony ensues.
The nesting hens are disturbed.
The fox is gone and along with his prize.

Let's row into mangroves?
Run by sandy shores
?Let sea wash away?
The salt in our sweat.

Daddy takes me to the greenhouse,
behind our rotted trailer, deep in sovereign backwoods.
Marsh voices, thick like tupelo honey.

The coo of a loon, hiss of a cottonmouth, shiver of a snapping turtle.

The silver of swamp lilies lip the land in wild haze,
a veil of ochre moss tickles my nose like gauzey ginger ale
and soil clings to my ankles like a lonesome hound.

Daddy’s greenhouse is a shed, a haven.
A milieu of magic and fleur-de-cannabis
where pixies pull my curls and gnomes dance
under mushroom parasols.

My hands dip into a hollow of muddy earthworms.
I feel akin to the yellow blood of a butterfly
or pale jade of perplexing geckos.  

Daddy is a shaman.

He trims holy blooms that come from spirits
who sing in the wind like the whippoorwill at dusk.
Snipping sticky bushels, he pads tufts into his pipe,
carved in the shape of a sullen armadillo.

I watch him inhale.

                          His breath
                                               stiff
                            as a braid of mangroves.

                      He exhales a ligneous cough.

                              I don’t mind,
                                                   much.

My body burns to rove far from man-made
buildings, prisons for the modern soul.
I need to traverse the frontiers white man stole
from those who made it their home.

I've been down to the Everglades of Florida.
Fan boats flew through the estuary lines with roots
of mangroves. I've been to the Hoh Rain Forest of
Washington where fog descended on the shoreline
and married the sulfur smell rising from hot springs.

I must experience America's coast to coast beauty.

Every spare seconds I spend luxuriating in the
sun, thinking of all the places untouched.
My list of desires grows as the glaciers
of Glacier recede in Montana, beckoning
me to the Rocky Mountain Peaks.

Old Faithful gushes, surrounded by wolves and grizzlies.
Someday I'll cross Yellowstone's expansive mountain ranges.
from Idaho to Montana to Wyoming. On the arches of
Utah I'll face my fear of heights and find solace at
the tops of time-layered sandstone towers.

Descending the Grand Canyon I'll study beautiful
colors exposed by years of erosion. In winter
Death Valley will be braved. The lowest and direst point
will exhilarate me with scaled creatures as sand
dunes whisper my name with every hot breath.

The Badlands of South Dakota will hope I come
backpacking through prairies to watch precious bison roam.
California Redwood trees and I will stand side by side
as friends. Yosemite will call me to her cliffs and I will chase
waterfalls and sequoia groves until I've seen it all.

I ache to explore the terrain that bears
my name, the country I call home.

Despite the moon, the mood
     And stars on foreign skyline,
From having seen the Earth, this world, teeming
With life, with breath, and breath Almighty,
     And spirit in things which are perceived,
Still, I feel a deep longing, a chasm,
The feeling of missing, the want
     For reliving a lot of things,

Like the beaches on the South,
Sagada, Batanes, the tarsier,
The reefs, and the mangroves,
Our fellow Filipinos eating Adobo
And the so-soft fluffiness of rice,
In celebration of our heritage,
     Our famed resiliency,

I am a tourist all my life,
I remind my self,
     Until I found you,

For they are all yours, all finest things.
     You are the islands of our country,
And all these call me
As though to take me to you,
As though you were calling out to me
     For an embrace.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

Somewhere in the lake
of deep sleep
is an island, dark and mysterious,
entangled mangroves here,  resist movements
where I snake in like a thief
excitedly breaking in to own house,
pretending to be an alien
and find
a body double living there
acting out one's secret-
fantasies and voluptuous desires.
I won't dare to speak aloud here,
where, the overpowering smell of
too ripe fruits of indecent passions waft.
The dark chamber,
the smoke filled ***** den of my mind,
is to  take secret refuge and be one
with a dream that flies me
to the border lands of psyche.

Wicked nether-land. Nether world, white, askance. Capitulating mangroves, verdant trees spliced with hyperbole, onomatopoeia, and manilla envelopes; her world is stuffed with secrets, she listens to gorillas cracking mussels a kilometer away, near a rill. Never she thought. Nothing that could provide....providence. Mangled heliographs  sprayed all over the everywhereworld.

"Don't be S.A.F.E.," she whispered. A bouquet of gorse, cistus, and pimpernels squished in her small fingers. She climbed her way through the pedimented stairway, then collapsing on the porch. Legs spent, and spread out upon the desiccate grayed four by four planks of the portico.

And as time elapses, the shuttering shake of the hemlock, which writhes through her skinny nimble dactyls, upwards straining the heart as its toxic bends appendages- crisp cerise lumens bend on the Titanium White walls, where only shadows bend time. The hour, still nine. Every adornment, furnished with red and its hues. Not purple, periwinkle, or any masked enhancement.

These are the symbols that reticulate splines, that curve temperatures, perverse hemispheres and debunk worlds. Upped antes, verbs that terns flirt worth, birth words. Ooh. Aah. Camera. The forest wraps her in its verdant pasture, where at last the moribund tamarisks disperse.

While at the plateau she is quiet and longing. Arms astride, dangling. Vaunt with highs and bliss- a kiss of withstanding pleasure serves her the cure for a lifetime of whining. This, yesterday where her body rattled through crooked vines. Square ships toasting her vocal melancholy in the sweet-waters of Time. So that all of her ripened limbs could grow, no more sheepishly than the magic she knew as a child. Stress free. First among the Earth-words, verbed-up and made jealous by pronouns that encompassed her joy-brimming hide. Closing down her voice and hugging her from behind.

Rise softly, rise gently, waking dawn
And let the drowsy sun yawn a while
Beside me, my love sleeps in peaceful bliss
With crescent eyes and a crescent smile
The morning breeze may tease the blooms
That wait to unfold with the sun's blush
- But softly, blow gently, oh morning breeze
Let the wind chimes be still, quiet, hushed

Rest your melodies, singing birds and bees
And cease the fluttering of your wings
The hum, the drone, the medleys
Quiet the rustling and the whispering
Why gurgle so loud - river- change your course
Flow far away, past the mangroves
For how lustily you gush, bubbles and froth
Shhshh...love sleeps - eyes closed

But alas - the river stays, making its music
The birds from their songs shall never cease
And the morning breeze breathes free
Tinkling wind chimes, hustling leaves
Rise - the sun shall and burst in gold
And the world'll be in daylight's warm embrace
My love will waken yet I still revel -
For sun lights the grace of my love's face