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girl diffused Nov 2023
The workman told you to bury a curled dark lock

Of your dead baby’s hair in the earth,

A quiet offering to a quieter god

You spent several months weeping to the sky

Your small hands curled into your white frock



Work was left unattended in your colorful house

No food on the stove,

No boiling salt fish, or softened dumplings in murky white water

The pungent smell of cured fish filling the quieter home

The home, austere and shrinking into the long street

Your helper comes to do all this

Your children understand in their small ways



You covered the lock of dark hair with fresh dark soil

Palm fronds wave in the wind

Salty sea air kisses your wet skin

Tears make tracks on your cheeks like a map pointing to

Nothingness, like a page of a book with words of moroseness



Once you had my mother, birthed her into a world of noise

The sure and strong hands of the matriarchal mother,

Your mother, who’d delivered more babies than she’d had her numerous children

Then you cooked, you toiled, swept the veranda with your broom

Left the buried lock of hair in the locked cabinet of your mind



Now, when I make the saltfish, I do it with stilted preparation

My hands form lumpy misshapen cornmeal dumplings

I fry the little ***** of dough for too long, they come out dry

I pop one into my mouth and chew

There, the fragrant smell of your perfume,

Sweet lull of your voice, your birdlike hands.
A/n: A rejected submission to a poetry magazine. Hopefully it finds its home here. Thank you for reading in advance everyone.
Mark Toney Mar 2020
Jammin' in Jamaica
Driving my DeSoto
Being pursued by
My foe Quasimodo
Lying on the dash is
The missing person photo
When my phone rings
I hear "Hello Moto!"

(Chorus)
I don't have to work
When I'm in my pajamas
Acting like a ****
When I'm in the Bahamas
Really go berserk
When I'm feeding my llamas
We all go to pieces
When we’re talkin' to our mommas

Jammin' in Jamaicaaaa...
Jammin' in Jamaicaaaa...
Jammin' in Jamaicaaaa...
Jammin' in Jamaicaaaa...

Rush hour traffic
So I park my DeSoto
Nowhere in sight
Is my foe Quasimodo
See a man who looks like
The missing person photo
Then his phone rings
Shouting "Hello Moto!"

(Chorus)
I don't have to work
When I'm in my pajamas
Acting like a ****
When I'm in the Bahamas
Really go berserk
When I'm feeding my llamas
We all go to pieces
When we’re talkin' to our mommas

Jammin' in Jamaicaaa...
Jammin' in Jamaicaaa...
Jammin' in Jamaicaaa...
Jammin' in Jamaicaaa...

Jammin' in Jamaica
With the man in the photo
Who's not really missing
Just roving incognito
Suddenly appears
My foe Quasimodo
Truce as we pose
For a group selfie photo

(Chorus)
I don't have to work
When I'm in my pajamas
Acting like a ****
When I'm in the Bahamas
Really go berserk
When I'm feeding my llamas
We all go to pieces
When we’re talkin' to our mommas


(Repeat chorus and fade, with "Jammin' in Jamaicaaa" playing in the background with lines 1, 3, 5, and 7 of the chorus.)

© 2020 by Mark Toney. All rights reserved.
3/5/2020 - Poetry form: Lyric - © 2020 by Mark Toney. All rights reserved.
datanami Feb 2019
Oh La La
Si Ma Ya
Zig Zawya
Big in Bed

Paint It Red
The Whole World
Yes Mi Friend
Feel So Good

-

Highest Grade
By your Side
Half Way Tree
Never See

All my Life
All of Me
Party Time
Happy Home
16/64 Reggae song titles, sorted in mirror alphabetic (ascending by last letters)
Joshua Solomon Oct 2018
Ihi yahnh ihi
Dance the calypso
Step to irie nuh ire
Life’s everliving love song
Though mi throat coarse

Mi wi sing fi yuh
Expression through patois, interesting to try and wrte as the language is so beautiful
Steve Page Aug 2018
Every Jamaican is a superstar.
It's there in the carry
in the step
in the stand.
It's there in the belief
that anything
that anyone
that anywhere
can swagger
can strut
can take the room
and make the world stop
sit up
take note
and smile.
First line credit to Idris Elba in an interview about the movie, Yardie.
BlackMind Aug 2018
It's all so quiet
Silent within its hidden slumber
And dreams a beautiful dream which guides and cools the Windrush on the water.

Its dream song flows through my patterns
Atoms wave like sunkist fields of wheat
So peaceful is its essence
It is silent when it speaks.

Black Mind
Jeff Gaines Jul 2018
Hello everyone,

  I'm so very sorry … I feel horrible doing this, but I have no choice. You see, I have published my first book on Amazon/Kindle! This piece (and many others) had to be taken down because they do not allow published material to be available online for free. (Go figure) I wanted to leave the shell of the posts because I felt compelled to leave all your helpful and loving comments. (Silly sentimental, I know), but I also didn't want to just have the pieces disappear without an explanation. I feel bad enough as it is!

  I owe ALL of you so, SO much for all of your reads, love, and support. It was YOU that gave me the gumption to FINALLY get off my **** and publish! Thank you all for the warm comments, camaraderie, and encouragement! I will still be here, reading, uploading and just being the Rascal that I am. How could I EVER leave you guys?

  The book is called “The Way I See It – FictionPhilosophySoul Food” and it will be FREE for the first few days on Kindle Select, so watch for it, if you are interested. I hope that you go and grab it. If you do, I would also hope that you find it worthy, you would leave me a good review. That will help me get in the public eye! Soon afterwards (2-3 days or so), it will be available in paperback. I will be building my Author page tonight (12/21/2018) and my website finished first thing Monday!

Find the book(s) here: www.amazon.com/author/jeff.gaines

Or find the book(s), and all about me, here: www.JeffGaines.world

  Soon after, I also hope to have my first novel (a supernatural thriller), called “Wanderer” available as well!

  Wish me luck!

                                Big, Biggest Love,

                                               Jeff Gaines
Being a Lighting Designer/Director, I was blessed with landing an ongoing gig with a Producer from Jamaica that put on several large Festivals in Jamaica, The Bahamas and several other Caribbean Islands. For 5 or 6 years, I found myself going to Jamaica 5 times a year or more and several other islands the rest of the year.

Mostly we did huge, multi-day festivals Like Sumfest, or Sting or the Air Jamaica Jazz/Blues Fest. But we also did The Bahaman Jazz/Blues Fest and several Comedians, like Sinbad, on other Islands.

I was also the first guy to do "Rock-n-Roll-type" lighting for Carnival in Trinidad. Prior to my friend Scott and I, they had only used what we call "Flat White Television Light". We brought all the tricks and Moving Lights and Strobes and Fog and well ... that's yet aanother story for another time. The people LOVED it ... and to this day, THAT is how it's done there every year. It makes me SO proud.

This story is about how Jamaica touched me. It helped me find myself in a way I never saw coming. You see, I had gone there on vacation several times before I started going there for work. This essay is mostly about what happened to me in those first trips, before I was going for work. It really is a mystical place and and is very dear to me, as you just read.
Kimberley Jan 2018
brutally honest,
gorgeous,
free-spirited,
kind and loving -
i love my people

the jewel of the Caribbean
i love my country
my little island
full of so much beauty, it should be illegal
an island forever on top
the best in Caribbean, really

the talk of many
home of many greats
" we likkle but we tallawah "
so much talent on one island
raw and pure
i could be no prouder to be a Jamaican
Chanel Dior Apr 2017
Oh Jamaican girl,where is your patois?
where is your long dreads of natural hair?
your culture?

Jamaican girl,sing your country's national anthem
How do you not like reggae?
what kind of Jamaican are you?

You see the ackee and codfish I stuffed down my throat on a Saturday morning would never be enough for them.
My extinctive use of the English language made them sick at their guts
The fact that my waistline won't move in such a manner to alarm others.

Born in the Yard
Grew up in the suburbs
Never boastful;always grateful

So Jamaican girl you try to act white on purpose?
Wear 'American clothes'
And perm your hair?

My nationality will coexist throughout my veins
Will never hit sunlight unless my tongue decides to move in that direction.
Will never be ashamed of my heritage as I am proud of it,yet also modified to not be defined by it.
The place I once considered paradise is now infested with parasites.
To get drowned In sorrows is inevitable, because a land so beautiful is now running miserable.

I am crying out, this world cries out in need of a solution...a redemption.
Blood that is screaming from the earth, souls that are forced, a resolution we need.

It's nothing but master destruction, that's what it has been so far in year 2017. Jamaica we pray, we shall prevail. Blood thirst criminals who roam the streets snatching lives, women had become preys.
vanishing out of sight.
We can no longer stroll in the nights.

I fell to my knees in despair, with scornful memories of this year. My beautiful land is being destroyed. From where I stand, we are victims, captured in our own land.

This world is going mad, and no one truly understands.


S.B
Inspired by the current situation that has been going on in my country, too many lives is being taken...all for nothing
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