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Zach Gomes May 2010
I saw him at work;
When he would visit the mangal
With a ***** over his shoulder.

He rolled up his pant legs and walked
Through the tidal wash.  Once he had picked a tree,
He hacked for three days to cut

The mud and the mangrove
Free from the surrounding forest.
He piloted his self-made island into the lagoon.

Shortly, he became mangrove crazy,
A disease he called Rhizophoria
In the notebook he had taken along.

With mud lobsters and tree for his only company,
Of course he had mangrove on the brain.
His life became an ellipsis—

The two centers were the tree and himself.
From tubular mangrove branches, propagules fattened,
And seeds nested inside them;

He would scribble notes with delirium as they fell
Plumply into the lagoon
And were pulled away by the warm current.

Each time the tree condensed its salt
Into a sacrificial leaf,
He would sadly add a tick

To the tally of the dead he kept in his book.
He once wrote:
‘The salt is burning my eyes.’

Late afternoons, with beer in our hands,
We would watch him from the beach,
Five hundred yards away.

Eventually, his mangrove island drifted ashore—
He lay by the suberic roots
With a crust of salt along his cheek.
Deep in the creek
where speckled light kisses the saline shore
and mud hole bubbles leave crab trails
I knock upon her door.

She opens with a whisper on her skin
licks my **** with her southern tongue
winds rise the dusts within
the mangrove falls quiet to her moaning song.
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.....
As he scanned the far horizon of the mangrove beach
He imagined her silhouette by the sea of Norwich
A home he had left long to be so remotely far
On this alien shore with her face a distant star!

The sea winds kissed his skin in a bid to make amend
For his walks in the blazing sun weariness of dayend
He felt a peace in his ruffled mind craving for a rest
Amid the waves’ serenade dreaming a lulling nest!

What if he made his home on this ****** desolate beach
Walked the sands thought-romancing the woman of Norwich
Swam wild in the saline sea then lie in the mangrove’s shade
With no statistics to worry about only love’s buzz in his head!

Not going back to the asphalt path he would build here a hut
Laze dream lying in the shadows of wild and green coconut
In the starry evenings when the sea would hold her bewitched
He would walk the trails of scent left by the woman of Norwich!

This man went with the mission of building on the sea a port
But the mangrove gave him a reason to make there a love resort
No relic survives now the waves having carried beyond reach
All except the lingering scent of his love for the woman of Norwich!
Andrew Frazer, Lieutenant Governor of Bengal (1903-1908). He fell in love with the stretch of beach on the western edge of the Sunderbans and built there a bungalow. Nothing remains to remind of him except the name of this place – Frazerganj, now a popular beach resort. Henry’s Island is not far away.
The first new star flashed waves of blue tonight ,
securing my belief in the afterlife
A grove of ferns lit my imagination
For I became a shipwrecked captain -
that stumbled upon an island nation
Exploring the deep jungle without machete ,
potable water nor compass
Knee deep in mangrove forest
Tropical winds whispered and moaned
A lean-to of fronds became my maritime home
In the presence of a million stars
An army of sand ***** paraded before -
their newfound master from near and afar
Crashing waves lulled a poor sailor to rest
The whispers of Poseidon
A dream about a lookout in the crows nest
Counting orbs in the tail of the Milky Way-
with visions of mermaids , ghost ships and rogue waves
Copyright July 2018 by Randolph L Wilson * All Rights Reserved
Jonathan Moya Nov 2020
All you wicked men
what is wrong with you?

There is no black Justice
seen on the Sistine Chapel.

Only the stupidities that
can make a stuff bird laugh-

the small axe ready
to cut the big tree down.

https://youtu.be/b0Tk-FoiX_0

Based loosely on theSteve McQueen anthology  of films.  The first in the series is titled Mangrove.  The title is from a Bob Marley song.
Geno Cattouse Feb 2013
would walk out of the city on Sunday afternoon after Sunday Mass
Dinner at noon was the custom. then the city would slip into  Sunday coma.
Mantovani, Acher Bilk, and the BBC wafted from the Television less homes we passed
on our way to the river.

Old chocolate men reclined on rickety old wooden porches smoking hand rolled
whatever as we strolled by giving us the lazy eye. All knowing , know nothings.
Sun beaten and calloused to lives of hard labor. every now and then one would just give a
jaundiced nod and look away/ Live to smoke another day.

Half paved tar and gravel roads simmered and writhed in the distance.
but our bare feet.
slapped in rhythm .cut off knee pants and skinny bare chest attested to sparse living but we
never knew it cause the mangrove jungle was minutes away and big
unwanted catfish to hook and throw away. Disdainful (Kiatto).

Off the simmering road now hopping toads. Johnny fiddler ***** for bait .
The canoe awaits us two small school boys in our natural state. One seven one eight.

Pelicans survey slowly above where the river meets the sea A small ripple and down he goes. He knows where school is in for mackerel and terrapin. Bone fish too.
We small boys with no fear . Innocence a pole and cork. One hook apiece is our gear.
Knee deep in mire as we push of and jump. A paddle apiece as we stroke against the tide to traverse the emerald river wide. The far bank. My Aunt Doris's shack.

Man over board to tie of the. Bow.

A snack of tortillas and beans then up the river no fear. Fun and the fish
Sun and the wish for an endless Sunday. We hate Monday. Back the priests and nuns.Slate writing board and times tables.
Let's fish.
Let us dream.
Tied off in the mangrove shade.
Swatting horse flies quietly. Quietly?

Like bird dogs we study the floating cork.
A wiggle, a bob. A bob. Set the hook and out comes the prize.
Then more. More flapping underfoot.we can hardly.walk. The glee
A bonanza.
All fried up and crisp.Catch and release. What madness. Catch and consume.

Day is done in the Carribean sun.
Home eastward. The pitch road is more forgiving on bare feet now
with the September sun at our backs. A leisurely stroll back to the
house. No worries,

A bath  and change for the Sunday evening show.
The Thief Of Baghdad or  maybe El Cid.
The Duke Audie Murphy in a double header.

The walk home along the moonlit seaside.
To start another Halcyon stream.
Another time and place rooted firmly in my memory.
Read  THE RIVER ROCK. More from Memories of a childhood in Belize.
The golden tinge of sun pierced the cloud
But the mangrove held onto its dark cloak
She hid somewhere between the light and shadow
When from one irresistible daze I awoke.

Unbeknownst flamed up the rocks salt white
Dry since the waves receded beyond the *******
A cold loneliness crept up in the spell broken light
As if eons had passed without the sight of her.

Then one seagull’s spriteful fish dream shriek
Motioned me up from the vacuous stupor
Buzzed each sand grain all years’ unborn speak
Was to be seized this moment and tell her.

The wind having carried the voice of her name
Spread it across the mangrove and far
From the receding waves rose a rising flame
When in her hug beneath an acacia I found her.
In the meantime in the Állos kósmos or Ultramundi, Wonthelimar after hearing the speeches and paragraphs of the speakers saw from paradise how Calypso Lepidoptera appeared, approaching in great magnitudes on the dry land on the banks of the blue and golden stones of Skalá. In torrents of rushing from the water-sky with wind-water, by geomorphological hydraulics of the collapse of the irresistible capacity to harass each other in the ears of Seleuco's dialogues, after they piled up in the sneaking curds of him on the island of his speech. Right there it settled from the koelum or sky of the Lepidoptera from the Orofí or ceiling, on the natural arches of aeolian erosion and its devastating plumage, appearing in the subaerial splendor of Chauvet and its gloomy darkness, changing the morphology of the bank of Skalá turned into enchanted turquoise light also with Calypso nuances. From here Wonthelimar obscures the circumflex arc or circumflexes, which pierced and eroded the surface, piling up the ex-generals of Alexander the Great, to skewer them on the stump that was languidly seen supporting them, after the tides of Lepidoptera that avalanche in destined per capita towards the destined underworld of Wonthelimar.

Wonthelimar was separated from everyone by the moat that was separated from the gods of the surface, but now where the supporters of Seleucus were predestined by imbibing themselves in the bilocated kingdom of Chauvet and its darkness, where they were put into agreements of suitability and clarity of words discursive for the eagerness to persuade his major general. But they all fell into the middle of a dark Ultraworld, judging themselves to be dying in stockpiles of biosystems where no one helped them and gave them some indication or diagnosis of being separated from the canopy that drained them from spectral affairs, speaking as vivid visions of benefits and sovereignties that escaped from themselves without contemplation or quietism of the human race, which procreates xenophobia to kings without throne or nation. Under the Attic, calendar were the months here were only eighth, Anthesterion, received them with the name directly of the main festival celebrated in this month, Anthesteria. In goods of name contests in the semester of Pyanepsia, Thargelia, and Skira where they were relatively significant, in some of the greatest celebrations in the life of a Polis, which is not recognized in the name of the month. Some sparkled in the sound of the Great Dionysia celebrated in Elaphebolion (ninth month), and the Panathenaia in which they are only indirectly recognized in Hekatombaion (month one), named after the hecatomb, of the sacrifice of "one hundred oxen" celebrated at night. End of the Panathenaia. This is where the suspicious fondness of both families of Seleucus and Alexander the Great differed in the accent that marks the written line of the infra Polis, where the leaders of Haides or Hades are lost, for the purposes of Aïdes, as not indivisible, but with the presence of Wonthelimar, who is invisible but epically static on his balustrade in all the rings that chorally wore them for each patronage of the diádocos generals, even so he had betrayed the Hellenic legacy, by a Hellenic-Orthodox one in the disappearance of Alexander the Great in Babylon without knowing that it had been rescued by Wonthelimar, surpassing the limits of the rings of stefánes ibix, or Aros de íbiz, as nano kvantikoí daktýlioi, quantum nano-ring that augured to sensitize the dermis of its carpal phalanges, from the eighth, Anthesterion to Elaphebolion (ninth month), minus the one hundred and twenty days of gestation in a month of the attic of imníbiz, that it was of wise advice to receive him in the new engend rivers of Wonthelimar in the depths and bundles of marrow with gestation forms of an Ibex goat, with their embedded bases of stalagmites, filing the meaning of each life that was lodged in the depths of the caves and its opacity. The Eygues of Valdaine was the Acheron, but with half the deceased who sat in rows and unleashed their laurels that possessed poor aids tormented by mandrake root hands.

The underworld was a swamp that covered the heels of the diádocos in the immense blackness of the cavern that wounded them one and the other with its Kopis, by more than a hundred blows and slashes that covered them with mud and moans in their buried half bodies. That they had been intruded from linear entrances to the underworld of Wonthelimar. In the thick musts of the quagmire where objects with ornaments of fear and cavalier materiality lay, such mangrove deserts satiated with gloomy fibromyalgia and amnesia, refiguring in the wandering bones, that sinned in lights and destinies that were adopted in the sub-world with incorporeal needs., more than the exhaustion that tore the skeletal muscle of each one behind the meager compromise openings, in the strong ligaments of the host Wonthelimar that took them at forced steps towards paradises where there will never be consciousness from a Theseus typology, but from a sub taxonomy - Verthian mythological, for purposes and among others that unleash it by propelling self-infernos that are not those born by a Macedonian force or Satrap into puny kings turned into a servile, mute and decayed.

It is necessary, that solitude of all the entrances from the abyss into which they fell, was titanic and of ultraphobic acquiescent inspiration, and in the acid gestures of search of Persephone or Aerse that in random gestures fled from their persecutors, like females who ended fleeing from themselves falling into the back room where the end of souls is never exceeded or Psyché re emigrating from the punishments of a satire or a static that resulted in a ghostly wandering, or in tendentious spinners that tribulated in belated bundles of repentance. From primitive times, subjugations have been longed for in kings who would never think of leaving their cracks and washing their hands behind the backs of others who stood by, leaving the courage to lose themselves in the perversity of a body deposited in the Tartars, having to give them their prehistoric debts and meadows of carpeted debts and caged rooms.

The generals commanded by Seleucus walked barefoot along with the stump that wounded them in seams for their plantar areas, and in extreme distress, they did not dare to ask mercy from the cave host who transported them through the deep pit of perpetuity, where the frigid bullet of angina of Wothelimar, filled them with memories that protected their survival. In unworthy caprice and watery *****,… it ran frivolously down their legs, even after each impulse to recover the flashes of estimating being scared of oneself, after finding dead fruits subsisted halfway, feeling voices from the origin of the abyss that I quoted them.

Etréstles says: "Mashiach allow me to enter this grave, I do not know if I should go to rescue them, because I know what will happen..., I only ask that if I enter with courage, help me to find the same light of the exit, with the same memory of not to waste arrests, and not to lose myself in my entrustment by those who I know will not return”

Behind some Sabine poplars, it is seen how the elytra of the Lepidoptera were opened for those who crossed from the darkness without the appearance of their fruitful eyes that tickled praises of surrender, and not of ibid in the ibid that surrounded them, as if they were violated that heal at the moment when their faces departed from the miracle of privacy, and from the solitude decreed of non-existent company, companionship calming any dogmatic symptoms and hypoxia that the glimpse of the Eygues and the Acheron left them, further behind in which Saint John the Apostle and Vernarth, Reader and Petrobus to bring Etréstles back.

Saint John the Apostle says: “Vernarth go for your brother,… he wants to protect the souls of Seleucus and his comrades, go soon because there is little left to fill them with darkness which will even besiege in their reasoning and anti homelands that will not be from the din of the campanile, out of tune with joy that runs on the graces of the gift that frees you from the worst virus by not being anti-viral… ”.

Vernarth replies: “Etréstles is the slogan of Erebus, perhaps of Bumodos…, I have to stop him for his profession, since the comrades of Seleuco will not return, the effigies of Wonthelimar have made them of his children in Ultramundi, and what is Solstice of the underworld, it is only a small Sun that fits in the buttonhole of the orthogonal slot that confines it”.

At that time Raeder paraded where he before they reached the omega of the gully pit, running swiftly over the eyelets of Wonthelimar, leaving both completely naked, to tear them away from the contrived spell and bring Etrestles back all the way together and running., but both stripped of lightness and acceleration escaped from the centripetal bodies. After the tortured walls of the pit, they no longer supported themselves in their Skotos or Erebo of Wothelimar in such a primordial deity of this theogonic and fantastic event in the bilocated cavern of Chauvet in Skalá. Here all the densities and units of physical genres, from above and below surrounded them in the thick sulfur atmosphere, Ananké in such a goddess of inevitability ran after all who tried to reverse the situation of the diádocos, for the purpose of consenting their paragraphs Hellenics and to save their lives, but the mother of the Moiras went behind Etréstles and Vernarth along with Rader and Petrobus who were basking in the glow of Persephone that imbued them as they stagnated drinking mead with the Canephores who followed him. From this cryptic moment or from the bombastic insignia of Crete, Kanti's trotting from his Cretan figure was felt united with the Lepidoptera Calypso, redeeming Demeter from her crying on the edge of some Bern olive trees, emptier now that the last gradients of the agonic and venous voices in the hilarious of some diádocos that were completely absorbed by the benevolent illusion of Wonthelimar, snowy in the harrowing tenuity of his gestures and of the great Iberian that took them towards the heights of the hillocks and towards the Ultramundi that It turned them into proles of the mountainous areas, and into super aquatic monsters with thousands of loose eyes in the arches of the generals bleating, which transposed ****** subjugations of primal deities, and philastics of phantasmagorical genres of Hellas that is plucked from the peritoneum of their stomachs, and that guttural eradicated them from the blue adrenaline of Apollo.

This odyssey dispelled the orthogonal lines of the poetic affliction of those who could see the sunset and the Spyché ***** that antagonized Ananké's numinous efforts to extubate them, and perhaps exile them to the Theban plains to graze Achaeans of the first degree alongside Shamash. Lamenting of young afternoons and of the abysmal with beautiful hair of the generous of effects, swampy and of feverish Hadesian or Hade's rounds that crippled their districts, they emanated from some Marie Curie junk and vapors radiating this Parapsychological Quantum to them from their own holy final body., for a virtuous and rout of the Ultramundis of Wonthelimar.
Wonthelimar Ultramundi
Joey Dec 2014
It was a Masquerade, she said: a place we could go to hide. I wasn't in fright of her. I had it all under control. She took me by the hand, softly, that cold summer morning. The confusion that surrounded us allowed us to see more clearly. We were both wearing horse masks, and she whinnied at me so eagerly. The apple tasted bitter, but when I licked her lips, I felt the sugary sweetness of saliva mixed with cake crumbs and wine. We flirted. We sang together. I saw her naked, twice. When she took off her clothes and threw her tights around my head, I couldn't see the flesh she flaunted to the rest of the room. She licked my chin, all the way up to the tip of my mask, lifting it from my skull with her tongue. When her song was sung, I wallowed in pity and doubt. Her father chased me from the balcony. I climbed faster than he and escaped with my life, barely. The walk through the mangrove was dusty, and spiders kept climbing down my back, spinning their threads along my spine. I contemplated my mirage in the rippling waters before taking the final steps into my doorway. Looking up, greeted by elephants, tigers, peacocks and pigs. They strangled me with their elixirs, and we danced with the moon until our legs abandoned us.
SomethingRascal Jul 2016
Poison the well.

We do all that we can.
Not for the great return,
no,
but to know.

I'm good for a while I'm last.
The plump moon lights up my room.

My mind is now a flat graph
no desire no lust no dream

the cold winds from the rumbling sea
make no dent on me
I look at my palms
and see the cracked floor
gnarled roots of mangrove on the wall
blend seamlessly with all I have
like once I had her in this room
love together
taking wingless flight to the moon
but now I more like sitting here
prospecting no words to rhyme
not angered at the blankness
for in this vacuous moonlight
I wait without a hope of gain
without a despair of loss
unconstrained for time
contoured by fireflies
alone
recounting a new beginning
from the end.
bayou baby

She comes from the swamplands
Back in the mangrove
Back where the stories say
Magic runs wild
The devil plays host
And all who visit must stay

Witches and Zombies
Together by night
Gators and Snakes there as well
The river, it changes
Cut you off in a flash
And then you end up in hell

Hair as black as Kentucky Coal
And eyes green as the sea
She's the witch queen of the swamp to most
But, she's a Bayou Baby to me
Born out of the magic's world
Where the mystic world runs free
She's the witch queen of the swamp to most
But, she's a Bayou Baby to me

She comes to town
to get supplies
That's where I saw her first
I followed close
Back to the swamp
And saw her do her worst

A simple boat
A single lamp
An oarsmen, long, long dead
A different route
Through water black
To a place where most folks dread

Hair as black as Kentucky Coal
And eyes green as the sea
She's the witch queen of the swamp to most
But, she's a Bayou Baby to me
Born out of the magic's world
Where the mystic world runs free
She's the witch queen of the swamp to most
But, she's a Bayou Baby to me

She saw me
And I looked back
She knew that I would follow
She slowed down
Her travel home
And she trapped me in the hollow

I never told
Another soul
Of who I go to see
I travel out
At night alone
My Bayou Baby waits for me


Hair as black as Kentucky Coal
And eyes green as the sea
She's the witch queen of the swamp to most
But, she's a Bayou Baby to me
Born out of the magic's world
Where the mystic world runs free
She's the witch queen of the swamp to most
But, she's a Bayou Baby to me
Vince Chul'Theg Nov 2013
~~Overwhelmed by the raw talent and emotion with which my students think and feel and write. Thank you, A.N.--Chuukese woman~~


Early in the morning
When the dark cloud covers the light
And hides my brother from seeing the light

I woke up along shocking news
That glazed my face with sadness
Brought tears to my eyes

I heard an awful voice
Coming from the mangroves
Just right after my brother
Hung himself with a thin rope

The voice said that
He had to find a hat
Before Uncle Priston
Forced him to drink the poison

I smell his perfume
When I start to feel the pain
In my heart

I feel the cold air
When he appears in my dreams
And he touches me with his cold hands
Apologizes to me

We cry to each other
Among the mangrove trees
Hugging each other
Talking about the truth

I lost his warm hands
And his warm heart
That blocked the cold air
From entering our house

His love and his memory will not be forgotten
But I hide it in a secret place
Because his love was exactly like a fire
That makes the people feel warm
As they come closer



by A.N.
representing Chuuk, Federated States of Micronesia
Ira Desmond Dec 2018
Last night,
I dreamt that the friend of a friend had died.

His body floated lifeless on the surface of the Pacific,
tossed about between the Bering Sea whitecaps

like an orca’s seal-pup plaything
while the Arctic wind whipped

and beat the freezing cold water
across his pallid face and through his chestnut hair.

Then his body
began to sink,

its silhouette appearing
against various monotone

canvases of blue
on its trip downward:

a vivid cornflower,
a pelagic cerulean,

a chasm of cold cobalt,
a starless twilight,

a forest of indigo,
a velvet curtain of navy.

Finally,
as it reached the deepest possible shade of midnight—

only a quantum away from black—
it stopped sinking.

There, in that void,
where daylight and color are considered but outlandish theories,

strange fish of all and shapes and sizes
began to surround the decomposing corpse:

Greenland sharks hailing from the frozen arctic,
mantis shrimp from the mangrove labyrinths,

eyeless electric eels from undersea caves near the Galápagos,
vampire squid rising cautiously up out of their World War One trenches,

scores of spindly ***** and pale worms that had ventured far beyond
the safe familiarity of their alien geothermal worlds.

At first, they approached the corpse gingerly,
nibbling only the tips of its hair and fingernails,

and then suddenly, voraciously,
they consumed it—until not even a skeleton remained.

Now, only a single point of light was left
there floating in the void.

And from this single point of light,
where just a moment before the corpse had floated,

a brilliant white lattice structure emerged,
unfurling as would a fern across a forest floor.

It fanned out onto the seabed
and then swept upward, upward

back toward those reaches of sea
where color is known

and fresh air gleefully permeates
that foamy outer membrane that skirts the base of the sky.

Scores of familiar fish began to lift up the crystalline structure—
schools of shimmering sardines,

stately, dignified manta rays,
skipjacks, bluefins, and white-tips,

brilliant cuttlefish, humble pufferfish,
shifty barracuda, gargantuan whale sharks,

all of them
beating their tails in concert

to carry this lattice away,
this measure of a life,

this husk of a soul
at last freed from its earthly bindings.

The fish were carrying it somewhere deeper,
somewhere darker,

to a place that I understood—
even from the inky depths

of my dreaming mind—
that I could not enter.

But then again,
I knew that someday

I would.
Steve Hagget Aug 2014
In foreign land of towering pines
And hammocks, mangrove-torn
A dark-filled night reluctantly
Bequeaths a pale dawn

Upon one battered cypress perched,
Amidst the morning haze,
Bright eyes stare out from part-cocked head
With piscicultural gaze.

Intently focussed on the brook,
That glides beneath the tree
Alive to every shadow’s sound
Yet never truly free.

For choicelessly these eyes are drawn,
As waters break below
And like a flash a head snaps back
And rippled muscles flow.

Within the slightest moment’s breath,
Two mighty wings released,
Two claws full-stretched, two legs reach out
The sinews, strained, unleashed.

The beaten air the only sound,
As time itself stands still
And, tracer-like, on charted course
The osprey meets its ****.

With consummate and practiced ease
The painless end begins
The single deadly blow is dealt
As sharpened claws sink in.

Then up away into the dawn
And time resumes its course
Two final beats – then disappeared
Is this magnetic force.

The cypress perch and well-filled brook
As silent witness stay
And as they settle – calm again
The sun declares the day.
Shofi Ahmed Jan 2020
Beautiful Bangladesh naturally is pretty cute
on second thought is a masterstroke.
You gotta see it to believe how stunning it looks
as if the sunrise rendered a beauty spot
gladly put it on the morning rose!

Pop into a country of mass people
you could be walking down the singing birds
hanging low nearby our princely open doors.
Every one of us knows in the heart
we are sitting on a land of pure gold!

Should you bask in at the crack of dawn
as the crackling light of heaven stumbles upon
follow the first light that gives you your cue!
Besides the world's ******* Aladdin's
three wishes came true: the longest beach
the biggest tea gardens and mangrove forest,
in ***'s Bazar, Sylhet and Sundarbans.
Take your peep eye on in every direction
ah, moments await you on both sides of the pool!

Vividly mesmerising the Bengal of Gold,
a narrative in words can't always be told.
Sometimes it's said with whispers of old
in the shade of bamboo when that flute is heard
expect it to be carried to you by the frost-kissed air!

Hang onto your cameras even though
you walked passed the twilight in scenic Bandarban
seen the sunset in Kuakata is de ja vu ambling down this nook
you might feel walking one step down beneath the Moon!
On the mangrove bank of the tidal river
lie embedded the mollusks,
they appear mournfully motionless,
deceiving you to believe
they’re too passive to be alive,
are just displays of dead shells
in their muddy graveyard,
though the truth is
they are mystic monks
silently enduring their estuarine transience,
bidding in meditation the time
the return tides carry them to their marine abode.
As I saw them yesterday at a mangrove estuary near the Sunderbans.
lua May 2021
Crashing waves against the crunch of sand
Touches my feet
Sinking into the softness beneath me
As the water stains my toes blue
And paints goosebumps
Paints chills
Across my legs
Up to my stomach
Full of the same crashing waves
Those which curl
And spin in whirlpools
Up to my chest
Into my lungs full of seasalt
And the bitterness of the morning sun
Down every branching vein
That reminds me of mangrove roots
Yet pale and blue
So small and delicate
It reaches my own shaking fingers
And to the rosiness of my cheeks
All I hear is the soft ringing of windchimes in my ears
And the splash that dissipates into nothing but tiny droplets
Maybe that’s what keeps me awake at night.
Daniello Mar 2012
I would die to say here, truthfully,
splaying my arms round as the sky,
this, this! is how it is possible to live
and not sink under a faint surface,
and not run, windfaced, against a distance,
and not lay down, weary as nothing.

This is how it is possible for us
to look without shaking skin or heads
or blenching eyes, writhing like mangrove
limbs in this incomprehensible slough.
To live as discovery of life and still not know
if ever we were born, or when, if ever, we’ll have
died.

But to you, I cannot say this, truthfully.
My person is not truthful. It has a voice
you hear through air in the daytime, I am
not truthful to you. Else I would be
fringes of all time
stretched. You cannot see me, truthfully.

I am ground movement, just under, welling
untouchable imperative unattainable.
Are you bound by the point to create
your own destruction, as I? Then proclaim it
yourself, truthfully, waving your fresh
roots out to me, soil juiced and ripely plucked.

I will try to remember crossing the plains from
dawn till dusk, before I made the world fragile.
If I do, I will dissolve, and will come out your
breath, speaking truthfully. But will you remember
too? So that, disappeared, I may find you?
I would not have to die, then, truthfully.
Geno Cattouse Oct 2013
The speckled puffer fish was a greedy scavenger
a greedy thing with no agenda but to grab the hook
I used to hate to touch them.******* eyes staring
Huge gopher teeth bare and sharp.

I was Huck Fin Carribean
Bare foot and rural as heck
Dirt ring around my neck
The dusty roads
humid.

The sweltering heat and the river would meet us
in the mangrove Forrest as we walked the
Picado road to river's edge.
A cranky dory sat tied of
for our convenience with a paddle or two.

We pushed of and fought the tide
to get us safe to the other side.
Aunt Doris would stand with'
arm akimbo a cigarette burning
between index and middle
a tiny smile stayed put.

The  Muttruce , as we named it
Flourished because no one would eat it
so the river teemed with catfish and puffy.
we did not eat catfish either some cultural bias. Lucky cat
but that bias died when the market for him found Belize.
Scary little blacked eyed buck toothed *******.

Dont know if they are on someones menu now.
They seemed a bit scarce last time i fished.
high priced export on the orient express I guess.

Price of popularity is no privacy
eaten to extinction.

Head up , eyes open
mouth closed.
Under misted august sky
where the fishnet boats dot the Matla River
I stand drunken on the wild mangrove.

This abandoned out of world noon
when the river breeze whispers
you are deathless
my blood paints in my eyes her face.

Only the estuarine heron
wings smelling of sun and fish
is my timeless witness!
Matla - the estuarine river in the mangroves of Sunderbans.
Kevin Eli Jan 2015
I'm having a dozen dreams a night; fluid and lucid.
I prefer this imagination and fantasy in my bed.
It's a lot of fun, also terrifying,
All in black and red...

Deep diving indoor pools with oil rigs and sea monsters.
I butterfly and sidestroke across the unfathomable chlorine waters.

Gliding downstream through swampy, vine-roped forests.
I end up in mangrove lakes, a canopy of bright glowing mushrooms.

Zombie hordes making me hide in closets at my parent's house.
They never break down the door, I don't understand why they carouse.

Being in a place without time, space, colors, physics or floors,
Talking to people I barely know, with no names or faces. Am I bored?

Sitting in my underwear on a dock, waiting for the bus
The others don't even seen me, but the cute girl next to me does.

I learn to fly, jump off a roof, start falling, then forget.
I twitch in my covers from a concrete slab, comical to wake up dead.

Sometimes I just sit in a cave with a reflection of myself
Talking to my ego; arguing and reasoning with nobody else.

Every time I close my eyes and lay my head,
I feel like a mad-hatter, locked in wonderland.
One mile down the drunken river
I lost my mind in her midday yellow haze.
Residues of the river-wind-kiss lingered saline on my face,
Wild sun on the wild river scathed my skin copper,
And I glided upstream in blurred eye sweat
Losing and finding the river’s mangrove shore.
My mind in delirious mess wondered
What it was that wined the river, made her a swirling detachment,
Bearing all with the endurance of a drunkard
But embracing nothing like an all foregoing monk.

I dreamed adrift one more mile and then another
Till I was windswept and wined like the drunken river.
when torn clouds bared blue holes
the river brimmed with ecstasy.

it had rained the whole day
and she was bursting in seams
to tell her side of the story
from the many
upon her shore's mangrove.

how the tiger guards her treasures,
prawns and ***** and honeys and woods,

pounces from the saline thickness of the mist
when dream of life is heavy on the gatherer
and smell of death far gone forgotten

rips the flesh cracks the skull open
flows the blood as silent night
carries the trophy for a bony rest
till devoured by her floodwater.

the river knows it too well

the tiger is her lover and loyal sentinel.
The Sunderban tigers prey upon the fishermen, crab catchers, woodcutters, and honey gatherers who venture into their territory, more often illegally, driven by the lure of the wealth in the river and on her shores.
Where the river abandons herself to the creek
and the mudbank is cratered with crabclaws
waits the old man.

He doesn't know his years
but his ears are a sonic gift
catching the tonal variations of tides
seemingly for eons
evolving with the mangrove map
into a flawless tracker
of how far the moon would recline
for ***** to be holed out
and what shoreline the water would touch
before the shrimps starlight driven
make a beeline for the net.

I encountered him once
in the absurdity of a time
when I was high
and he lowly crouching
was making art by the creek.

Who was the poet
I could never tell.
Ashleigh Black Apr 2014
I see your face in everything
-- the reflection of a dripping wet window,
the whispering leaves on a mangrove tree
in the creases of my rustled bedsheets --
I see you in everything I cannot avoid.
Sean Fitzpatrick Dec 2013
Met a wife and her husband at a bus stop in Atlanta.
Said
     "We're going down to Miami to see our brother. Hubby's gonna go deep sea fishing next to all the mangrove roots."
Just then, the double decker came and swooped them up, took off into the sky beating its mighty $1 dollar ticket wings.
With the veins of my grief
the day dies a fallen leaf
night’s shadows in me confide
the boat is coming from the other side
chirping crickets on darkness feed
thickens smell of mangrove reed
waves rolling in the saline stream
paint a boat in slumbered dream.
poems flow like rivers in tide
when she’s by your side
and reclines a November afternoon
on the back of the crescent moon!

you tell her stories only for her made
as the birds their weary wings spread
when her face is west borrowed red
and you grab the last flickers before they fade!

you don’t talk of love but companionship
as night wears on and comes not sleep
the mangrove smells of long dead shells
with returning tide the river swells!

beside you walks a woman in your mist of tears
a face you hadn’t seen over all these years
she’s the woman you wonder if you ever knew
a companion a lover one dream forever new!
Wanderer Apr 2012
Leaning against the rough bark of a mangrove
Piercing sunlight grinding into the tender layers of my eyelids
For sleep I would walk miles to darkness
Headed down a rabbit hole journey
Stars twinkling above the gazing set of my road weary eyes
A sea of diamonds lighting my way home
Pulsing vibrations connect me to the heart of the great mother
Her eternal intensity feeding our spirit
An ever spark of life
Omitted by a cosmic lotus bud
Constantly blooming bright and full
Reflecting our force of will in each heavy, buzzing cell
I want to be in the core, know it all
Not enough room inside this compact skull
Must expand, must evolve , escaping the tight confines of physical experience
My minds eye all encompassing in terrifying capacity
Engorge.
Saturated with the very idea of light
Too theoretically complex to keep a hold of
Sifting and drifting through corporeal fingertips, grasping
Wandering stardust vagabonds, becoming unattainable
Creating instead tiny flames inside my head
Ivie Jun 2013
Oh how the freckles grace you pale skin, forming a map and an ocean, my fingers the airplane,
- gliding across the mangrove forests your eyelashes form
Fiery strands of silk glowing in the reverie, underneath the palm tree –entangled with poison ivy
I wanted to ask you to stay, I needed you to stay, but you were like sand, slipping from my fingers,
The ocean swept you away during evening tides, faraway to the Bermuda triangle
Your fingerprints etched on my spine, blazing in the iridescent sunlight,
Lips still tingling in the morning light, drawing into a smile, reminiscing past time.
Then fading, frowning, morose from the flow of life, the course of time.
Cracked shells abundant on the beach, no traces of hued sand dollars,
Too many love song records, your playlist pumping like a beating heart in my ears,
Feeding me lies, the idea of eternity drowning me in its addictive incense
Deadly and irresistible like the deadly nightshade, but love, time shot me
We bled profusely, till we were outlines of chalk, a mess of capillaries and a
Web of broken bones, till we couldn’t breathe anymore and the memories became our drip-
The only hope.
Growing up in the
White man’s grave,
Experiencing the days
Of infinite mental disquiet,
Glancing up at the
Towering walls of life,
And considering my
Unacceptable wretched
Condition is all I can remember,
For I rejected the feeling
Of rolling in my own cobweb,
Calling it merely a
Trick of my imagination,
Indeed, the child resembles
The father but belongs
To the mother’s clan,
And the waves and tides
Are nothing but noxious
Dynamic icing strength,
Ah! A mighty tree has falling,
Flinging down coil after
Coil with hasty energy,
Someone should please
Ask nature to make
Restitution for this damage
Done to my restless hope,
For the resplendent and
Bastardized peace in me
Has been torn into
Squalid tatters by howls
Of rage and shrieks of lament,
May be, nature can establish
My virginity in the blood-stained
Sheet on my wedding night,
Hmm, my queer life,
The white fowl spotted
By the roving evil hawk,
Indeed, the mangrove tree
Dwells in the Pra river,
But that does not make it a crocodile.


© PRINCE NANA ANIN-AGYEI
Email: nanaspeaks@gmail.com
Ivan Brooks Sr Oct 2018
I cry very hard every night
For the land of my forefathers.
Once called Africa's golden child
Woe unto them that hurt you.
Like a child gunned down,
Somebody shot you in your prime
Your soul cries out for help
Purging the nectar of hate
Joggling the sack of opportunity
Looted out by pseudo politicians
And devoured by corrupt wolves
Who talks as revolutionaries
Paid with very huge salaries.
Hungry kids with sad eyes
Eyes stained with tears line
tears lines that know no tears.
Dried lips and Weak bodies
That can't stand neither walk.
Even if the did, where will they walk?
For the roads are now no more,
Washed away by corrupt erosion.
Ills of yesterday, void of compassion.
Look beyond everything, see the poor
Stuck in the black muddy ponds.
Those real victims of poverty, poverty
Tattooed on the souls of the poor.
Poor people who went en-mass
To the ballot boxes and voted,
For a change that's yet to come.
Waiting From the mangrove swamps
Squinting from the shines of the elite,
Dwarfed by brand new mansions
Gift from the country giant to himself. I'll pray every day for the masses,
Wishing the real Massiah would come.


IB-Poetry©
26/11/2018
For those still in the struggle.
Daniel August Jan 2015
I will tell you not of our
Secret mangrove tenement,
Tunneled through the space
behind both of our eyes.
A place meant for whimsy
and bioluminescent fauna,
fawning faux sun light
out into obsidian night.

Nor will I tell of our
soul’s soft meridian,
served on the half shell
to both kind and prying
eyes, distant though
unarguably tied— ribbons
spun, fastened, dyed

For what end should I tell?
When your very presence is
Heaven.
And your very absence
Hell.
Cecelia Francis Dec 2014
Taste full
waves made
rolling
moare of
you

discom
bobulated
model
compiled
of tons of
things not
made of
us
in a
constant
grasp
of your
bending
banyan
limbs a
mangrove
combinding
to keep an
open
meyend

total
composite
of things
outside
of me
JL Mar 2012
I can no longer wait for spring
When I know the perfume of countless pale orange blossoms
Will fill the air
When heaven will hold white billowing clouds
Over the trees and pastures now full of wildflowers
Purple and yellow and red they grow
Petals all tossed in the cool wind
The lakeweed will gather at the shore
Where the reeds sprout tall and thick
Dragonflies circle the green water
Viceroy butterfly like a leaf
Now the cranes are joyous
Warming their wings in the sun
Walking in the shallows
Searching for mosquitoes on the surface
The Bluebird calls from the treeline
The Cardinal calls from the air
Deer roam through the rows of sugar cane
Quiet in the breeze
Orange groves full of angry cottonmouths
Who coil in the sun
Soft flowing river
Mangrove snapper slips through the water
Warm in the noon time sun
Today we bury you
Underneath the ground
Everything you've seen and been
All that you became
Is lost in an instant
During a final winter rain
Now we give you up
To become part of the earth
Bringing only joy
Leaving only love
We cannot stand here in sorrow
When the orange blossom starts to bud
Fah Apr 2015
Charred bones line his head dress and the children slurp at the last bites of flesh, but no one eats together and she horrified at their ugliness, drowns herself in the mirror and they laugh at each others pity and they sing to each others more-ish vanity as each slither of their compassion turns to silver as they vanish and the scene is repeated in the good book of the law, he’s entitled to everything. These days he doesn’t even have to label her a ***** you think they’ve got it now? I think most people harbor the notion that we’re not very civil and that laws are bent in favor of some. Listen, the good book of the law THINKS he has made a fool out of you and of me. But a fool steps off cliffs because she’s so in love with life that everything is enchanting and everything is magical. She is essential to being alive and well, yet they make her out to be public enemy number 1.  

Either way, he’s sneaking the children in plain sight under his belly of hate and she’s crying in shock she’s gob smacked at the rate in which his searing fear burns their connection to a respect for themselves, she is not bound to this flesh but she is bound to her duty as a mother, what fallow may this be I wonder as I sits and I waits in my sequoia self tree, I wonder as I sits and I waits in my mangrove mud.

She’s readjusting her vision and I’m over the hill, maybe I’m selfish maybe I’m cruel maybe I’m a jester to none, but I laugh a little tune and beat on my drum , maybe I’m downright rude but I’m not able to feel the depth of her mourning but I’m scared in it’s place       I‘ve got shadows on top of me and I don’t want to lose grace or compassion but it’s those ghosts that are leaving me slowly

s l o w l e y

and I want them away, let me open my arms now when I am ready.

I wonder with a heart beating yet, does it hurt him?
or does the taste of oblivion still whet?
Or is is the musk of revenge of who knows what, singing out sweetly on the breaking of one mothers back? Perhaps I lack the proper vision to see what this is all about. I ask that I relinquish myself from her now because I feel what she feels in such clarity and more often than not I’m shaken at the barbarity
that plays down on the unpleasant and on the wretched and at the stinky and it’s uncomfortable to stab myself every time she says I’m not perfect. Between you and me it’s easing, it’s easing. I know of the root to this nausea , it's the mother that came before her.

I’m not one to forget, but I’ll take my time to remember. Remember that my strength warrants my gentleness but that involves **** near heavenly trust because we’re nearing a precipice of our life long surrender
to the current
we’re flowing on and the ins and the outs my body has become a series of caves and the ocean licks at the curves and fills me all up to wash me out and kiss me on the nose and tell us all we are brave
but sometimes it’s hard to see when it’s so empty and the noise of the waves dashes us against the crystal pointed rocks where we’re snagged and torn like corners of cloth , but the flesh of our bodies will not lay there and rot
we’re to be eaten by some other creature. We’re to be devoured like we imbibe others.
And this is the way of this place.

So -  what’s the rush?
these views may not reflect my current or total views and my current views may not reflect the views I hold once you read this.
Gaye Sep 2015
I’ve been waiting for so long,
On the road that never ends
Migrating between seasons to my
Pastoral lands north and south
Searching for your unfamiliar face
In forest foothills, swarming buses
And basins next to the Ganges.
I can wait till the moon hits the sea
The time- till you come, till you come.

Flashing lights, chiming bells,
Inscent sticks and a peculiar charm-
You carried, they said.
But you’re flesh and blood for me
Truth and reality knotted between
My garland of jasmine flowers.
I can wait with full heart and glistening eyes
Till you come, till you come.

There is no haste, I’m anticipating an upcoming
There is no starry blanket or mount chariot
But there are fireflies and a summer sun
Playing peekaboo with my shadow
Behind the mangrove forest
Envisaging your ticket to this world.
A crew of lasses claims and expects you
But you’re beyond love they could conceive.
Let the world scream, cry and yell
I still can wait till you come, till you come.

You’re a friend, philosopher and guide
I adore, worship and awaits your arrival.
Merchant ladies who walked my hut
Asked me all day to keep a ghee lamp
I lit a thousand lamps and still you dint-
Walk my shed. This life is not long enough
To witness thy face, eternal and mysterious
I can wait till you come, till you come.

The journey is beautiful, endless and offhand,
Walking through lanes strangely acknowledged
But there’s a feeling familiar still so odd.
The walk is not to say good bye but it’s a quest,
A prayer to reach your mountain nest.
There is the world- cirrus and starry nights
I can escape for the time forever from tides-
That counts the time- to the unknown!
I can’t wait, till you come, till you come.
Marshall Gass Apr 2014
It was only a line, a flash, a blurb
but it lit a lifeline to
mangrove minds, chandeliers in the street,
peacock feathers,
art ****** sunsets trapped
in bleeding orange and emails
of honesty.

Who was this vibrant artist
waddling colours of purple passion
aubergine temples of trust
murals of majestic visions
nights of bright lights
and poems from the streets of dawn
bohemian Queen
painting ecstasies in double entredres
whispering apologies
collecting little bits of jigsaw life
making sense of sublimation
unafraid to speak the truth

She must be special.
in the selfie of the moment
she opened a window
to let me peer in and
I stayed well past the
unreasonable hour. Fascinated.
Author Notes

The Artist. Have met her many times before.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

— The End —