Duppies July 6, 2009
Posted by Tel in Placed.Tags: abandonment, affair, anger, death, desire, domestic violence, fear, gay poetry, hatred, jamaica, jamaican poetry, love, lust, Placed, Poem, poems, Poetry, spirituality, superstition, the unknown, youth
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a jamaican mile
seems a long thing,
relatively relative
almost subjective
but these are the lengths
you’ve came, my doctor
to find me here tonight
we are both afraid:
you and i.
about those things
lingering among the trees
the stories we tell pickneys
haunt, us, too, good doctor
strangle us so that not even
our voices or capabilities are heard
there is fear in the mountains
and deep in cockpit country
people still talk and second guess
who is who and what is what
medicine means nothing
in a place where people
fret about what follows them
home at night, seen and unseen, good doctor
there is something frightening
clasped around my throat
and fierceness burns in your eyes
so easy to blame the nothingness
that does not exist
or whisper to one another
that we need just breeze off a while
set those duppies free,
whatever demons they might be, my doctor
but sprinkle a little rum and salt
for my safekeeping and passage
This is eerie, but very cool indeed..
I was in an eerie mood, I guess, trying to channel some stuff I’d heard about domestic violence into a poetic piece about superstition.
“medicine means nothing
in a place where people
fret about what follows them
home at night” = chills.
Trying to go for something deeper and make a statement about how chilling domestic violence is and how it’s based on some of the same tenants, or like thereof, of superstition. Not sure the parallel comparison is coming through, though. Will probably edit.