Because I Love Words: Chapter Four: Excuse Me

Excuse me

Excuse me, but can I…?

May I…?

Is it really so much to ask for?

So much to beg for?

So much to plead for?

I just need a break

Not a fake break

But a real break

Away from the constant constant

Ringing, bringing

Going, coming

Yelling!!!!!!

I NEED A BREAK!!!!

FROM ALL THE BULLSHIT!!!!!

FROM ALL THE DUMB SHIT!!!!

FROM ALL THE SICK SHIT!!!!!

No

Uh-uh,

Hell no

I……….don’t want to be forgiving

I……….don’t want to be accepting

I……….don’t want to be understanding

I need to be unrelenting

Unrelenting

Unrelenting

Till it clicks

And shifts

And I piss.

I piss

All over your sensitivity

Your insecurity

Your morality

Your Pc-icity

I am SICK of your DEFINITIONS

Your ROLES, PLACEMENTS, CHARACTERISATIONS

I need no EMANCIPATION

Because YOU never had ME

So excuse me

No need to forgive for being blunt

For deciding WTF and finally spark that Blunt

Excuse me if my speak

Be incomplete

Excuse me if my tongue pass my cheek

Excuse me

When you LIE to me EVERYDAY

And leave me with just enough

So I come back same way

So I’ll come back another day

Excuse me

Excuse me

If I think you stink beneath that $200 Smell Sweet

While I and We walk around BROKE no BOMBEAT

Excuse me

Excuse me if I have a Shitload to say

But excuse me

I’ll leave DAT for another day

Glen Toussaint 2012©

Mek I Say Som’ting

Killing me softly as I’m screaming out my soul into the air of your ear

Carbon dioxide rushing, colliding into much needed oxygen

As I fight and kick and squirm my body

Myself from the pressure of the psychedelic tools of mind binding

It feels like the earth is bending beneath the sheer weight of garbage

That’s just multiplying to infinity and beyond

Taking up space like a downloaded sniper virus from cyberspace

Replicating itself

Filling out and devouring every gigabyte of soil, river, mountain, blood, bone and thought.

The neon flashing lights of sooped up joy rides

Foreign delights

Liquid tainted nights

And a whole lot of open secrets shared by all and none

Festering while we ignore and forget and convince at least one

Who?

You?

Definitely not me in this game with no name where every Jack got a ball

And every Jill trying to score with a net that ain’t never caught a fish yet if ever at all

I’ll lay it all on the line everytime I feel the need to place no restrictions on the freedom of my seed

Because we all need to breed-

I’m sorry, breathe.

Let’s cough and clear throats

Let’s forget what was just said

Cause decent people don’t entertain such thoughts in their head

Instead

We bled

Yes!

Let’s bleed out our sanity

Bleed out our morality,

Our vitality cannot possibly be of more worth than our vanity

Let us replace our blood with red coloured kool-aid

Cause its cheaper, faster, easier, more efficient and cost effective

In these hard economic times

Let us mix some soft truth between these hard lies

Yeah I’ll take a coke with my fries

And stare into your red rimmed eyes

And white dusted nostrils

While you tell me we are free

The same time you jerking to the strings

As you answer the call of every bit of technology

So we’re back to where we started from

Going full circle obeying every traffic sign along the way that said we cannot turn right

So we keep turning left

Leaving bits and pieces of ourselves till there is NOTHING left

And we’re NAMELESS by the time we talk to death

Are we just too smart for our own good?

Are we so INTELLIGENT that we’re fools?

Clowning around while we’re just tools?

A whole legion and more of mental, spiritual and emotional midgets

Suitable for nothing more than maintaining digits?

We are refined beings

The top of the food chain

Because there is nothing to feed on us

Yet that’s the kick ain’t it

We are allowing ‘Nothing’ to feed on us

Cause we constantly give ourselves to oblivion and naught of substance

Wading through that sea of garbage

Polluting the temple that is us

But we have to perpetuate it

It’s a must...

A must…really?

I’d suck my teeth at this point

At this very point while the joints of the world scream out

To the selfsame oblivion

For release from the clowns

She tries to be rid,

To be free

So she quake and burst and flow pyroclastic

Howling with hurricanes and tornadoes

Forgive me…

Forgive me If for a minute I came off preachy

But its killing me softly

And I have to speak

I have to breathe

I have to be

So mek I say som’ting

Even if it kills me

Glen Toussaint 2012©

Mind Bizniss

Me?

Bas me does keep to me self, bas’ me nuh mind people bizniss…

But if me did mind people bizniss an chat people bizniss

Me woulda tell you bout Cindy…

Yeah Cindy nuh man?!

You know she man, de big batty gyal from bottom village

Well she say she ah go pan diet fi lose weight

Fi de man she done hab five and a half picnkey fa

An how she ah nyam nothing but pineapple, banana, grapes, lettuce an wata

Till she pop down and nearly pronounce ‘dead on arrival’ at Mount St John

But me? I don’t have time to mind people bizniss.

Wha? Anna dat min happen…

Hey me say anna so ‘I go…

Jason min get the phone call the morning right after him reach a work-

Hello! Me say he min done reach a work, dat a how he min mek it back a yard jus likkle after 10

Me? Me min dey a mind me bizniss a wash de pickney dem clothes

Next ting me hear ruckshan brock out, Milli ah bawl down more murder an Jesus, looka naise me dear

like say de house a brock down

an den one black smadee wit all he bizniss out a door fly tru d bedroom window like one movie star

ah pelt up de road like say him ah Usain Bolt

But me? Me just mind me own bizniss see buddy. Me nuh hab time fi study neaga bizniss

You hear me?

I does not mind peoples bizniss

But if me did do,

then me would tell you how Bella hab two man,

one ruff lookin one dat does ring she out ah day time

an wan fat white one wit um big car she does ring out ah night time.

And how since me did know she, Sophie gut always swell up wit pickney

And how Mason have 4 job 5 woman and 13 pickney and nah feed nuttin but prostitute

But me? Me na have time fi mind neaga bizniss

Eh-eh, So me guess nuh hear how maxim third son get deported from merica, and how the first son rich like dirt living in France but cyan send a coppa to he mooma. But the likklest one, d last girl she get island scholar and she plan to go way and study and own she own business.

Me also did hear say Sandra and she Trini husband find Jesus and de holy ghost and join Jehovah witness

Ah tru aye, you nuh believe me? Look d watch tower magazine she gi’ me when she corner me infront ah Rising Star.

Me bet you nah min know say Buss’een lef jail. Chupz? Chupz? You nuh bizniss.

Well you better bizniss. You nuh know wha he ennup ah jail fa? A 8 man get sen up ah has’ital

Cause ah he nuh, papers say he min pon a rampage, an how the judge say him guilty of first degree buggery wit malicious intent. But now me a look pon you, you best leff u money where it drop see, dem say he lob bwoy whey favour foo you complexion

Me? Me just mind foo me bizniss see, me na able. Me nuh hab time fi mind—

Eh eh. Fu who black cyar dat deh? Backside! Ah whey she ah go dress so…

MIND YOU BLASTED BIZNESS MAN

YOU Y’EYE TOO DYAMN LANG!

Glen Toussaint ©2012

Ode to Love

Whisper to me a word

or two or three my sweet

Can you feel it?

That vibe, so hot so demanding?

Pulsing and pulling?

Calling and crying…?

Can you feel it?

A cadence so ancient and mystic so rhythmic

So close to the wild and primal

The fall and rise of man condensed in this single moment

A conflagration at the very core

Grasping hungrily for more

Pounding the air

The gentle night breeze

The hibiscus in your hair

Arms so strong

Arms oh so graceful

Eyes so bright

Voices take flight, till the heavens weep

Move with me, flow with me, sink with me

To the bottomless deep where, love, brave hearts seek

And in this moment within this night

Our hearts dancing nude in the moonlight

Give praise to the divine

As one our bodies stay, souls entwined

A testament to nature so pure and sublime

Glen Toussaint 2009©

The Storyteller (Patois)

Vieux nomme la, overt deux z’yeux evet garde soleil la go’ go’ et rouge, rouge

Desan aise, aise ah la mer la

il assiz assu bouden un canoe shesh pou pon un ti pose

‘merci papa bon dieu, pour un d’ot jour’ il dit

‘merci Jesis-Christ pour la foss pour continue viv assu la terre’

Un ti moment passé eveh un lot

Mem si il vie il sa chante con un jennes

il sa marche san un bwah

Aypi il sa tan un chat mache

Vieux nomme la garde soleil la prepare pour dormi

Il ja connet le petit z’enfant la kay vinni fait tweh ah zowei li

‘papa Jacque, papa Jacque’

Ehbeh!

Vieux nomme la tournez tete li evet wi, say pas yo mem?

‘Papa Jacque, Papa Jacque, Bon soir Papa Jacque. Ou sa dit nous un d’ot storie, Papa Jacque?

‘Oui, oui, Papa Jacque dit nous un d’ot, nuh, s’ ou’ plait…

‘Nous pas que fait tweh, promesse, nous que anni assiz abba pie’w assu terre la evet ‘coute’

‘D’accord, d’accord. assiz z’enfant, assiz.’ Vieux nomme la feme z’yeux pour un moment, après Il ouvert yo et garde tout seh z’enfant la ki assiz assu terre la evet crier:

‘Tim-Tim’

‘Bois shesh’

‘Qui sa Bon Dieur mete assu La terre?’

‘Toute  chose’

‘Mesieur, mwen que dit zoh un histoire kot Macack, Cabuite evet un bom sancoach coco….

Mesieur quee!'

‘Qua!!!’

‘Un fois, i'tenni…’

Glen Toussaint 2012©

Conversation: She Said:

She Said:

Babes.

Let’s talk for a little ‘bout what we don’t talk about a lot

I’ve noticed how you’ve taken to avoiding my eyes

Hardly returning my smiles

Your hands hardly touching my thighs

Your cold shoulder in the colder bed frequently console me when I cry

And when I try

Oh baby when I try to ask a question

Or THE question you ACT shy

Or are you being for real

See it’s been more than six days; six months; six years

But who’s counting… fo’ real

Remember when you used to speak with that strength,

Never bluffing?

Baby those whispered sweet nothings actually did mean something

They really did mean something

Cause your talk was never cheap

Especially when it came to me

At least that’s what you said once upon a time

When love was the life line betwixt the two of us…

That umbilical cord converting I’s into We

When you proclaimed your complexity was simply sweet simplicity

You remember that?

 Baby?

Baby are you even listening

You used to hang on my every word

And your voice when you sang beneath the brave stars of the twilight

Was the best I’ve ever heard

Surpassing the nightingale in full flight

Now your hands in repose unprepared for the fight

Your eyes flung so far away

Am I even in your line of sight

Baby let’s talk a lot on what we’ve spoken of so little

If we’ve spoken at all

Your winter has changed my summer into fall

And I’m left wondering

Should I have even bothered at all?

What is it that I’ve done wrong?

Have I not given enough?

Was I not wife enough?

Was I not Woman Enough?

Freaky enough

Sexy, Smart or loving enough?

Should I just give it up

Resign myself to a war lost

Cut my losses and move on

Regardless of the cost

As hard a thing as it is to do

With all my years entwined in you

It’s a monumental possibility

This actuality I’ll acquit

I’ll quit this state of limbo

Hanging on to this crumbling rock

Buffeted by your ebb and flow like the tide

Waiting on you to decide

 Or have you decided already

And you’re just toying with me

Angry is not how I want to feel

Rather, safe and loved wrapped up in your arms still

Has the love we shared, in this Savage Garden, died?

Has what we laboured so hard to build faded into

Black and white images

Only to be preserved as footnotes

In the corner of pages

Adding weight to poetic phrases

So that others examining these stages

Can look and sound like sages

 Despite what I have said

It’s not that easy just walking away

Maybe its all in my head

I’ve given all that I can give

More than my fair share

But I’m here

Beside you right now

Waiting

Waiting and wanting to see more than a broad back

And eyes that have gone black

Needing

To hear you draw breath

To see you part lips

And say….

…Baby?

Glen Toussaint 2012©