688 words

Unexpectedly and without invitation the old man had become the focus of my pain and anger. Rising angrily from the bench I turned to face him, the facility of my movement making a mockery of his life of effort, and pointed “Fuck you! Fuck all this talk about God and dogma and kings and beliefs, when you see your God old man…tell him he can kiss my arse!” I moved as quickly as the words tumbled past my lips, hurrying from the site of my tirade, away from my reality.

I’ve always loved the sea and it is to it that I run to seek peace, to regain my rhythm. I sat at the water’s edge that evening pulling on a 20 and watching the sun disappear behind the shadow of the Main on the horizon. The water soothed me with sound, the ganja enabling me to float on the wave of sound as easily as I had learned to float on water that day so long before. Closing my eyes and listening to the water caress the shore I remembered her, before the children, before the anger and hurt, before the damage was done. I remembered the woman I had fallen in love with in my house on the hill in view of the sea.

She comes from the water as I do, the daughter of a legendary Caribbean waterman, one who seems more at home asea than on land. We would talk of boats and anchorages, characters and events that we had witnessed up and down the islands. Conspiratorially, after we made love we would lie on the porch and talk of loves and lusts lost on the sea and because of the sea. The sea was a special place for us, about a year into our relationship I went on an assignment on the north coast for three weeks in the most idyllic of settings. She came with me. Almost every night we would sit on the sand listening to the waves, making and learning love. That beach is where I learned what love was, the sea our private harmony. She has turned her back to the sea since her father died, a place too painful for her to visit with the memories of him still fresh.

I thought of us standing in front of God and our friends and family, pledging ourselves to each other forever, the innocence and joy on her face that day exchanged today for world weariness and resignation as she took the stand, Bible in hand, swearing to tell the truth according to her. Flicking the butt of the 20 into the sea, I steupsed, climbed into the car lighting a cigarette as I did and drove home to me.

I am standing on my backstep coffee cup in one hand, cigarette moving to mouth in the other. It is dawn. Directly in my line of sight is the flourmill, rising like an ancient ziggurat out of the fo’day morning; almost obscured by the flocks of pigeons seeking to feed on the grain. This is something I see everyday, as much a part of my ritual as prayers are to the faithful, but this morning is different. The old man’s voice playing in my head brings the 12 years of Catholic schoolboyhood to the surface in me, the questions back “What I do to deserve this God? Why yuh leave me hangin’?”. In the early morning light, the pigeons transform into doves, the glow behind the mill becomes a halo tracing the holy lines of the temple and my lips began to move, mumbling “ Maybe that’s the answer, Jesus has forsaken me because I’m not one of his doves of peace rushing to feed at his altar. My table is good enough for me. He ain’t stupid…why waste time on a non believer? Thank god I’m not one of those stupid black people with a blind faith in an imposed God…”. The bile rising in my throat had brought back my cynicism. I flicked the cigarette, tossed the coffee out and went inside to get ready for the day.

Eating Jesus

Dear Reader:
This is another potentially offensive work of fiction…be warned. It first appeared here

On my darkest day, the sun seemed brighter, more intense than I remembered it being recently and, as a consequence, it was hotter than even my head at that point.

Navigating my way through the square amidst the street philosophers holding court in “The People’s University”; the Watchtower peddling Jehovah’s Witnesses and one or two stray Mormons; the sight of a snocone man by the fountain made me change my focus and filled my mouth and brain with longing – a longing to replace the vitriol, like bile in my mouth, with the cool, sweet flavour of syrup and to freeze my brain to free myself of the hate that filled my thoughts. “What flavour syrup you have there breds? You have passion? Give me one with just passion syrup and milk” I watched the snocone man as he automatically filled my request, never looking at me, all his concentration on his task – filling the cup with ice, rounding the top, saturating the ice with syrup and crowning his creation with condensed milk.

Taking the masterpiece he had created, I retreated to a bench and consumed myself in consuming the snocone. Out of the corner of my eye, the movement of pigeons clamouring around something caught my attention. Turning to see what was going on, I realised that I was sharing my bench with an old man who was as intent on his task as I had been to mine. Feeding the pigeons, he was carrying on a monologue “ The problem with the Caribbean is that we need our own god. We can’t be free until we have a religion that is ours, of us by us.” The pigeons didn’t seem to care about his point of view, but I needed to know where he was going with this thought, “ I’ve never heard such nonsense, what shit you talking, man?” I was pushing fire, eager to distract myself from the day’s earlier humiliation.

I had left the High Court physically and emotionally shattered, the humiliation of appearing in Court to validate my right to be daddy to my children had done a number on me. Was I as bad a father as I was made out to be? Did I deserve to be a father?

He seemed carved from mahogany. Dark, smooth and with a glow that, to me, came from under his skin, he resembled pictures I’d seen of tribal warriors. He sat upright, shoulders square with a threadbare suitcoat hanging off of them like a shirt on a clothesline. Looking at me down the bridge of his aquiline nose, and wearing his pride like a battle banner, I was suddenly embarrassed at my outburst. “Young man” he continued, “ Cast your eye on history, understand and appreciate what it demonstrates and ask yourself who talking shit. Every single successful empire or civilization has been founded on two principles, technology and religion or a belief system. Every single one, Think about it, if you don’t know, now is the time to be educated. In the Americas, Inca and Aztec defeated only by the technology of the horse, smallpox and the Spanish belief that it was their divine task to spread the cross around the world.”

“A divine task, you get the point? Are you hearing me boy…you listening to me? The divine right of kings, who gives them that right? They do, the belief system makes it possible. The empire building monarchs all share a deep rooted faith and encouraged clear belief systems. They anoint themselves ‘Defenders of the Faith’ for God’s sake!”

He had begun to bore me, my mind began to drift and I started chipping at the snocone, now solidifying into a chunk of yellowish ice; the hue, like his, coming from the centre where the last remnants of syrup were literally insulated from my sucking. I absently wondered what gave him his and from whose sucking had he protected it. “Appreciate the arrogance, then think, come on. You must be able to think of at least one example in that mind of yours…I’m sure you went to school, you must have learned something.”

His goading snapped me back. As he had spoken at me, I had begun to involuntarily replay random incidents in my head. All sorts of images played at bullet speed, confusing and frustrating me. I felt the angry tears burn in the corners of my eyes and I felt completely helpless, as the tears and the feeling of inadequacy rose, his goading was the last fucking thing that I needed.

“ Go to hell, old man”, I snapped.

Without missing a beat, he continued, “Here, let me make it easier, check this out. Look at the Romans. As soon as Christianity becomes widespread in the empire and the emperor himself becomes a Christian, the empire dissolves. Why? Because Christ was not their God – it’s that simple. An imposed belief system or religion consigns a people to serfdom. Look at black people, lining up to receive the body of Christ. Eating up the host, but unable to embrace a religion that is historically not theirs. What’s the by-product of eating, boy? You must be able to answer that.”

“Shit.” I answered. “The same as you talking.”

“So we’ve come full circle. You telling me that I talking shit. I think I have shown you that the people who are talking that are the people who blindly accept a dogma imposed on them as a condition of independence. The sad thing about these shit-talkers is that they aren’t aware of it.”

Real Therapy

Dear Reader :
This is the piece that got me selected for the Cropper Foundation Workshop. It is a work of fiction that may offend some sensibilities. It contains adult language, graphic adult descriptions etc.

As such, it was the subject of much debate and spirited conversation in the peer sessions with accusations of ‘this is not literature’ being tossed about like so many breadcrumbs from a breadboard. I invite you to critique it and let me know if this is a Caribbean voice worth pursuing or should I too revert to writing about the West Indies in the time of Federation, when Biswas was alive and Brother Man was doing his work in Kingston’s ghettoes?

The piece originally appeared here: Real Therapy

Goatie started it. “De only way to fuck a goat is…” I got scared – what was I doing here? How could I have been this stupid to let myself get caught? “Take it by water and puh de back legs in yuh front pocket and rest yuhself on it.” The semidarkness of the holding cell didn’t allow me to see the face of my sage cellmate, but I could see the mischief written all over the face of the next speaker as he pushed Goatie that much further with the simple question “Why?”.

Goatie needed no further prompting “Because goat ‘fraid water and dey go wine back, an’ it does feel real good.” That was a little more information than I really needed to have and only served to heighten my discomfort. In the gloom all I could see were the eyes and teeth of those across from me and the face of the man sitting next to me who had proudly introduced himself “I is Doon Pundit and I kill a man.” Pundit was the one that was encouraging Goatie in his explanation of bestiality.

These were the circumstances I found myself in that Sunday morning in the Central Police Station. I really should start the story from the beginning though, and let you appreciate the situation in which I found myself and the ridiculous chain of events that led to my being here.

My name is John, Slacker to my friends. Like my name, there is nothing that particularly distinguishes me from the rest of the species, with the exception of my body markings. I tend to use this term rather than tattoo to set myself apart from those who mark their bodies as a fashion statement.

I’ve never been one to subscribe to trends and fads and used the discipline of the pain of body art as catharsis. My marks are all about me and for me; hidden by the clothes that I wear, they are visible only in my nudity – yet another concept that I have yet to come to terms with.

I enjoy marijuana.The attention to detail that rolling the perfect joint entails so that you get rid of all the seeds and stalks, and that first pull that makes everything better. I have always indulged in my vice – it makes me happy.

Anyway, I had been sitting in my living room with my boys Buck Bumble, Ruffneck and Stretch taking a pull and shooting some shit. Bumble was in the middle of fucking himself up, he had opened the newspaper and seen a vacancy for the post of CEO of one of the political parties. “I feel to apply for this job…” he began, “because yuh doh need a brain to be in politics.” His ganja-addled brain had processed the information and filtered it through the lens of his ignorance to come up with this.

“But yuh is a kinda …” said Stretch, before the door came crashing in and we were confronted by police. I don’t know about anyone else, but automatic weapons scare me.

“Get down, get to fuck down” was all I heard before my face met the terrazo floor. “Put your hands on the back of your neck and empty your pockets,” said another officer. I don’t know what got into Ruffneck but I was never more scared than when I heard him steups and ask the officer “What kinda ass yuh take mih for! Eh? How de hell yuh expect mih to lie face down on the floor wid mih han’ on mih neck AN empty mih pockets at de same time? Tell mih dat nah?”.

An officer dragged him up by his belt, slammed him against the wall and began a vigorous body search as the rest of them continued to ransack the house. “Who living here, whey de drugs – search dem clowns, dere mus’ be more.” By this point, I was no longer having a good time. Whatever little buzz I’d been able to glean from the still smouldering ten-piece was gone and there was a very empty feeling in my stomach; which makes what happened after that much harder for me to understand.
“You obviously have no warrant, otherwise you would know who lives here and, further to that,” I heard a voice say, not recognising it as my own “there are no drugs in this house other than that” pointing to the discarded joint on the floor. Who tell me say that? Next thing I knew, the four of us were being loaded, handcuffed in pairs into the police vehicle and en route to the station.

I hate police stations. Always have.
They make me feel persecuted and guilty, even when I have been to report crimes against myself. This time was no different, the fingerprinting and processing left me exhausted and ashamed and the sneer of the officer when he separated me from the others and placed me in the cell with my new associates will always remain with me. I didn’t realise the severity of my situation until he slammed the cell door behind me with a smirk saying “ Yuh want to smoke weed an’ resist arrest? Dey go loose yuh ass in jail. Anyway, yuh have de weekend to tink about yuh actions an make some new friends – who knows? Yuh might get a boyfriend.” Then he was gone.

Confinement is a hell of a thing. The biggest problem for the first-time confinee is coming to terms with it. I was powerless and afraid, feelings I thought I’d never experience again. I felt like a child, not afraid of the dark, but afraid of what it contained. Then I heard the voice “Yute, come here an’ siddong. Everyting go be awright.” I didn’t want to go, but I was tired and upset and my legs were trembling. “Might as well” I thought to myself “It’ll be alright, and if anything I could always scream for help” I convinced myself as I made my way to the voice.

“I is Doon Pundit and I kill a man” was the next thing I heard. This proclamation was accompanied with a hand outstretched in greeting. I must have taken too long to accept the gesture because when I reached for the hand I was met with “Fuck you – who yuh feel yuh is?” I sat down on the cold floor drew my legs up against my chest and peered around. There was nothing to see, but my other senses were assaulted. The smells of fear, desperation and resignation ; the human sounds melding with the scratching of roaches and other vermin as they scurried over the bare concrete floor. The walls were damp to the touch and the floor sticky. The omnipresent sense however was the acid taste of fear in my mouth. Goatie’s discourse didn’t help anything and Doon Pundit, I’m certain, sensed my discomfort and asked

“Yuh ever had sex wid a man?”

slacker’s small axe

For those of you who didn’t know, Slacker is a self-repressed writer of fiction. Before 2008, most of my writing was personal almost throwaway; but now that I’ve been an active member of the blogosphere for 11 months I find that my voice does have some currency.

Anyway smallaxe, the Caribbean platform for criticism, is hosting a literary competition and the Slacker is going to enter. It’s just what I need to quench my creative and competitive thirst. You see, I work as an advertising hack by day churning out senseless jingles and mundane sales copy so I rarely find the motivation to write in my voice and this opportunity will give me an outlet.

There is a precedent. In T&T, the Cropper Foundation has long been a nurturing ground for emerging Caribbean literary voices; helping to launch the careers of many of the bright lights of Caribbean words…Slacker is a humble alumnus of this competitive programme who sometimes feels that he has let the side down.

The big tree that my picking up of the small axe will bring back to earth is my own insecurity. I intend to confront the fear of myself and embrace the challenge, hopefully creating something that will allow the reader to hear the Caribbean, to taste the reality of life on these gems strewn across the sea and to hear and see themselves.

I have begun to sharpen my blade for the effort and would appreciate any support you are willing to give. I intend to make this space my virtual notebook to sketch plot and character so stay tuned…

The gentle rain

I’d lived in urban or developed areas all of my life until November last. Even as a child, before the urban sprawl overtook my quiet residential neighbourhood in the suburbs, I had always been interested in the sound of rain. When it rains in cities or towns, suburbs or developments, you know that it is raining, the sound of the rain hitting the hard surfaces of development reminding you of your detachment from the natural world; the cacophony of sound playing incessantly in your head driving you to distraction.

I work on the top floor of a converted home in an office with a suspended ceiling, the roof itself being galvanised sheeting – when it rains I can hardly hear myself think, forget using the phone or carrying on a conversation. You become conditioned to this noise, this natural intrusion into your headspace and give thanks – thanks for what the rain brings, life springs forth due to rain with plants drinking this manna from heaven in preparation of giving up their bounty. The psychic cleansing that the rain brings washes away the ugly and after the rain everything shines like a diamond under lights, rainbows form in the most unlikely of places and we are refreshed.

I moved out of the city in November, to hide, to heal, to reset. In the Caribbean, November is deep in the rainy season and it has been raining regularly up to now, a month and a half into the dry. My home is surrounded by green and backed by a hill covered in virgin bush, when it rains where I live…the rain makes no sound. No sound, can you believe? The drops caress the grass and weeds and trees and hills; turn the gurgling stream into a strong river and make me sit deeper in my chair or dive deeper under my duvet. This is what I have come to know and appreciate; especially sitting in my office this morning my thoughts being drowned by the sound of rain. If you can, take the opportunity to enjoy the gentle sound of rain if and when possible.

Because I can…

In most instances, that reason is just not good enough, though when it comes to craft, talent, aptitude and most desires it is reason enough. It’s the reason I write both professionally and personally.

I have spent the last 20 or so years working with words in some form or the other and those years have been filled with one thing…an appreciation for the power of the word. In my day jobs I have used words to sway people’s buying habits and to make them believe in realities that come out of my mind and have little basis in the true reality of everyday existence; I’ve also used words to report and convey a sense of place and events. Over the last 11 months since my entry into  the blogosphere, I have used words to convey loss, optimism, humour, observation; I have used them as a catharsis and benefited from their power to heal.

I begin to occupy this space because I intend to harness the power of my words and share some of me with those of you who take the time to drop by – this is what I do, because I can.