She holds you close,
And keeps you warm
Through nights and days of the horrid storm.
What gift to man this precious one,
Who's quiet and humble as a lamb.
Yet beyond these wonderous gifts she bears
The world is never as sincere.
But today, her day, her birthday comes
She's seen and loved by everyone,
And now she knows if not before
The warmth and joy her presence holds.
- Kady-Ann Morgan
Bolt, Phelps, Rogge
The small boy
in the open pasture
admiring the newborn calf
surprised by the sudden changed
mood of the cow chasing him
all the way to the fence
The good boy
believing in the devil
terrified of the dark
lingering with friends
must make the mile home
before the engulfing
and suddenly noticed nightfall
The cool jaywalker
just now aware
he'd misjudged
the asphalt-coloured
car bearing down
The schoolgirl
proper young lady
untouched by teacher's leather
as lateness looms
this sullen Monday morning
with a proud pain-free record
that has to be kept
The stately matron
confidently opens
her old friend's gate
unaware of their pit bull acquisition.
From the backyard
the low-lying mass of muscle
growls to start the race against her
towards her breathless car
The fleeing thief, the surprised adulterer,
the priest who overslept for mass,
the worker covering ground to the clock machine
on the verge of losing the pay for
fifteen precious minutes,
the urgent traveller who, distance away,
sees the last passenger boarding the last bus,
the mother of the toddler who has
trotted off into danger,
the old man who must escape
the encroaching fire,
the grandmother hastening to shelter
from the wet high wind
Secondary to us are the splashers in the fourth element
Speed over land is our need, our survival, our passion.
Bolt is the dissipater of our panic,
the peak of our aspiration
the butt of their futile, hopeless, Rogguish envy.
Unassailable in his oft-tested cleanliness,
he elucidates our pristine tradition,
our past seconds and thirds
when gold was taken by tarnished others.
He will have dictionaries print our words,
and make us look clearly at ourselves
Bolt, our ascending illuminating shooting star.
- Keith Ellis
----
Drunken
Old, wrinkled sitting on a bar stool
Sipping vodka
Smoke being exhaled
The rum burned his throat and he gulped more
He puffed on his cigarette
Staggering to and fro
Tears fall from my eyes
Is this what I am going to be 30 years from now?
He loved her with all his being
She promised him until life's end
She left him before he drove the Lada
She packed before he could apologise
He hated himself
He loved the bottle and cigarette
They were his closest friends
He loved us at times
Sometimes he hated us
For letting him remember his past.
- Antonette Sinclair
--
Mystery
The temper of God steams across the scene
in a vicious circle of creeping clouds
black as sin, behind them a hint of blue
sky begging to shine on a depressed earth,
wet with its own salt tears; seas swelling with
the tantrum of disbelief and pregnant
termination like prophecy of end
times -the apocalypse, armaggedon
and judgment all in one great rush of gail
force winds and soul-gripping rain dropping down
on the heathen earth with condemnation;
rain like hellfire, winds like the memory
of unrepented transgression in the ears,
howling: wolves devouring the flesh of earth,
carnivorous leeches of the world's gaping
imperfections, that have just sucked the blood
of our land!
Before the storm there's the calm
and after the even calmer: the storm
of attrition, the recovery and discovery of life after death, the closing
act of some tragic play of Seneca,
Sophocles or Shakespeare, masters I sit
here wondering if they could write a better
ending to this life drama I witnessed
unfolding before my eyes like a mystery.
- Nicholas Alexander
----
They don't see her trauma
She is going through psychological trauma
But where is the apology?
Memories keep coming back to harm her, she was raped
And it's like a tape that's on repeat when
She goes to bed, sometimes she cries until
Her eyes turn red, her fear of men is worse than her tears, no one knows what she goes through day by day when she sits in the corner. Alone, not making a sound but the phone only rings without an answer. She never answers it because she is afraid it might be the monster.
She shivers every time her father comes close to her but he doesn't realise she is traumatised, she is broken and she is afraid to open up to him and he sometimes wonders why she hasn't spoken to him recently, like she used to, even when he talks to her in a decent way, standing few feet away, but her mother always says to him leave her alone.
Her parents are unaware that their teenaged daughter Brenda is in danger and she was raped by their neighbour Roger.
- Damion McCatty
