There is some secret power of love. The ability to change the world as you perceive it, recreating each moment as a lifetime shared of experience that the artist feels the need to express, to share with someone else. Experience cannot be shared, not in that way, not completely. It is the plague of the artist. This need to express of course brings you back to the realization that though you may try your best, moving and molding words the best you can, that it is impossible. Most times you are only able to articulate it in a way that satisfies you best after the moment has passed then it barely seems meaningful in articulation. Still to the writer it is worth it, always worth it. It becomes the haunt you can't ignore. It becomes the purpose of your life and consumes every thought, it becomes that mission that must be completed and you made even more dedicated. It becomes a passion.

Passion gives each breath a whole new power within you, every thought, every movement you make releases like a sigh that emotion, that white light energy for all the world to benefit from. It drives you and makes you want to live, want to see tomorrow what new word will manifest itself to you, in the sentence you've been writing for the past 4 years. Sometimes just this simple dynamic is the only thing that keeps you.

Realizing that, you inhale deeply, filling all space within you with all else out of you, releasing it slowly back to its place. You live. Grateful for the little things in that specific day.

Searching for Meanings

Nightflight - Aaron Pocock


As a child growing up I would look at everything around me and wish less than patiently to grow up and get away from it all. Adulthood meant freedom to me, doing what you want to do, for you, because you want to do it. Of course when I actually was faced with adulthood I realized that it is all one big same old and I wished again for the care free days as a child. When my biggest problem was which girl in the school yard thought I was too weird to talk to. Yes the problem of some girl in the school yard finding me too weird still exists literally, but now that aspect is laughable. I am too busy thinking about responsibilities, commitments, goals to worry about random people. In that way life is interesting, living behind my glass window, hardly ever looking lower than my 6' 4" eye line of sight people are so very easy to miss. However I find myself living still to please people I do consider dear to me, going to places I hate, nodding silent yeses when I want to scream, socializing when I'd be better entertained with a book. This is what defines adulthood for me something is wrong with a life like that. My problem now is the inescapable nature of life.

I'd like to leave.

At first the idea of leaving life would frighten me, I didn't understand it. Didn't understand my reasons. At fifteen sneaking to the roof of my high school and looking at the concrete below wondering if the drop will be enough was always daunting in after thought. The last thing I could afford would be more humiliation; a broken leg and then have to face my classmates. Then there are the ones who say suicide is for the cowardly, lol I think it might be my cowardice that has saved me so far. It takes an insurmountable bit of courage to even make the decision let alone execute it. Pushing past the point which your body defends itself. Willingly inflicting and bearing pain to face only unsurity about what happens next. I have not done anything else in this life that requires more courage than that. I am a runner, always have been. I'll probably be running very soon. These days it's gotten past the early childish reasons for running and suicide.

I'd like to stop.

Ever have those moments when the world seems to be screaming at you in cacophonies, when every child is crying, every vehicle blasting it's horn, every bird singing and the loudest, most invasive sound of all is the slow, heavy laden tick TOCK of the clock? Imagine feeling in your very being that you can't eat, you shouldn't sleep, the minutes are passing, marking every movement by time and the fact that it goes so fast without you in it. It can become the scariest thing in the world.

In my world I have no power, I seem to have no control over any factor that governs me and most frighteningly myself. I have control over my voice, and my words. It seems the only choice I have. Of course the two are interrelated so rendering me voiceless renders me choice-less and I have a problem with that. It is the one thing that breeds obsession in it's purest form. If there can really be anything described as pure obsession. I need to be heard. or at the very least given the chance to say what I need to say. This is why I write.

I know I have said a lot, my mother would faint if she sees this post but still, take a moment, forget the instinctive reactions, I need no sympathy, you do not understand, and I care less about your judgements take a moment and see what I mean when I say writing is my life. It is my life in the most literal of meanings. Without it, without the sense of freedom that it offers me this life caught constantly in a wicked changing past - for there is no present - is not worth living.

I have not lived up to my intentions of this blog since inviting readers. It is supposed to be my safe place to say as I please so that most importantly I can meet myself. So far I have written in betrayal of that promise, curbing words and sentences so as not to offend. I have suffered for this and so as of now I offer no apologies for anything I say or will say. This is me, there can be no substitute for my truth.

I am looking for my freedom.

....excerpt...

Entering a new phase is difficult. I am starting to lose faith again in this dream of mine.

I am tentatively working on a larger work that seems to be taking a few years, at this point I am on the verge of giving up. I thought posting this excerpt would do some small motivation to continue with my writing. I guess we'll see if that works at all.



His hands, the same that excited me in their individuality, moving together in the end like a choreographed chorus, reached right inside me, drawing out on their tips my voice stringing there, dangling there in his power. His eyes pierced mine again while I tried to cry, to explain, retching with regret.


There would be no understanding in this darkness, seeing only the white of his eyes cataract covered, white as his grin and always, always the darkness, within the darkness, the hole where his heart should be. I reached my hands to him cautiously, unsure of his reasoning, whether friend or foe. Still without the irises his eyes had not left mine. I was sure he could see well beyond this fleshy mask. Olabokun moved out of reach.


Forgetting my voicelessness then I tried to scream out to him, and was forced because of pain to grab at my middle. It was crippling, catching my breath in my throat, imploding in flames in my stomach, washing down my legs, into my feet, into my toes grabbing at the wooden floors as I doubled, if I could only take root. Olabokun laughed at this attempt, the hearty, heavy haunting laugh that seemed to flood into the room from all walls. I crouched to the floor, sat without choice feeling the tear roll slowly down my cheek.


Olabokun raised me up against him gently, his mouth found mine in the embrace and as they touched he blew his breath into me, his last effort of a rebirth. It was with the last of my faith that I hoped he would fail.

Her Language

Her Language
(c) Krys-Darcelle Dumas 24/ 08/09

She gave me a whole new language
and so I loved her.
A language rich with accents
of scattered ancestors
and singing with the voices of women
too long silenced.
She taught me no words
but breathed each syllable
into me
always with a piece of herself
one at a time
allowing them to mold to
the moment
and become.

Her fingers ran the length
of my bare arm
re-awakening the nerves
run dead
by fretful dreams
of broken stones
and trees
and wills
and backs
forcing me to remember.
They ran over the back
of my hand
tracing the map
of my grandmother’s land
and into the streams of my fingers
she squeezed
and I inhaled

SHHHHHH

We had gone back
back to a time
we took pains to acknowledge
because it gave us strength
taught our feet to fall
sure of the ground;
to a time when we could not love
outside the small dark rooms
awaiting the new day
that would come sure
as the white man
when madam was away.

Her breath caressed each
hair on my neck individually
they stood and waved to her wind
my own plantation,
her hand squeezed again
my lips moved
and


OOOOOH

another sound.
That was two.
I was counting now
as we, in this strange way
grew together.
With that one I remembered
the magic of our hands
when even with no money
the banana lady
would insist
“Take two for the children.”
just so Iya’s hands would
touch her tray
and later when the day
was dimming
blackened by her work
smiling she would come
empty tray in hand
“I did tell you so.”
With that ohhh
I understood the power
of a mother’s hands.

With her hand she
turned my head slightly
as though to urge
the quick glimpse of the
night sky’s lightening
across the face
of a pregnant moon
her lips touched mine
briefly
her tongue darting through
the part to pass
lightly over mine
wiping the last of her
language
unto it
over and over to make sure
I got it. I did
for out it came slowly
as she withdrew

AHHHHHHH

That last syllable the
birth of our new language
the ever lasting symbol
that would tie us and
all before us together
the one that tied me
to her
to my mother
to my grandmother’s mother
and her powerful hands
and I knew
that though I had no children
I would have her
and love
and this story of our
language
to tell you.

Poet as King

This is an argument I had today with a colleague started from a facebook status....

"The poet is philosophically superior to the philosopher and historically superior to the historian."

Krys Darcelle Dumas The poet is philosophically superior to the philosopher and historically superior to the historian.

Vlad Krys I could not disagree with something more vehemently. This is a very dangerous notion. But I wont expound too much here. I place the poet lower than both. And in this contemporary era of poetry, i consider it even more important that we recognize that. The type of poets that are here nowadays could easily be featured on E , or on The Soup. Poetry unlike both history and philosophy is excused so often for lack of intelligence. In fact, anyone who goes to poetry looking for intelligence taking a chance. The role of the poet is not really to give answers, probably not even to ask the right questions. What takes primacy to the poet as it has been manifest, is the creation of a beautiful thing, metrically beautiful, beautiful imagery, a kind of staid symmetry, that has not received the memo about the many things that have been demystified.


Vlad and the danger of what you're saying here is what has been manifested in our society which really have become desperate for an intelligentsia, that a man who writes good verse, has his opinion sought on things which he knows so little about. And we spend years debating some of their vagaries and stupidities. True the philosophers have had us waste some time as well, but at least they did so directly, we had to wade through no shrubbery and gardens to get to what they were saying

Krys Darcelle Dumas I can speak for no poet but myself. I agree with you about what the poets in this "contemporary era" stand for and represent. It is up to you to follow the fashion or strive for higher purpose. I do not intent to settle into the contemporary. Do you? Because I will have to say that with your talent such a decision will be a great injustice to your art.

Krys Darcelle Dumas Then if that is your view simply present your art sans "shrubbery and garden".


Vlad you see thats the thing....art to me is not a destination. And that is an easy mistake to make, because Art kind of gives people the placebo they wanted, the ether. Art is never a destination. Poetry is just one ramification of a general search. And really that search can be best though not adequately represented by philosophy. So I can get up and leave art at any time, because its not, and can never be a destination.

Vlad art has its purpose, but to me it simply does not rank as highly as philosophy or true history or historiography for that matter or economics or several other arts. I think people like the magic of art, thats y its given so much special attention.

Krys Darcelle Dumas It cannot be a destination because it is ever continuing in change and evolution. It is a means to an unreachable end. Think of my portrayal of the organisation of object, perspective,memory, time and understanding. We use or art to try to grasp the unreachable understanding. Maybe not to a world at large but clearly to ourselves. It is why we first picked up the pen. To express and lay clear our own thoughts, ideas, emotions etc.

Vlad but i do have a question about the actual status though, about the second part, how is one historically superior ? The judgement of superiority or inferiority requires that there is a common ambition shared by poets and historians. History if anything is part of the poet's material, history as in things documented and agglomerated by historians/archaeologists etc. So as for the poet's 'historical' capabilities, well it is dependent ON the historian.

Krys Darcelle Dumas The magic is that it dips so elegantly in all the fields mentioned and has an important part to play in each. In Yoga there is the term/greeting/ idea of "Sat Nam" I am truth, or truth is my identity. I think for the artist this is especially true. The bottom line is no matter what we write or create brings a truth just by us having written it. I am not saying that the great unanswerable questions will be answered by our pursuing the evolution of our art but at the very least can explore the topics and perhaps introduce new perspective.

Vlad i think we can agree to disagree, i don not think that art is the journey either. Art is a pub at the side of the road, in which we drunkenly (drunk on the muse of course ;) ) say quasi-intelligent things. But there is intelligence rendered that can seem unpoetic....so that leaves us with the question....what makes poetry poetic...and i think the answer is somewhere veering between beauty and symmetry, even when that symmetry is specious, even when it ignores certain knowledge and does not confront it. And I think poetry is like the mirror mirror on the wall..and there's nothing wrong with that. All ARt is the mirror mirror on the wall.When we find something beautiful or find some terrible beauty (for those poets who like the gore and so on) we represent/reproduce it but imbue it with our features with our selves, even with our own segmented insides. It is a way of finding one's beauty. BEauty in a much wider sense of the word. IT is only consolatory, but it is still finding one's beauty. Even in writing an elegy....it may be completely wrong and unintelligent in the way it deals with death....and it may convey emotions that we do not actually feel sometimes. But one is satisfied with the beauty which one has produced from his insides....

Krys Darcelle Dumas The poet within himself is a historian Vlad. The purpose is to record, re-present, re-member history. Think of Brathwaite's arguments on the subject. The historian states the facts clearly as they are seen by him, the poet does the same. I think however that we tend to look from a different angle. We re-create history. Not that it is false but in the gatherings of historical facts there remain too many biases it is the poet and the artist that sheds light on many of the hidden aspects of stories to be told and remembered. That is undeniable especially if you look at Caribbean history and what was told of it. What we learned at primary level and even what we are learning now. Just revisit the arguments with an eye on the importance of every contribution to history as 'the white man" knows it and the truth that the artist and later historians to a point bring. Anther aspect is the emotional history that is not covered at ll by the fact fanatic historian.

Krys Darcelle Dumas That is the emotional aspect I was talking about. That is what is missing in the history books. Yes it is a skewed elevated view but I think as neccessary as the dates and names of "glorious discoverers" and all else.

Vlad The historian I think brings less of himself to history than the poet. The poet always approaches history as judge, the historian more than the poet, leaves himself out of the facts. the poor poet can't help it. And you're write, we re-create history. But it is the poet that brings the biases, he biases everything to his own experience. Walcott reduced to histories to his vein. But anyway, there is a small space in my republic for the poet, and much larger spaces for the historians and philosophers. The historian proffers history bare and clinically....and each interprets or mistrusts or rejects what is given....the poet gives us history how he sees it and has interpreted it .....

Vlad i dont think emotion is necessary in history at all! Krys ur gonna kill us! if emotions were to be a large part of history, we wouldnt have history at all. We would have people's biases invade and one quicker rejects things with that sort of attitude. I shall never vote for u for prime minister Krys, im sorry.

Krys Darcelle Dumas So does the historian. How can Columbus flickin DISCOVER an inhabited world? That was clearly a biased view of the situation. It has happened in all of the history books. The historian approaches with suspicion, investigates, and still picks and chooses which part of the story to tell. I think they are equal in that regard except the historian, like a coward, hides behind the veil of "unquestionable" representation while the poet comes brave and says "This is the world as 'I' see it."

Krys Darcelle Dumas lmao It's a good thing I have no intention of ever entering into politics then isn't it. History is full of covered emotion as is. The elite and superior views of the sovereign. According to History blacks were animals and such deserved to be treated like it. That is what was recorded by the 'unbiased, unemotional' historians of the time.

Vlad yes exactly, but those who said that columbus discovered the new world, never deprived you of the fact that there were people there. They truthfully, plainly and factually rendered even the biases of the participants in history. Any writer who uses historical material (that would be all real writers) would tell you that the Europeans keep all their history...the documentations of their cruelties and everything. How else do you think we know all what we know about their inhumanity during the period of slavery. Their records that they kept....

Vlad exactly, and since this is the world as 'I' see it, the historian somewhat says, this is the world as EYES see it, which is a lot more open to interpretation that the inner investment of hte poet's 'I'

Krys Darcelle Dumas as well as their supremacist views. They only told it all to prove to the world as they had convinced themselves that the cruelty and all, including the de-Calibanising (allow me that word) was needed and they were the saviors of the new world. Bullocks! Hiding behind their veils of facts the agendas of their own representations.

Krys Darcelle Dumas It is a lie. It is the world as their tainted and biased EYES saw it. Which is in fact my argument. They are all the same, the historian, philosopher and poet. Just some hide in lies and the other lies directly. And it is the truth in the lying of the poet that makes him superior.
:-)

Vlad yes but the presented it all.....check the archives in england or france or spain....u get everything....even in times when calls for emancipation were going on. who would u rather giving u ur daily news a poet or a historian....this would be the poet:

well i think he was killed but thats unimportant. whats really important is the bestial inhumanity that has inhabited man yada yada yada ....

Vlad anyway i guess we can agree to disagree but you would find with ANY artist that there is a historian and/or philosopher to whom they apprenticed themselves: Joyce -Aquinas Yeats-Blavatsky and others, Auden- Freud, Homer (not the poet), Marx, Eliot-Bergson etc, and the list can go on. So I don't think even they would agree with you on this.

Krys Darcelle Dumas LOL I disagree the poet gives you both. It is not a total disregard for the facts but the coupling of the "factual lies" with the humanity of the situation.

Vlad but the historian...and the history itself, since it works in that way...will allow for you as a person now to say that facts were untrue......u are now able to say that colombus did NOT discover the caribbean bcuz of historians.....during all slavery days there were poets ande playwrights..how much did u get outta them. Whatabout Perse in Guadeloupe? he was busy talking about his little trials and so on. and no one cyah take d man to task for that, but....

Krys Darcelle Dumas It was in an effort to not be accused of what you stated the poet represents today in their time. To not have anyone able to accuse them of ignorance. Again I am not saying to disregard the history or philosophy presented but to take it a step further (which the poet does that makes his superior) and represent as much as possible a holistic view. It is the fact that poets of today not making those conections that causes the art to flop in its true purpose and makes the one we are living in today a "contemporary era" and the same that vexes me. Let us agree to disagree

Krys Darcelle Dumas The historian presented both at the same time true, telling you in one that "There were other people there, he didn't really discover it, at least you can know that if you have sense, but because I rule and I say so you are to learn that Columbus was a great discoverer and this savage ridden filth that he found is the NEW WORLD." Which is still the case now. What does that say about the world that takes in silver spoonfuls the feeding of the historian. You know it is a lie but you stating it as fact anyway casue dem seh suh. No man.

Vlad i think ur being unnecessarily cynical toward historians...and i think ur also restricting the word historian to europeans.....what of all those egyptologists who gave us so much history, who transcribed so much...who translated the hieratics and hieroglyphics...come on krys...the poet can never be superior to both because he takes from both so often.....they are much larger than he is.....the poet shops around for history n phil....which poet ever gave a whollisticv view. All poetry ...all art even can be easily placed within some philosophy....even one that hasnt been uttered yet. The very WAY one writes poetry depends on his PHILOSOPHY. a poet is not a thing in itself. one needs to be a philosopher to one degree or another before becoming a poet....one needs to philosophize id say and one needs a sense of history. thats y i say poetry is a ramification, not a destination or THE journey. poetry without intelligence/philosophy is vanity (paraphrasing and altering slightly what Eliot says here)

Vlad and there were poets at the time when 'history happened' ....so what had they given us? what Whollistic view...and which poet?

Krys Darcelle Dumas Like I said Vlad it is an unreachable goal. I agree that they are all, again, one and the same I just think the poet belongs just a tad higher on the scheme. It is like a King living on the labours of his subjects. If the historians and the philosophers are the dish the poet ads the seasoning and is thus representative of the finished pot. That is my view. Wholistic in the additions of the "humanity" within the numbers.

Krys Darcelle Dumas We can tell from history the state of the land. We can tell from, Elliot, Beckett, Woolfe and the others, the states of the mind, the emotions, the repercussions, the humanity of the humans that lived within it. We can relive it (to a point) with them, re-feel it. I think that is just as important as telling me about the factual state. We will not agree.

Vlad i dont think we can every KNOW that something is unreachable first of all, especially in the incipience of the journey. but i will agree to disagree....but i will say this much.....the food without the seasoning couldve existed as a meal, as opposed to the seasoning without the food. Philosophers/philosophy and historians/history can exist without the poet, but the poet can't exist without them. bless ...off to skool for me cuz i need a break from all the smartness lol...bye

Krys Darcelle Dumas lol yeah me too. bye.

Vlad exactly, poetry is where we stop and debate feeling ....well and good...to represent feeling....but it is dependent upon history and philosophy to decide HOW we feel about things.....love itself that so many poets have written about ...is ONE philosophy on love which they debate around....i mean...come on ....as i have asked...if u can name a great poet that did not apprentice themselves to philosophers or historians, u will convince me...if u find just ONE u will convince me. I can name a zillion philosophers and historians that needed nothing from poetry

Vlad and i dont mean philosophy merely as in the work of philosophers but the fact that one MUST philosophize before he can write any cogent poetry

Krys Darcelle Dumas I agree. It is a coexistent relationship. But going back to my example a King cannot rule without the labour of his subjects. I am not arguing that poet does not need the others I am just saying that with their work combined he is King. I am heading to school. Agree to disagree?



So I ask now...What do you think?

Secret Language : Tobago Love Poem

"Lover's Retreat" Plymouth Tobago...my home village.


Seh ah was to talk
to yuh
di way ah did learn?
Yuh woulda hear mi den?
If ah did come
clean
wid words cut
fram mi heart
runin ova mi tung
singin in a melody
dat doh match yours

Yuh woulda hear mi den?

If ah cyarry yuh
Lover's Cove
where ah grow
an hol yuh han
an tell yuh stories
bout playin skip
ova buried histories
unda sapodilla trees,
bout stan pipe jumbie
whisperin to mi
in de dark
we would tark
fuh hours.
Jus you an me.

It have a magic
in dese words
ah cyah spell it
but still.
Imagine a love song
when yuh play,
fingers movin
quick quick
touch an kiss ova
dem strings
try to catch de riddim
in dem yah word yah.
Star twinkin sky
black like mi skin
scar up wid life
jus suh.

Sumtin in me want to touch
sumtin in you;
deep inside yuh
di secret place
yuh have hide up from de worl.

But ah suh secret like secret
me haffi whispa it
tell yuh sorf
sun nobody nah guh hear.
Come leh we tark
jus me an yuh
secret secret.

"Ah neva mean it innuh
God hear mi
Ah neva mean it."

It is the start of an experiment and my growing interest in the use of language in Caribbean Literature. I am learning still so it will take some time. The idea came to me, having my expression limited in "standard" English, what if I was to send the same message in other languages, in my own "patois"/ "dialect". There is deep investigation and experimentation with languages in Caribbean literature, but this is my private exploration. Fun is always to be had within a new book. :-D

Secrets and the Caribbean Aesthetic.

There is an emerging idea within me that is becoming a bit difficult to ignore.Another haunting. I am starting to fall in love with the idea of film. Tying in to my experimentation with magical surealism and dreamscape writing, I started thinking that perhaps my ideas would look so much better on film. It helps that I have a friend willing to venture into this with me. Combined I think the two of us would be unstoppable. Talking to her yesterday a few issues came up but we both agreed that the purpose would be to explore the truth and forget about the possibility of offence. Sat Nam. There is no denying it, it is the responsibility of the artist to tell the truth and present the truth as we see it.

Lately I have been reading the newly emerging Caribbean Aesthetic arguments about embracing the past and the possibility of creation within that realm. Not surprisingly I don't agree with the idea of going back to go forward. The idea of pain, slavery, black skin and colonialism on a whole has gotten stale. I admit it is part of the Caribbean story that deserved a voice from the colonized perspective. The development of Caribbean specific literature is new (no more than perhaps 80 years of creating)and so has so much room for exploration and expansion, from the perspective of creating and the claiming of a Caribbean identity. As a young writer it is an exciting thought. With so many "respected" writers the past is the "Mother" of their writing, the mother of their tongue if we look at Kamau Brathwaite's view. I am not saying no, I am saying there is so much more.

My friend that I mentioned before, Mandisa Pantin, premieres her film in the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival today. "Caribbean Skin: African Identity". As we were expecting she was not received with open arms for her insight on the issue. Not surprising to me some of the responses I thought lacked simple common sense. The concept is simple. Claim your African roots if you so wish and that does have some importance, but also understand the need to claim an identity as a Caribbean person. Simple enough right? Made me wonder how many of the Naipaul angered academics realized a level of truth in what he said about creation in the Caribbean.

Anyway the good news is that within the Caribbean we have so many secrets that are either forgotten or deliberately suppressed within our art and literature that does contribute to the forming Caribbean aesthetic. I have a habit of exploring these topics, though I admit shyly. I intend to delve deeper now and tell it as it is in the truest way imaginable. Yes it may mean my work pisses off quite a few people, showing the Caribbean in a negative light, but there are truths to be told and I have a responsibility to do just that. Of course there are some positive as well(BEYOND CARNIVAL, which personally I think it is time Trinidad and Tobago realize is not the end all of CULTURE).

Combining Film and literature is exciting me. I have something more to work at and I'm looking forward to the challenge.

Free spirit.

Sometimes I feel like I am painted in dull, badly mixed acrylic on a too-large canvas. The unfinished idea that someone had of perfection, held in neurotic birthed short weak stroked finish. The remains of a fading dream three days too late in capturing.

Sometimes I feel so very trapped...and long for freedom.

Of Looping Time

Lately I have been dreaming and feeling like I am stuck in a loop of time the Fates have wound up for my misery and their humor. Yesterday I was reintroduced to the concept of time as thought of by the modernist artists as school. I have thus developed my own theory that perhaps there is a dormant modernist spirit that has molded into me somehow. It would actually explain a lot.

The modernist period is known for the constant search for answers and of course the rebellion of the capitalistic rules and ideologies. It was a wake up call to the gloom that was the reality of the people. Getting up everyday to a routine in everything you do. Work your 8:00 to 4:30 sleep repeat. Time was thought to be fluid and anything but chronological. A powerful influence on the subconscious and how we experienced anything that was happening in the present. Time in my world has become as relative as may be possible.

More than anything recently I have felt like my body is in the now present/ real time yes but my spirit, my mind, my senses are in a past time of some sort. My memories are holding me in a place that is familiar. Scents are compared, sights are reminders. My every thought is either a reflection of my memories or a comparison of what was. The concept of a future time hardly enters my mind. I am having spiritual experiences that can only be linked to ancestors dating back possibly hundreds of years or possibly my own past lives. Dreams ranging from Navajo Indian animal spirits, to African Orishas and Japanese Goddesses. There is one common link among them all that I have already attributed great significance to but can do nothing about at this point.

How does one then put a hold on real time and re-center a reality that makes sense? So far ignoring it has not worked. No real surprise there. The passage of time has always been my trigger factor for depression, feeling hopeless and like Time is passing too quickly. This new dimension (ha ha ha think Einstein) cannot be helpful it only adds a new aspect of the uncontrollable. I am still thinking and I guess waiting for more clarity and watching time pass.

Time Chosen Loop
by Krys Darcelle Dumas on Monday, September 6, 2010 at 9:29am

...and time will prove
the cruelest of Fates
laughing as she
chooses delicately
memory seeds
to drift along
tail end whispers of winds
entangling in present scentscapes.

You will question now
with the wisdom of
ancient sleeping
spirits withing your
eyes,
truth as you
have written it.
Turning molding pages
curling to hold
each stanza as
they sing of what
you thought to
assume.

Watching as night
swallows whole the
day, each a promise
of barrenness in memory
fighting flowing
secret tears
mourning her
insistence on rows, and lines
order in now.
She laughs at hands pulling wildly
thorn scarred
dying each
rose colored pleasantry
it starts again.

Unable to stop neurosis
barrowing forth
too much thought,
faces whisking past inner lids
closed tight
shutting out the kaughter
of the three
twisting even then
for their spiteful end....

(Start again)

....and time will prove
the cruelest of Fates....



Obsession
by Krys Darcelle Dumas on Monday, June 15, 2009 at 11:02am

I am obsessed with time
beyond the norm
in human life
because in mine
he passes rudely by
and most times
I want to stop
and sit
in my darkening corner
curled
forehead
to knees
toes intertwined
eyes closed
and though I ask him to
stop
and stay with me
he never does.

I want to catch up
take a minute and
chat
about years that are gone
and widening spaces
between that time
and this time
sometimes I lose control
of my time
fleeting and flighty
fleeing with any sign of…..
rest it seems
casue in hard times
like sex time before my time
it stretched like the walls
of my tight…….
and in time
I still will never forget.

I cannot let go of that
not now when
tomorrows haunt my
every turn
and reckless abandon
actually seems more welcoming
than a plan that time
will not follow.
It seems I will never learn
never gain the courage
though trust me
I try
but everytime
I wait
On what? Exactly?
I do not know
But after all THIS TIME
there must be something better
here
something my mind
has held on to
to steady that balance
between real time
and surreal time
I am afraid that
soon this time
will be up here
and
where?
will be the next question.
I am barely here
your world is not mine
my eyes do not see
plainly what you see
and in my world
filled with monsters
and cold sweats
without light
most times

I want to
sit
in my corner
curled
forehead to knees
toes intertwined
eyes closed
and stop

Stagnancy in Waiting

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - T.S Eliot



Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky,
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats,
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go,
Talking of Michaelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the windowpanes
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle upon the windowpanes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the windowpanes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go,
Talking of Michaelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
(They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!")
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin,
(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions that a minute will reverse.

For I have known them already, known them all-
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons,
I know the voices dying with a dying fall,
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all-
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling ton he wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all,
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare,
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie around a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And how should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep... tired... or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet - and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worthwhile,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball,
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say, "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all," --
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say, "That is not what I meant, at all."
"That is not it, at all."

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worthwhile,
After the sunsets and dooryards and sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor--
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worthwhile
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning towards the window, should say:
"That is not it, at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous,
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old... I grow old...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves,
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea,
By sea-girls wreathed in seaweed, red and brown,
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.


My literature teacher was taken aback that I would get this poem and the depth of feeling in the words as a sixteen year old. The uncertainty of a life lived and questioning the meaning of it all, all past and all that might even come after. He has experienced all that there is to experience as far as he could tell. He has been rejected and sees only possible future rejections. His world has become a stagnancy in waiting. Noticing that he is in fact getting older and that death is inevitable. But...nothing to be done.

I feel like an old Spirit, Like I could ask myself the very same questions and have at some point. Having known it all, where do you begin to presume differently? Was it all worth it? Would it be worth it at another point? Having lived life out of the mouth of a spoon, what next but to wait and obsess over what might have been/ might have been changed?

Sometimes your feelings have already been documented almost as best as it could be.

Belief Intertwined.

I am here at one in the morning because another night has snuck up on me and din't tell my brain it's time to shut down. I'm awake and literally dancing when I try to lie down, much to the annoyance of my tired partner. I have been trying to do some soul searching lately and was reminded why I usually avoid it. There are so many contributing and intertwined components to me that sometimes when I try to decipher some part I tend to give up and let sleeping spirits lie.

The question of identity in a very broad aspect has been plaguing me recently. To give you a glimpse I will tell you a bit of my "self" as I am basically aware of it. I am of mixed race coming from Spanish and Negro ancestry, I know close to nothing of this ancestry. There was ledgend of a powerful, tall, beautiful, respected and duly feared woman that was my grandmother on my father's side. I never met her as she died years well before I was born but her spirit has followed me from birth. She saw it fit to print her image onto my face so that the name 'Lil Dinah" has followed me since I could remember. This woman was the mother of her Baptiste church and managed to raise a very devout daughter in the same faith.

My aunt, now the mother of her baptiste church, saw her mother and perhaps her potential in me and decided that I may have that same potential. I liked going to church with her. Being forced to go to the Anglican church as a child, the closest one to my house in the village, it was a welcomed change from the old people singing horribly in first soprano. The service, though long, was friendly, loud, energized. I loved it.

Meanwhile my mother a "quiet" Catholic would burn her prayer candles. She would tell me of her "angels" what I now call spirit voices, helping her out in life. Her father a Devout Orisha Baba would try his best in every trickery possible to get me to Orisha functions. As a child he would ask me to read to him from the books. I learnt of the power of the numbers and he told me the stories of the Orishas and how I was special and he could see the power in my eyes. He knew that my spirit was already quite old but could still use guidance. He would refer to what he called my "sly intelligence" as a private joke between us.

Reading on my own I realized that I had grown with a disbelief in "God" as specified by most religions. Yes I believe in a greater power but I found it difficult to commit to a boastfully jealous and vengeful God, that would smite more than 50% of the population he himself created because of a lack of blind followship. I started to refer to my own beliefs as "the universe" which by my definition covers all that man creates Gods to define or explain. It works for me.

I believe that we are guided by spirits as well. Be they dead "angels", wandering spirits, animal spirits or otherwise. We all have encounters that confirm to us in little ways that maybe there is life beyond this one, or a link between the world we see and the one we cannot. I see them. I hear them. I listen to them. I always have. I have my animal spirit guides I know what they are and how they work for me.

Writing about any of this is a way that would make sense to a world either one way or the next tends to be difficult. Part of the Caribbean aesthetic is how freely we can mix the "conventional religions" with the practices we just grow up with. Many of us will still bite our finger after pointing at a grave to make sure it doesn't rot. Molding all of this smoothly into a character I find difficult. It is usually where the self search begins, after all If I explain myself to me I can then describe my character to you. Imagine the character that comes from church then sits on the porch speaking to her dead grandmother casually as she does every other day, out loud, being answered. The Christian character that leaves the bible at the door step to ward off enemies.

The system of beliefs is deeply intertwined but I remain grateful for the exposure to all of it and the calmness that comes with acceptance of that is just how things are. What is to is must is, after all.

Releases in Breathing

A lot has been going though my mind lately. Too much to stop and take the time to write it here in any coherent way. So I decided to just write it and hope that in maybe a sentence or two may make sense.

I have been having many dreams lately of women, sagely women in fact. It's been happening for a while now since I wrote "Spirit voices" as posted earlier. At that time I met a bunch of older women and thought that the message was that I needed to learn something from them. I have been doing just that. I have been gathering encouragement to grow emotionally and in my writing. I have been learning to be me in all situations no matter what is happening around me or what anyone else thinks. I have been loving openly. Lately as trivial as it sounds I have been learning to breathe.

Doing Yoga I am learning unfortunately that my mind and body doesn't relax, never relaxes. My mind being an abstract painting or swirling brush strokes is actually quite normal being bi-polar. Especially lately that I am in manic mode. But imagine trying to clear your mind and meditate and just breathe to realize that you just can't. It is quite scary. Now that I am aware of it I seem to be trying to relax in everything I do.

The last exercise we had was to send positive energy and good universal wishes to someone we love. A tear started rolling down my cheek I started trying to fight it then remembered "Sat nam". If I am the embodiment of truth then my love is true, and the fullness I felt of sending that true love is true. A stretch I know but it is the best I could explain the feeling I had that evening....though I still could not relax.

I lie awake at night and try to relax my body to the point where I am soaking into the bed bit by bit. Of course concentrating on this means my mind is working and still not relaxing....and when I do sleep, the women come.

Oshun comes.

Oshun is the beautiful and benevolent Orisha of love, war, life, marriage, sex and money. I am not Orisha. I have an Orisha grandfather who had a great influence on my life and self image however. I did not know about Oshun. She came to me one night, I cannot remember now the circumstances of the dream but she walked up to me and said very clearly "You have a gift, stop ignoring it." At first I wondered which gift she was talking about. I asked her her name and she smiled at me kindly, knowingly, "you know me .....(she called me by another name I cannot remember)" and started to walk away. I laughed and called after her (in another language) calling her Oshun.

Later the name kept coming up. My friend mentioned her. Apparently it was the time of Oshun in the Orisha faith. It still does not mean more than a slightly passing fact to me. However, I accepted her advice and started paying attention to all of my gifts and am awaiting the epiphany moment that should tell me what my next move should be. For now I am practicing to breathe.

Truth I Am

The purpose of the writer is explained very simply. We are the present representation of the truth. Our magic lies in not only capturing but re-directing that truth an element as flexible as probably anything you would ever come across. I have been thinking about this recently and realized that in fact whatever a writer writes once written becomes the truth. The fact is that the moment you pick up my writing fictional or non you are expecting a truth from me.

Now consider that alongside what i call surreal writing only cause I don't quite know the actual literary name for the form. Lately I read a book called "Like Water for Chocolate" written by Laura Esquivel. The novel takes you on an emotional ride using the ingredients of recipes set to time. The writer starts the novel talking about chopping onions finely to prevent crying and goes on to speak of her aunt Tita. The second paragraph starts

"Tita was so sensitive to onions, any time they were being chopped, they say she would just cry and cry; when she was still in my great-grandmother's belly her sobs were so loud that even Nacha, the cook, who was half deaf, could hear them easily. Once he wailing got so violent that it brought on an early labor. And before my great-grandmother could let out a word or even a whimper, Tita made her entrance into this world, prematurely, right there on the kitchen table amid the smells of simmering noodle soup, thyme, bay leaves, and cilantro, steamed milk, garlic, and, of course onion. Tita had no need for the usual slap on the bottom, because she was already crying as she emerged; maybe that was because she knew then that it would be her lot in life to be denied marriage. The way Nacha told it, Tita was literally washed into this world on a great tide of tears that spilled over the edge of the table and flooded across the kitchen floor."

Every time I read that passage cause I did more than once a smile comes from my heart. The fact is that that flood of tears brought on y onions with the power to move a child unborn to a flood of creation "Yes I know how that sounds" is marvelous. And whether you as the reader believe it fully or not the fact remains that that flood was Tita's truth. The ability to shape something like that into a believable truth is not as simple as it seems. I have been practicing to write my surreal truths mostly about fire. For some reason the image of fire and the concept of heat and all that can come with it refuses to let me sleep a full night. I'm still practicing.

I started my first Yoga class yesterday. Kundalini Yoga with Elspeth Duncan. During the class she introduced us to the chant "Sat Nam" which means "Truth is my identity" It is a powerful thing to be the personification of truth, a liberating realization and an almost daunting responsibility still I had to think of the truth the writer reports, creates, represents and I had to smile to myself. Every time I pick up my pen I create truth. I send a truth out to the universe. Remember "Stranger than Fiction" with Will Ferrell? Imagine if every character you created was real, what about the ones you left hanging with no end to their truth? or the ones you killed off just cause you didn't know where to take them next.

After a friend of mine read some of my earlier work she asked me "Does everyone die in your stories?" Now that I know my pen sounds out a truth, my truth in many ways I guess I will have to reconsider some of my endings. They still aren't going to be happy and honky dory cause most things in life just don't end that way right? Still it's important to remember that conviction "Sat Nam."

Change's fear

And still….
I would reach to you
to hold, and hope
through star kissed fingers,
in greying days,
the feelings you whispered
into the past,
like diseased memories
slithering, scarred, pink
into my now.
Stopping them where they
lie discarded, mouldering
in waiting for
the movement of Death to pity.
Change has passed them,
skipping time for fear
that they may catch
and spread beyond
logical repair, her only
thinly veiled
hold of me.

Voicing It Out

Think about your voice…think long and hard about its tone, its pitch, inflections…think about it. Now write it in a sentence. It’s not very easy to lay your voice on a sheet of paper and now that I’m thinking about it there is so much left to expansion in a voice, so much of yourself up for grabs. There is so much vulnerability in that little detail. Your reader thinks they know you by how you write, what you say and how you say it.

I’ve been looking recently at the voices of some of the Caribbean writers I have come to adore and respect. Edwidge Danticat, Derek Walcott, Jamaica Kincaid and Erna Brodber all have distinguishable voices. If I chose to read an except from any of them without telling you who they were I’m sure u may guess right away. Think of writers like Naipaul and Lovelace, like Walcott, their voices are both known and undeniably distinguishable. I have compared all of these to my own voice. Walcott has a slow and deliberate voice, simple but learned with an almost Shakespearean intimidation. To me at least. Danticat seems relaxed and deeply connected . Her stories carry you with them. Her imagery is blow mind and subtly surprising you. I love that about her writing.

I don’t know what my voice is. I know I wish to have as calm a voice as Walcott, one that gives me an air almost “Oh that?...it came to me as I sipped my Jamaican coffee, looking out at the “galvanised” sea.” I’d like the carrying power of Danticat, so I can drop you in the middle of my story or poem and have you convinced that stories were braided into your plaits and slipped into your Saturday cowheel soup.

The novel “Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home” by Erna Brodber and the inspiration of this blog’s name, explores the finding of the voice and the self. I can relate to this completely, looking for my own. Something in me however, does not allow me to shout it just yet. I want to listen to my voice; simply hear it. I want to be able to hold it and nurture it till it sings my stories. I want to tell the same story someone else told you five mins ago and make mine distinguishable by MY voice.

“Voice” I have always thought comes naturally at first. Slipping out in the sentence you didn’t edit the life out of yet. Surprising even you in the re read. I admit (reluctantly) that the edit may help but how do you balance it? How do you change a word to one YOU would not usually use, doesn’t it perhaps alter your voice? Vocabulary is a major part of it.


Then as a growing “Caribbean writer” how do I know my voice is Caribbean enough? Kinkaid I think has an elegant Caribbean voice. Walcott in “Omeros” made me so admiringly jealous. He is the writer most times that cause me to kick myself and ask “Who you really tryin to fool? You? A writer?! Ha ha ha”. Maybe I should mention coconut trees more often.


There is a lot of thought that deserves to be allocated to your voice as a writer it can make or break a story and leaves an impression of who you are, where you’re from, what growth potential you may have, and you general though pattern on your readers. Everyday I think I may be ready to shout something shouts back from the inside…
“Pickney please! Go eena Kumbla!”

Listen...Learn

I’m just back from my “Earth” ‘Lunch’. Today I decided to read something new. I took with me an essay written by Stephen King called “Everything you need to know about successful writing in ten minutes”. What amazed me about it besides the simplicity, and here I tap myself on the back is that I was well on my way all along. The rules are simple, do it naturally, simply and enjoy it. I think I ask myself too often what I’m doing and where I would end up. Taking criticism to heart from anyone who appears to delve into a somewhat literary critique of my work and ignoring the nods of “It’s really good Krys.”


I have yet to write a serious piece where a number of people pin point a specific area they all have a problem with. One or two disagreements in the placements of words is not a bad thing. They are also not set-in-stone-end-of-my-career opinions. Giving up come too easily for me. Of course I disregard the “nonsense” pieces, the ones that were written as pure venting. However, the serious ones, the ones that came to me in dreams and whispered to me while I did something else unconnected in every way I re-read, re-write, take a black sharpie to, to make sure I’m saying exactly what, not so much me as the character needs to say.


So I have a glimpse of what my first novel will be. Ironic is that the story is about a writer being visited by her character, trying his best to get her to tell his story. To paint him the way he really is. Sound familiar? I started writing it 2 years ago and for some reason I can’t seem to finish it. I’ve lost it and written it over. It is cause of this stubbornness I’ve decided it has to be a novel. There was so much depth under that little story, so much to tell. The thought of a novel scares me so very much. It deserves the kind of devotion and discipline that I think I lack totally. In high school my cousin taught me art. I remember her saying in that slightly bored high pitch tone of hers “Who Krys? She just lazy. Anything she can’t do in 20 minutes so don’t do.” Sadly she was right. I’ve proven that to myself over and over as I grew older. Mrs. Brodber my short story writing teacher in Jamaica told me “Krys you need to concentrate you too lazy man.” We would sit in class, she would give us a topic, then 3 hrs to write a story. After 20 mins I’ll be done.
“Yuh sure yuh done?”
“Yes miss”
We’ll get the night to think it over, re-read and edit. I would nod knowing that I may change a fullstop, if so much, and come back the next day. It was a bad habit I developed. Now I know write it, come back, put it down for a month, read it again. Like Stephen King says “Only God gets it right the first time.”

Faith and Fates

Writing itself is an act of faith, and nothing else. EB White




There is a part of me that yearns for freedom. That loathes the morning and the routine that comes with it. There is so much more in the world for me to see. I want to know the speed the grass grows at in India or if Peppermint tea will steam, drifting up and slightly to the left as it does in a little dorm room in Jamaica, if I am sailing to Tortola on a Saturday morning. The world as vast as it is seems to be a trap, closing me off and limiting my growth. I used to dream of the transformation of the day I would step out of my Kumbla and be the best writer this side of the world would have ever seen. I wanted to read in the papers that “Krys-Darcelle Dumas is the female Derek Walcott and we expect nothing less of her.” I wanted to be able to nod my head confidently knowing that it’s exactly what I could be. I would be a successful writer with my secluded beach house, where my inspiration would come to me in whispers over lattice works. I would be able
These days my dreams of freedom are changing. I am losing heart and had made my mind up a couple months ago that maybe I am reaching too far with this writing dream. Perhaps I should keep my day job, work my 8 - 4:30 and write my stories as my vents. That is of course provided any story decides to be told by me again. I feel untrained to tell the stories; like they are skirting around me waiting for a crack in the Kumbla to seep in, to peep and watch me till they think I have matured enough to be given the honor. Of course it is this thought that makes me feel not good enough. It is this thought that causes me the panic. I am wrapped tight now. Changing slowly and I’m not sure for the better. Each day that goes by makes me feel weaker, less able to fulfil my duties to these stories. My characters float inside my head demanding I find the strength to give them the life they torment me for. If I open the Kumbla however, that is it. Today would have to be for today. The Kumbla will be ruined. Where will I find another?

Without End

I am choking. There are words in me pushing every which way trying to get out but for some reason refuse to be penned. Words that become embodiments of my fear, personifications of every mental obstacle I admit I may have put on myself. It hurts. "KumblaChild" was started with the hopes of making me write everyday. Something, every single day even if it was only a sentence it would be one less inner fight. Since I was a child, though some may argue I still am, I have been writing everyday. I kept journals of my rantings, angst filled and emotionally charged; huge books specifcally made for that purpose guarded with all energy from curious eyes. The important thing is that I wrote.

I have not written anything I think of value in over 8 months. The thought is nagging constantly reminding me of my writing goals, haunting me nightly sitting in wait outside my window.I am starting to panic now. Imagine thinking that as a caribbean writer u will not gain recognition or respect till you're at least 50. That gives me 30 years give or take a few, to fail at this.

I need inspiration to get these stories out. I have heard them but can't tell them. How do you lift a heavy tongue? How do u teach it to pronounce words it has never heard? I have written half stories. Stories of characters coming to life, fighting to be told. They stand just as they are, untold, unread, unwritten...

Another View

Multiple eyes stared at me distorted in different ways. Peering at me through swatches of blood and lines stretched across their middles. Carving kisses passed across exposed skin. I laughed while tears mixed with blood, forming rivers in the palms of my hands as I tried desperately to grab at each piece of myself; each new image of me. The ugly red, sharp and cutting mess in front of me is not who I am. I swear. There is another me, remember? The one who smiled before, that's me...I swear...

..........

You...woman
draws my words from me
pulling both sides
you are my balance
you held my head
tilting my eyes to the heavens
wiping your tongue against mine
Spitting your words into me
till they flow with our essence.

You...woman
stand before me
my sex, warm, wet
caressing my lips till they cry
hmmmmmm
refusing to let me die
though many cast aside
my selves
like dry seeds ocean tossed
you...woman gounds me
I know now

you...woman
will be with me
are mine
The word catches at my lips
afriad to fall
not wanting to dirty you
my goddess of beauty
and natural love
to know as
I know now
you are
my woman
my muse.

© 11-05-09
Krys-Darcelle Dumas

The power of a muse

I have always wondered about the power of the muse. From the mystical holders and molders of the art of great musicians, writers and artists to the faded memory that forces a creative piece whenever it comes to mind. I had one for a very short time...a very confusing experience. I wasn't sure if I should name her a muse because to me the name somehow if mouthed would dirty the purity of the delegation. The thought of it and her in that way I guess empowered her even more. If poetry born of it is any indication. Anyway I wondered if I should call her that and her denying that she was and insisting that others would come when the connection broke between us didn't help anything. Robert Graves an English poet described the concept of the muse and the relation to the poet in this way...

"No Muse-poet grows conscious of the Muse except by experience of a woman in whom the Goddess is to some degree resident; just as no Apollonian poet can perform his proper function unless he lives under a monarchy or a quasi-monarchy. A Muse-poet falls in love, absolutely, and his true love is for him the embodiment of the Muse...
But the real, perpetually obsessed Muse-poet distinguishes between the Goddess as manifest in the supreme power, glory, wisdom, and love of woman, and the individual woman whom the Goddess may make her instrument...
The Goddess abides; and perhaps he will again have knowledge of her through his experience of another woman..

I have fallen in love completely and she was my muse. I did however see the spirit in her more than anything else. The differentiation of the Goddessness (if you would allow me that word) in her every word, smile, or movement was evident to me. It was the way our conversation silent or oral would create a new language within itself. She had something...something unearthly, that took me to a different and completely strange place, yet so deeply rooted in my own self that it was impossible to deny. Saying that now I realize that it may sound a bit egocentric, but it is the truth. I felt proud on recognition that this powerful spirit would touch my life and deeply depressed when I realised that it refused to be "captured".

I have not yet been able to let it go completely and I have to say that I am still waiting for the other one and have not written anything of real value since then. I've started to think that like "true love" a greatly inspiring muse is something that u happen upon once in this life. In the end however I settled that I would in fact call her that because that is what she was. I know that because thinking of her while talking to a friend, this came out.....

EXCERPT OF A CONVERSATION: THE MUSE


muse

…is the embodiment of inspiration
a good morning makes me over spill with first born words for poets
waiting to be molded
her touch plants
new sounds in my skin and kisses
water each one
her breath moves them in sway taking me
into her, into me, into us
somewhere between me and my muse
new language would be born
without trying
the thought
of a memory
of something that has not happened,
may not happen should stay with me forever
unchanging.

That is in fact as far as I'm concerned the power of a muse. Such difficult things to grab a hold of.

Village Story

The rain had finally stopped falling and Kimorra could see the steam rising off the recently paved road. She liked the smell of it but not so much the heat that comes with it. If she was sweating she could not tell, already dripping wet, a shard of her long semi soft hair had escaped and stuck to her face. Her tears had long been made part of the downpour. She kept on walking to the little house that appeared as she turned the corner. Madame Jean was expecting her.
Rain had turned the dirt yard into mud her feet sinking with every step she took; it soaked slowly into the front of her shoes where the rips that told of their age were. This visit had better be worth it. It had been four months since Michael left and she had not heard from him since. She wanted to get out of this village, off this God forsaken island and make something of herself. She was not quite sure what yet. School had never been her thing but she had heard of a nursing program in the states where she could practice. She could do that. She needed her ticket out and he had built her hopes sky high in the little time they knew each other.
She blamed most of this on her mother. She had not asked to be the eldest child, the eldest girl. “You have to get up there, just make him think you like him, make him marry you do whatever he asked.” The rain was falling that day too, beginning just as the money had changed hands “Do whatever he say.” Her little brothers had been outside playing then, the two month twins started crying just as he came to her that night. Now she was almost ready to show, Jason had come to her rescue and agreed that she should not have this baby. Michael would not be back she knew that. She would marry Jason. He was going to the states too, already had a job and a place to live. He was born there but grew up on her island. Her Romeo. Her mother tried to make her believe or maybe make herself believe that Michael would be back. The last thing he said to them was “I’m going to get a house ready for us. Don’t worry Baby, I love you.” Kimorra knew he would not be back.
There was a noise to her left as she drew nearer to the house that startled her. A wet chicken its feathers dirty and clinging sat looking directly at her. The fowl did not move even as Kimorra pelted after it. She was protecting her eggs she sat through the rain it seems and refused to move. Kimorra’s toe hit into something as she stepped onto Madame Jean’s stoop. It was a bible, a big black bible with “Holy Bible” written in gold letters. She remembered walking down this same street in earlier years and hearing Madame Jean and her church members singing loudly “Put mi bible in front ah mi door, no man shall enter in.” she always wondered what it meant surely a man could just step over it, as she did now.
“Madame Jean?” she knocked softly and whispered again “Madame Jean.” Slowly the door opened and there stood the little old lady the village knew as mother. She wore her long blue worship dress and her hair was tied in a bright yellow wrap done up almost a foot off her head. Inside was dark, lit only buy three white candles placed around the room. There was no rug on the floor and close to the walls the dirt floor was damp. There was a pan in the centre of the room catching the drips from the leaking roof. She could smell the fresh fish that mother no doubt gotten from the fisherman Froggy. His house was just behind hers. “Yes child, talk to Mother.” Tears were already streaking Kimorra’s face.





……………………………………
I did not feel how I thought I would. I was sick for a week but that’s all that happened. I didn’t expect the hot Guinness and blue soap to work. Madame said a prayer afterwards and put a hot cloth around my stomach. That was 3 weeks ago and my mother still has not looked at me. I thought she would not have known. The baby was little more than blood washing into the water in the toilet. I could see the body somewhat but it didn’t look like in the books it was more blood. I still feel sort of sick and there is a smell coming from me but most times I could hide it well enough. I have to bathe at least five times a day. I thought all of it would have been over by now. Jason I can’t wait to see you again I hope everything works out well for you there. Mammy thought that all our dreams were over I haven’t told her about you just like you asked. Write me soon Jason I’m waiting.

Kimorra things are not going quite as I had expected them to. I have a job. I spoke to a man here who told me he could get my songs sold his name is Darien, but everyone calls him Bishop, he was from the Caribbean too. He said that it would take a while and that I should find a job. In my building a met a man named Troy, he’s my age and he wanted to help me. All I have to do is carry packages for him. It’s easy money Kims and all I have to do is carry maybe one package a week. I hope you feel better and remember that you’ll come meet me one day. It was best that you didn’t have that child it would only hold you back. The girl I met is smart and young with her future ahead of you. I don’t know what to tell you about the smell though I don’t know what is supposed to happen. Maybe you should go to the doctor. I sent the book that you asked for, I flipped through it, didn’t get most of it but you are so bent on this nursing thing I thought it’d do you good to have a head start. We’ll have a good life you and me wait and see. Take care.

Hey,
I feel worse everyday I don’t know what’s happening and I can’t go to the doctor. Mammy has her eye out for me now so I have to sneak around to get the letters. The post lady told her that a letter came for me, I didn’t know and I lied. She won’t let me go for the mail again. I’ll figure it out. I can’t go to the doctor I wasn’t supposed to do this remember. I feel so horrible and the smell keeps getting worse. I’m scared Jason. I feel like I’m going to die just like the rest of me that I killed she wants me to come to her. Last night I dreamt that a baby was calling me. She wasn’t crying just calling my name over and over. I know it means something I know. I can’t wait till I can get up there. I love you so much. I want to get away from here. Write soon Jason.

Kim,
The police have started hanging around the apartment and so I haven’t been able to go out. I can’t work and so I have no money. Troy keeps telling me that everything is ok and that soon everything will die down and I can work again. I’m starting to wish I don’t have to do this though. Bishop came to see me yesterday and said that there is no market for my type of music out here. He does not think he can help me Kim. What am I going to do? He said that the only way I can get my name out there is to work with someone. He put me on to a girl, just starting like me. Danielle. She does not sound very Caribbean but I think that’s the point. I met her and she’s really very nice I hope you can meet her when you come.
Kim I need you to go to the doctor that smell thing seems very serious. My grandmother used to tell me that the dead never forget their roots. Maybe the dream does mean the baby is calling you but I don’t know. I’ll try to write again. I hope you can get it.

The nurse looked at the child in front of her and her heart swelled. She did not feel pity or anger anymore. At first she hated them, now she knew it was not the way to feel. She did not know how to feel and so felt – nothing. The child’s insides were beginning to rotten; the infection had started eating away at the little left of her womb. Why did they not come to the doctors? She did not know how the child had done it but the placenta remained. Kimorra Sanders she read on the chart, only seventeen, so young. What a pain to imagine what her death would have been.

………………………………………
Kimorra sat at the window re-reading the letter she could not believe what she was seeing, Jason loved her he said so, and they would have a life together away from here. She had finished reading the book, cover to cover, and she understood most of it. She was going to be a nurse. Everything was already planned and although everything happened she was going to be a nurse. Jason loves her.
“I think he said so.”
Everything will be fine she would move out and go to America to meet Jason. Kimorra stared into the far corner at the shadow covered arm chair. The cries were heard coming at her again. The constant crying, almost like a screech but she can shut it out now she knew what to do.

“Hush little baby
Don’t say a word
Mommy’s gonna bye you…”

Finally with the stars barely shining in through the menacing black of the leafy trees outside Kimorra’s head slowly fell onto her own shoulder.


Kimorra,
We have been friends with potential all along and I think you are a great girl with your whole future ahead of you that has changed as of now. Daniella and are engaged to be married with the wedding planned in October. I am sorry for all that’s happened but I know you’ll understand. If you ever do get to America feel free to write me.
Your friend
Jason.

© Krys-Darcelle Dumas

Caribbean literature used to really get me angry when I was younger. I thought it all a waste, waddling in the pains of the past, reiterating the hurt and anger of anscestors and claiming Africa though hardly any of us would actually see it. It meant nothing to me. Africa was supposed to be this place where my skin tone and the shape of my nose would identify me. Where even if I found my "place" the tongues would be so different it would not have been worth the journey. There would be no story to claim and that is what I wanted most of all.
Now things are different and I'm starting to feel a yearning to want to know my past. I'm not talking back to Africa I mean, my grand mother's grandmother kind of past. Each generation has a story to share. Women learn to remember their stories, To share them through generations, to plait them into the braids of their daughters, to leave them on the tip of a pot spoon. To share that tongue as much as they can. It was thinking of that a while ago, I wrote this...

Spirit Voices.

Marie looked towards the window trying to discern where the sounds were coming from. She knew it was not outside but there some instinct causing her to believe in her own false reality. The lies of her imagination were easier, perhaps, to accept than the truth. For three months she heard the voices at night. Just as she was about to close her eyes in her dark room, she felt the coolness of the sheets against her bare skin and the warmth of the pillow as she made her final turn. Then one by one they would start. First it was always a low moan, whispery so she wasn’t sure that she was actually hearing anything at all, then they would trail into the room through the lattice work of the balcony and in through the window.
Fear paralyzed her growing worse when she realised that she would not be able to run if they did become threatening, they had not seemed to want to hurt her though and with time, because they came every night, she began to listen. They spoke to each other it would seem, sounding like the Babel banshees, she could not understand a thing they were saying but knew that it was important that she understand. What she knew was that these women were trying to talk to her. Tonight the noise was louder, she heard them just outside drawing nearer slowly but coming.
The balcony to her room over looked the garden below and during the day she would sit out there enjoying the breeze coming up the hill to kiss her cheeks. There was a glass door separating her from the cold night air at night, though she preferred this time. The glass shone and the room was flooded with light at different times as moons peeped in at her sleeping figure. She would undress in front of the moon allowing the light to bathe her skin, to soak into her hair causing the brown strands to catch it and shimmer it back around the room. She liked to look at herself in the mirror while she did this. Her reflection looked like a different person and kept her company her eyes knowing, and Marie swore that if she looked hard enough she could spot slight differences.
Tonight was a full moon and she could feel the magic of some sort in the air around her as she undressed earlier. Usually she would don a white night gown before settling into her bed, tonight she wanted that full moon lightness to wash into her all night. She wanted to grow in it while she slept. And now her eyes closing slowly to that light, the voices drawing nearer she made one last effort to see. She was not sure what there was to see but the goose bumps on her skin told her there was going to be something. Her eyes rolled towards the glass doors and for a moment a shadow stood at the door. Marie stared at the figure waiting for movement, wondering if she really was seeing it and trying to decide if it were something alive or dead.
The darkness lurked at the doors it’s back turned to Marie, seeming not to even notice her trembling figure crunched up on the bed. It began to dance. At first it was a simple side to side sweeping but it added a swirl here and a twirl there. Marie stared still not knowing what to make of this strange happening. She could still hear the voices. There was calm about them, the babbling was a whisper now floating around the room drawing Marie to it. Marie closed her eyes for a second trying to follow the whispery conversations through the lattice work. Still a strange language; always a strange language. It was like something she knew, something she heard all the time, but could not listen to it, could not understand.
She opened her eyes and found the glass doors to find the figure staring at her. The eyes were dead. There was no light there, no joy. It was a woman she could see, but her lips were sewn together, she had Marie’s nose, and hair. Marie recognised her but like the strange language, she did not know who she was or what she wanted. The skirts around her swayed in the breeze and flapped off to the left, showing Marie that she wore tattered shoes like she had been walking a long distance. There was a tear running down her cheek, her mouth quivered like she was trying to say something. She raised a dark hand to the glass, it bore cuts and bruises, the palm had corns at the base of the fingers that squashed down as he pressed both palms against the glass doors.
Marie was afraid now but she found herself slowly taking her sheets away from her body. She sat in the bed looking at this figure, her own eyes filling with tears. Marie recognised its face as her own, it was not a relative of some sort as she had thought but herself. She was looking at herself in the face and could not understand. She walked towards the glass doors. With every step she made the figure peeled off a piece of clothing. They were both completely naked. Marie was shocked to see the skin of this reflection caked with dirt. Her nails were torn off her hands, her stomach sagged like an empty sack and blood ran down her legs.
Marie gasped and placed her hand on her own stomach, she looked down at it quickly not wanting to take her eyes off this woman looking back at her. She felt a pang of pain at the bottom of her back. She grabbed at the pain, her eyes widening and unable to say anything she fell against the glass bracing herself with her hand as she fell forward. The figure raised her hand also and met her against the glass palm to palm. As their fingers met Marie’s sides pinched relentlessly like needles pushing through her body coming together for a great explosion of pain at her stomach’s centre. She looked up through the pain to realise that the figure was no longer alone.
Over the lattice work more women floated towards her. They were white and seemed to carry a light with them, giving the impression that you could see right through them. They came towards the figure and held onto to her. Women of all shapes and sizes floated constantly over the lattice work. They all had some part of Marie and she recognised these as relations, there was one an exact likeness to the picture that hung on her mother’s kitchen wall. It was her grandmother; she had died years before Marie had been born. Every one of these women was part of her in one way or the other.
Marie felt her head lighten, the pain was too great and she was terrified. How could she have this child here? The full moon looked in through the window and seemed sad in some way to Marie, she was tired, the jolting needles came closer and closer faster and faster each time. She tried to regulate her breathing staring into the eyes of herself. Then she noticed the voices again. They were singing. She did not know the song but it was the same sound the first time they were actually synchronised, they were harmonizing in a way she had never heard. She felt herself drifting up and out of herself but reaching out to the other Marie beyond the glass.
The moon shone through the circle of women catching on the end of the figure hair at first then spreading throughout her head and face. As the light passed through her skin changed. She was shedding it in flakes, each piece falling from her and hitting the ground. To Marie’s tired ears it resounded louder than it possibly was. Each thud awoke her a bit and the pain seized her body. She could feel her child pushing its way into the world. She did not want it to come, not now, not like this; she was supposed to do it on white sheets in a private hospital, knowing it was for her alone to bear. As far as she was concerned there was no father. She would have to bring this child in herself and ensure its safety alone.
Marie fell to her knees grabbing at the air trying to steady herself and the pain encompassing her so completely. The figure too was on the ground crouched but still their hands connected. The moon light was shining through spaces in the figures skin. It was screaming in pain also as the thread on its lips burst open ripping her mouth, she was gushing blood down her legs and skin was thudding against the floor of the balcony, leaving a light behind. She was becoming translucent, somewhat like the others but new. There was just a difference now, she was crying and her wounds were ripping and closing only to rip again as the moonlight tore through her. Marie’s creams matched the figures and she too felt like she was being ripped from the core. The child’s head was pushing through her, she pushed to match too far gone to remember her breathing.
She looked up to meet the figure’s eyes staring at her bleeding as hers ran tears. They did not touch or stop screaming into the night. The child’s shoulders came to the opening and Marie felt like she was going, she was drifting out of herself again, tired and fading into nothing, into darkness. The moon’s light broke away the caked skin and tore through the figure turning her completely like the others her light faded into and out of her. The women circling around her opened more for this light to reach her completely, renewing her, making her. Marie felt herself gone now, she saw herself standing among the singing women, looking at her tired self on the floor in the room. She felt too the child still pushing out of her, coming whether she wanted it or not. Till eventually it was all out.
The women were over her body now looking down on her sadly, shaking their heads. She moved in flashes between the ground and looking at herself. She walked towards herself laying on the floor. The women had stopped singing they were babbling again. Marie heard snippets of what they were saying but they seemed to not know that she was there. She pushed through them to see herself when she heard the baby’s cry. Her head popped in to the circle, almost jumping back out as the intensity ion this little girl’s eyes met hers. She could see her. This child, her daughter was looking directly at her, or more at her soul. The women moved aside allowing them the meeting.
“….told her.”
“….new language…”
…teaches the others…”
She looked down into the face of her daughter smiling into her eyes. The women pushed her now and she felt the urge to hold her; to overcome the tired feeling and kiss her daughter. The mothers came to her; they leaned over the child one and one and breathed into her mouth. She had stopped crying now and lay on the floor of the room looking at each of them in turn. Marie could feel her physical self again. She felt tired, she felt the pain, and she opened her eyes to the gurgles of her daughter. She could still hear the voices though she no longer saw them. Understanding was starting to fade from her again and as they drifted off towards the moon and into the night she pulled one phrase before closing her tired eyes again
“Teach her.”