Carlon Richards,POEMS (REVISED)

1.LAST NIGHT.

I got a peek 

at the moon

last night

and didn’t think of lovers

I got a peek

at the moon

lastnight

and saw

a man with a load on his back

 I got a peek

at the moon

last night

and cried.

2.Granny.

When Granny died
I stumbled in and out
her place, remembering banana porridge, fumbling her dog-eared bible,
faded bedspread,
musty cushions, hugging memories of her love. 

From the overflowing funeral
this fingled programme
is a talisman I carry
everywhere. Love is with me still.

3.ISLAND MEMORY.

Clear one island.

The surf brings you softly to another

Stations of crated mountains,

Clouds tightening around the necks

Of these green monstrosities.

This archipelago is a trail of memory.

On this old path I find a new poem

Way of seeing myself.

These are strange pauses young and tender islands.

Below, the sea is clear,a sharply sloping plain.

The rippled surface like a sheet of writing paper

Waiting to be scratched in clean white trail: the remnant of lives written on its softness.

4.Cane gang.

Torn from the vine from another world
to tame the wildness of the juice, assigned with bill and hoe to field or factory, chained by the voracious hunger of the cane
the world’s rapacious appetite for sweetness 

How place names of my servitude mock me: Eden, Golden Vale, Friendship, Green Valley, Hermitage, Lethe, Retreat, Retirement, Content, Paradise, Phoenix, Hope, Prospect, Providence 

Each with the Great House squatting on the highest eminence
the Sugar Works overlooking
my master’s eye unyielding 

the overseer unblinking not seeing
the black specks floating across 

their finely-crafted landscape 

At shell blow assembled the broken-down bodies, the job-lots scrambled into gangs like beads on a string O not pearls no just unmatched pairings the random bindings like cane trash no not like the cane pieces laid out geometric and given names 

and burning.