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Thursday, January 13, 2011

Coldfront

Cold Front

A sudden surge of wind supported the forecast
a cold front pending
descending
from the north in this the year's final month
moist wind traveling
from the tip of the Caucus mountains
raging down on our little island paradise
like slavery
Snapping winds like the curl
of cruel whips lashing our ancestors' backs
oppress us now-Romans to Christ
And then, rain rain rain!
Like the rising waters of the Middle Passage
drowning us now in a sudden surge of frigidity
like the greed of imperialism's rage.

Thursday, 30 December 2010 19:39 Nicholas Damion Alexander Xtra Poetry Jam(The Black Collegian)

Monday, January 10, 2011

poetry

Nicholas Damion Alexander
MY MOTHER’S SALT&

1.
My mother cooked with salt,
flavoring our lives
with the spice of her choice . . .
A white grain from the sea
that added new worlds of taste
to children made of mixed spices.
2.
My father loved his pepper
heating up her pot
with its red flames,
that little masculine bulb
men use to show bravado
about nothing.
3.
We ate of Mother’s salt
all of our lives till we grew
old enough to insist
she travel to the sea
of her spice, away
from the red heat
of our father’s pepper.
4.
Today, fifteen years on
my mother has stopped
cooking with that spice
as white as my father’s skin.
And we have grown accustomed
to his hot spice,
46
hardly remembering
her love for little white grains
drawn from the sea.
Calabash



The Body Politic

We are the body politic,
the ones who walk the city's streets
in search of salvation
                                  and home.

We crowd the buses to heaven
hoping that some illiterate preacher
will teach us the meaning of life;

thinking that somehow meaning
will unfold from nonsense
like truth from lies.

That something will emerge
from nothing
                  like genesis.

That new beginnings will commence
from old ceaseless ends.

And so, we rush by each other
on the streets, daily going to and from
places of work and the ones we call home,

unaware that salvation is
our own dependence on each other.

                                          Nicholas Alexander


The viscosity of infidelity

The night takes flight on the shifting
vicissitudes of reason
expanding its wings like vulture;
on the deep edge of treason.

The verisimilitude of love
floats in the air like wind-
an ill wind, tepid and so strange
and full of hidden sin.

It is then the viscosity
of infidelity
can be felt floating in the heart
with such sterility.

Wings that soar ominously, claws
that curl with cringing dread
heat up the night; and an unreal
swelling inside one's head.



The latest messiah

The loss of phone represents
carelessness with family.

The couch used as an outlet
for charging this tool of communication-

the same one lounged in
without thought of strife-

is a death bed  where your killers
conspire to hack you in. Disregard

the smiling faces- the best of  men
in all the world's races, whose hearts are pure,

have fallen victim to this trap:
Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jnr.,

Jesus Christ and now, you-the world's latest
messiah, dying in vain for its sin.

Troy

They were all men preoccupied
with the fame that death would bring.
Honor for them
was war and living through it; history
the sweet thrill of their blood mingled with dust.

So they wrote their names in the sands
of time, with the sword of generations.
Their spirits in a piece of steel passed down
from father to son: that was the great honor
of being a soldier of Troy, much deeper
than love and more powerful than death.

                                                             Nicholas Alexander