deleted for contest submission

Humid August Morning

Packed in my mind lies, all betrayals of my past
It shows on my face like a ****** mask
Over the passing years nothing seems to change
Not even my wore out tattoos nicknames,
I seek answer; I search for peace,
  I am caged, I am seized
 With my innermost thoughts and convictions

What’s my purpose, which one of my petals is going to fall now?
Who’ going to step in and staged an intervention?
I am caged, I am seized, I am so loving ******.
Surrounded by happiness, laughter and some forgiveness
Once again, here I am taking another summer test.

  Open bars, aged faces, cold frosty Banks beers
An islander tradition nothing changes,
not even my tattoo nicknames, Bajan Yankee
Caribbean Queen and Meany heartbreaker,

However, when the laughter fades,
and the music stop in the most romantic setting
A black heart, a broken soul, makes old memories resurfaces;
I see so much, I heard so much and
I overthink so much about worldly things

How can I not go back to the land of the flying fish?
Or where the Bank beers are four for ten
Or where the rooster wakes us up at the crack of dawn,
where humble people just smiling
and saying hello makes a different.

The annoying mosquito buzzes under the protected nets
Till I reach for a can of repellant with anger and yelled who’s next!

I‘ve heard the annoying barks of the neighbor dogs
The unsettling morning news, but nothing as soothing
As watching a black bird singing in the apple trees.
Speaking to the heart of the humans souls:
Once again I am an Island Girl

*See how the nature trees, flowers, grass grow in silence
See the stars, the moon and the sun; we need to be able to touch souls

Beyond the walls of sandbars and streams
waves break into silent white foams
often I've crossed them in my dreams
beckoned by the distantly looming haze.

The sky goads me to traverse the stretch
clouds hinder to ask what if rises the tide
the sea is all around in deadly embrace
her monstrous curls in hunger bared wide.

Climb the sandbars and reach her remoteness
calls the wind of the sizzling September
days as this would be gone in haste
shelled in memories to be ever remembered.

I slip into the lagoon in a drunken trance
the ripples break into a victorious song
the sea she breaks into a joyous dance
the time is here and the tides won't be long.

a move of broken glass
black as polished leather,
burnt wood, the big shifter

that trembles steel under us,
the horizon hides, above
a curtain made of holes

with stars around as the
lost language of wind,
howls of salt, tide of night

Some memories I give her
to drown in dark water,

like an old revolver
thrown into a river,

nights spent drinking
the moon under a table

made of maple and fables
we once believed true

love lost, found
and lost again together

where only the mountains
and seas last forever.

J'aime les ponts.
Ils m'obsèdent.
De tout âge, toutes formes.
Des eaux troublées
à en sécher les rivières,
la dérive de la mémoire
en l'hypnose de la pendule,
les branches des saules.
Et ce n'est même pas
la traversée du départ.
C'est plutôt l'arrivée.
L'idée d'arriver quelque part,
comme si c'était chez nous,
finalement.
La ville qui se réveille
comme le dessin pointillé
d'un ciel nocturne
dans une odeur de port,
à l'aube,
le navire emballé par la mer
qui se distancie.
Le contour du pont.
Suspension d'un mirage.
Comment ne pas en rêver,
des ponts?


~~~

I love bridges.
I am obsessed by them.
From all ages, all shapes.
Waters, so troubled
that rivers dried out,
the drifting of memory
in the hypnosis of a pendulum,
the willow branches.
And it is not about
the crossing to depart.
It is about arrival.
The idea of arriving somewhere,
like if it could be home,
finally.
The town, awakening,
esquisse in pointillage
of a nocturnal sky,
the scents of the harbour,
at dawn,
the ship, cradled by the sea,
lost in distance.
The outline of a bridge.
Suspended mirage.
How not to build upon?