Tag: caribbean writers

Posted on

Like Rain

(Crocker Art Museum – Sacramento, CA –
October 2025)

I can’t live in your daydreams
there are still half-read books and half-drunk cups of coffee lingering on my shelves
unedited manuscripts begging for attention under piles of mail I promised I would open
research ideas that haven’t quite been fleshed out enough
I can’t subsist on praise and sacrifice alone
Need the warm sun, a cool breeze, and an ocean view to nourish my aching soul
I can’t live in your daydreams but I can be a featured player in your fantasies
Call on me when the well runs dry
I’ll be there to flood your fields

Posted on

Blan/Lò

Église Saint-Merri, Paris, France – April 2023

Gadé mwen,
all decked out in white and gold like
I’m the second coming.
dripping venom instead of holy water.
wouldn’t mind the suburbs, if not
for the new age bros and vapid white feminists,
who have the gall to assume they’re part of the solution.

ki sa pwòblenm mwen?
thought you could talk down to me in perpetuity,
‘til I obliterated your ego with my doc marten boot.
we were never really friends, just friendly.
can’t feign austerity for your comfort any longer.
shower me in your hyperbolic platitudes,
wild, brash, dehumanizing for drawing boundaries – I’ll embrace it.
rather that than live sad, frigid, and fraught with fear.

Posted on

do you love me?

(Pacifica Esplanade Beach, CA – December 2023)

est-ce que tu m’aimes?

tongue dripping with silver,

kisses all over your body like Paris rain in the afternoon.

est-ce que tu m’aimes?

touch like the summer – wet, hot, unrelenting,

and enrapturing you all at once,

until every inch of you is soaked in sweat.

est-ce que je suis le diable?

peut-être, peut-être pas

est-ce que tu m’aimes, encore?

Posted on

Je me suis trouvé

pas besoin de raconter l’histoire,
je sais précisément qui je suis et où j’ai commis une erreur.
feuilletant Dostoïevski, allongé au soleil,
fumeur au Young Dolph, l’herbe fraîchement coupée effleurant mes coudes nus.
descendant dégénéré, dissident et perdu de vue de Ramsès II, bien que très loin des villes scintillantes de l’Égypte antique.

pas besoin de rejouer vos souvenirs,
je sais exactement où je suis allé et où j’en suis,
aucune indiscrétion passée ne me fait honte, aucune menace de mal de la part d’un homme ne me met en échec,
aucune chaînes d’entreprise pas m’apprivoiser.
ma voix est forte et claire comme le bruit des vagues qui s’écrasent sur le rivage,
Je suis un enfant de l’été, élevé dans la nature.

Je me suis perdu une fois,
mais maintenant…

Continue reading “Je me suis trouvé”
Posted on

Pride is an Inferno

trace me,
follow the nicks and scars deep down to my roots.
tilled in poor soil with not nearly enough sunlight,
yet still I grew undeterred, unwavering.
branches outstretched far and wide like my mother arms,
there to either cradle or shade you (take your pick).
no tolerance left for inaction,
devoid of patience for justice.

trace me,
the same fire raging you see before you
has always burned hot beneath the surface,
always been a card carrying member of the “others” –
the weirdos/punks/queers/misfits.
call us what you will, but we’re leading the charge now.
buying homes and settling in your quaint little areas of town,
and that raging fire is never going out.

Posted on

Ode to New Orleans

Strolling down Bourbon Street, centuries of pain and beauty beneath our feet,
Dancing on the heels of the greats to a rhythm the city seems to make from out of nothing,
en Louisiane,
à La Nouvelle-Orléans,
We’re alive, like the jazz, and smoke, and black magic floating through the air,
we’re wild, we’re free.
I love you, I love you, je t’aime, je t’aime,
Down by the Bayou, drunk on Rue Dauphine, on St. Charles Street,
Tracing the footsteps of Degas,
of Hemingway, Capote, Williams,
Sweet city beneath the sea,
Hold steady, hold on tight.