Water-fountain Music

"Hadn't seen you since you added the foliage,"
said she

what I eat, what I drink, air I breathe, become my beard
weight to bear, load to carry

worry not at all, at present, about appearance

my support, it seems, does not come from how I look
dress up or not, I get left alone

except for those who love what a poet does,
what a poet knows

I'm going where a poet goes,
with followers or without,
words flying from my pen and from my mouth

my beard’s from where my words come from
I make pens sprout, I grip them in, grip them with
my green thumb

"I hadn't seen you since you added the foliage,"
said she

stroking what she spoke of: I her pet, her kitten,
poet takes off his mittens to tap into poems

boxer removes his gloves for a street fight
in such a brawl, he draws blood with a blow
with another, a broken nose, with another, he breaks teeth

this poet does not like the smell of defeat
as stink, as unpleasant as smelly feet

"I hadn't seen you since you added the foliage,"
said she


© Obediah Michael Smith, 2006

Obie, Ars poetica, as I understand it, is poetry being aware of and discussing itself. It occurs when poetry is, in part or whole, the subject of the poem. It is self-reflective poetry.

In your poem, . . . Pearls, I consider it marvelously inventive, as poetic crossing, to move from SHIFT as leaver that moves the vehicle (standard-shift Wrangler) to the plane of SHIFT as ideas or mechanisms that move the poem. "What if the shift is so sharp it sank the ship," you write. The ship is the poem and the shift the tools (words, imagery, associations, tropes, etc.) that propel it. I interpret this as ars poetica, a poem being conscious of itself. I see this as the poetic struggle to, at some level, keep the poem coherent. The poem/poet is discussing its obligation to the reader. The reader must be able to follow the poem. Although the reader must make a serious commitment to engage the poem, to get it, the poet must be careful not to make creative choices that lose the reader on the poetic journey. In this section of Pearls, the poem is conscious of being a made thing. It is a literary construction, and it knows.

What you lift up hear, and the poem certainly acknowledges, is the universal concern of every poet, in every poem, to, in the poetic moment, maintain clarity. After all, the poet's job is not to obscure, but to make plain. To make us SEE--differently. All the best. Keith



Delicious and delightful; I thank you, Keith, for enlightenment. How very sensible and logical your explanation. It brings structure to mind. It produces emotional structure as well.

There is so much mental and emotional break down in our country and in our world, resulting in mayhem, resulting in murder which the structure your language and logic provide can, for an entire world, provide a stay against collapse.

My faith is in language. For intellect as well as for emotions, language acts as concrete and steel, creating beams and frames.

How very important structure is - the ability of things we make, to stand and to stand winds and tidal waves.

I feel lead to listen to recording I have at home of Shakespeare's sonnets. I need right now to hear or read the one about beauty's ability or inability to stand the onslaught of time and battering winds.

This sonnet I'm trying to recall, is one I really love. This is one I should learn by heart. Many thanks again, my friend. Forgive my running out and running on.
Obie.
p.s. a miracle, i've located it:

LXV

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o'ersways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O! how shall summer's honey breath hold out,
Against the wrackful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong but Time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack,
Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O! none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

People insufficiently well read, insufficiently educated or lacking in intelligence, avoid Standard English to escape the controls which language imposes. For me though and ideally, the goal is always for speaker, writer to exercise control rather than the Standards of the language.

The Standard controls when the writer or speaker barely knows the language, but when the user knows the language well, it is the user who is in control and is not subjugated.

Language we write and speak, in our case English, must do what we want it to do rather than our having to do what it wants us to do.

English is my tool, my instrument. I am wielding it, as at present. When one has, through use, education and reading, overcome the language which is either his or that language with which he is confronted, English in our case, it is no longer the master. Instead the user is master of language, of English.

When such a one writes or speaks, he writes or speaks, not in Standard English, not with some generic tongue, instead the language written, spoken is his very own, as is what I have written here.

when they settle, like Oat Meal in a box
with glass or mug or some gift inside
and the amount drops, no longer a full box

you open them, you're disappointed, feel cheated

what was promised, what you expected,
not what you're greeted with, confronted with

something else entirely to accept or to refuse to accept

must wait for her to come down
from her sanctimonious mountain

she assumes she’s Moses,
keeper of the Ten Commandments

must wait for her to bring them

Obie, You're welcome to share. I appreciate and value greatly the work you do. I like being a part of the live poet society, walking in houses that are familiar. When I read your poems I'm like the expectant boy in Watch Face, staring upon himself in a pond. In that marvelous poetic crossing in Necklace of Pearls from section 7 to 8, where you engaged in a kind of ars poetica, you end in 9 with, "Poems though are what I'm full of, all I'm full of." I'm so glad you are. Give birth--please! I wait. Keith


oh, food-back, feedback for my too often empty plate - the stuff which enables an artist/this writer to live. I thank you, Keith, for what is life-giving - for what makes an artist's life worth living. Hope your own creative process is alive and well.

How starved our community is, its artists must be, for critical response like what you provide me, like commentary you provide on Ian Strachan's "Show Me Your Motion". So very sadly, it's next to nonexistent - objective, intellectual commentary, resulting from [following] very deep comprehension. So much of what is lived in our Bahamas is not properly or thoroughly analyzed, is too often not even comprehended.

Distillation is what is necessary to arrive at identity - that clear river-water of who we are. Even though, just beginning, I thing we have begun upon what this procedure entails. Many thanks.

I've begun my research but, in addition, please explain ars poetica. I'd appreciate an explanation I can get my mind about readily. Obie.

Hollow

closing her pussy upon my penis
a finger being mashed in a door

I holler just as hard

for mercy
for more

Obie,

I hope all is well with you. As you know, I'm always awed by poets. I read your poems and I am moved by the fluidity of the rhythm, by the seeming ease of the associations. I can't help wondering if you labour for your metaphors, your imagery. I'm curious. I wonder if your tropes enter your room uninvited and sit with you and compete or clamor for your attention, as my characters often do. It's just my silly musing as I walk through your houses admiring the beauty of their construction.

Your imagery of the wounded, broken soul straining to cleanse itself and injuring its delicate self even in that process is disturbing and powerful. You make the reader feel the helplessness of the sensitive soul's vulnerability. The weaving of an encounter with a corn beef can's key into an association of making self and place ready for an overdue lover, employing the wave as currency in all its manifestations, is the amazement of the poetic gift.

A Necklace of Pearls is exquisite stuff. It is an abominable mix of dark and light/ in chaos, swirled together, whirled together/ like whip cream. Thanks for the taste. Congratulations!

Keith


my dear friend, Keith, you know not how necessary and how delightful this response is for me. By so very many, this language of poetry is treated like something which cannot be responded to, when it is the language I speak and require answer as one requires/expects an answer to a letter.

You save me from feeling completely let down. I do like your house metaphor. It is a metaphor by which I'm often guided - the business of poem being a structure one can enter. [Another take though on my initial complaint - people in the rat-race seem not to have time to take in and/or to enter into a poem, much less to understand and to respond.] What you show about the "soul" poem is enlightening even to me. You turn sides of it to me which are new to me, which were hidden from me. God! I thank you.

I had relied upon friends, thinkers for feedback. Not having gotten it left me feeling so very forlorn. Your response has to some, very highly appreciated degree, reversed that. Thank you. Obie.

P.S. I wish to add your words and mine, exchanged here, to my blog. I hope you approve.

About the clamoring of tropes for my attention. Do they come to me or do I go where they are? I suppose we meet somewhere in mid-air. God! You might have just now lead me to understand why I am usually so apart from people [though I want them near me], choosing to go where/to be where poetry is/where poetry happens.

In the company or in the country of poetry is where I am usually while most of the rest of the world, especially here in Nassau, is stuck in traffic. Obie/blessings.

P.P.S. I must in addition, comment on your use of an extraction of "A necklace of Pears" itself to critique it. Economical as well as brilliant. OS.

Corn Beef Can Key
for I.G.

must tighten, make taut,
the strings of the waves, must take the wrinkles out

must straighten my bed, must fix the table cloth

someone’s arriving, coming for dinner by candle light,
coming across the sea, coming to be with me

guest I’ve awaited all these years
I’ve waited ages for waves to arrive, to reach the shore
rocks against which, waves break into whiteness

untroubled waters for my love to cross, for my love to walk

it’s Saturday, she’s journeying, she’s joining me
she’s coming for dinner this Sunday

I must be there, upon the shore, where her journey ends,
when her journey ends I must wave


© Obediah Michael Smith, 2006
7:58 a.m. 18/feb/06


Role To Play
for I.G.

I wish I had your company constantly
to rely upon, to keep, to keep me

instead of being able to see you only every now and then
when able to spare an evening of minutes
with old greybeard

wiping, squeezing tears from your eyes
when I make you laugh and cry

I wish I had your company constantly,
instead of now and then, instead of when, after weeks,
you show up to assure me I am not alone in this world,
not entirely forgotten

like a roll upon a paper plate, which dropped and rolled
dozens of pairs of legs, of feet to watch go by

such a roll for the cleaning lady to pick up after,
to dispose of

in her great, grey, plastic, garbage bag


© Obediah Michael Smith, 2006
1:25 p.m. 18/feb/06


Careful Steps Careful Hands
of I.G.

unlike me, she is careful
not to break her soul’s skin with immorality,
with rough words, with a rough move or rough mood

the soul, as vulnerable as germs,
which I understand,
die when we soap and wash our hands,
because we break their skins

I break the skin of my soul with sin, from within,
with sinful thoughts, with sinful deeds

as if I’d open eyes of my soul, mouth of my soul
too wide

my soul, at times, difficult to defecate, must strain
I clean after, with tissue, to find my soul injured
upon the tissue I clean with, streaks of blood

she keeps her soul intact with delicate ways, delicate days
my days are ruptured, every one, wounded somehow

I open eyes, mouth, too wide to take in life
or irritate, when I clear my throat,
when I hawk and spit out what I detest
and am determined to get rid of


© Obediah Michael Smith, 2006
1:44 p.m. 18/feb/06


Empty Me Into This World

my poems are all translations into English,
from a language I should have been speaking,
would have been speaking
had slavery never happened

upon second thoughts though,
had slavery never happened,
I could not have, would not have,
would never have existed

European parts, African parts,
Arawak, Carib, Tino Indian parts
would never have touched to create this new race
which peoples the new world,
the Americas, the Caribbean


© Obediah Michael Smith, 2006
2:28 p.m. 18/feb/06


Watch Face
of I.G.

own you, my own you

such a one for me to put my arms about,
to slip in my pocket like watch with chain
to draw you up, to draw you out

like water in a bucket from a well
to stare at your face, to stare at mine

like little boy expecting galiwasp,
staring upon himself in a pond


© Obediah Michael Smith, 2006
3:56 p.m. 18/feb/06

overlapping, lapping waves against a shore
hungry cat laps its milk, noisily

unfinished business to finish, to varnish

wheat-brown, wheat stalks in the rain,
swaying, ready for harvesting

her mother in her car, waiting,
her books in her car, boxes of She Sails,
in print after all

let her shiver, shake, make cat-like noises
cry so human, in season, in the night

what anesthetic for hurt we cause on a cruise ship

I, seasick, she having to bring me supper,
feed me in bed

unlike a pair of Chinese chop sticks,
unlike the upper and lower jaws,
working together, acting in unison

Cock Crow

how many times
does the heart beat between Christmases
how many times does the clock tick

does the cock crow
between birth and when the crow hovers over
with its wings outstretched

its opportunity, its meal at hand
a smell which promises a belly full

rotten food makes a belly ache
rotten you or me and a crow rejoices

how many times
does the heart beat between Christmases
how many times does the clock tick
like a knife through cheese, thinly sliced

in a stack, in a heap


© Obediah Michael Smith, 2006
11:40 a.m. 10/feb/06

Rungs of A Ladder

1.
she fits my bowl, fills my bowl
with her full hips, her shoulders, slim

woman for my tea, my taste, exactly
measured out in coffee spoons

I’ll be kept up with pen in hand

2.
White Rub, black woman
in a ball in bed in bad weather
wanting warmth, wanting health

my job to love her, to help her recover
her smile, her laughter

must take her back where I met her
into the sea, laughing among the waves
wearing little in addition to wetness, to water

Saunders Beach among casuarina trunks,
old and tall and thick

my pick-up-truck, pulled in, parked between trees

I have a towel to dry her off,
must wrap her up, let no one see

in bed in White Rub in winter
waiting for/wanting our season to change,
for winter to lift

in church last evening, black tam
covered half her head

3.
so much history in her hips,
all coiled up, so tightly wound

undo it, how far back in time

it would pass through towns,
wrap around these tiny rocks of islands, cays
wrap about this planet, the spinning earth

hips like hers, turn heads


4.
another man’s wife to make poetry of
Kool-Aid packet

strawberry, orange, cherry to rip open,
pour the powder out, into water in a pitcher

we use to use a wooden spoon to stir it
add ice cubes

thirsty children with plastic glasses
Kool-Aid to drink with sausage sandwiches

summer break, off from school, hours to kill
in coconut tree, in dilly tree

in the dirt upon ours knees
marbles in a ring to contest for

there was jacks, jump rope, tops to spin, to split

when tired, when hungry,
we’d gather in the kitchen,
make Kool-Aid, make sandwiches

before returning to all the games,
all the things the back yard and the summer offered

what games can we invent, can we play
in these modern, adult days


© Obediah Michael Smith, 2006
1:49 a.m. 07/feb/06

Music-free Buses

thinking, breathing, reasoning,
reading human being

unavailable therefore, like sardines in a tin,
with heads off, stacked partially atop each other
until what’s containing them, is full of them

on local buses, just like this, treated like this

in the crevices in the can,
between, beneath, around, about fish bodies,
water’s poured or some sauce flows

when the bus is stuffed with bodies,
windows shut, air condition on or not
music’s turned on, turned up,
fills in all the empty spaces

but I am a breathing, reading, reasoning
human being within a can, under pressure

enter the bus to get home, to get to town
in addition, pay for torture


© Obediah Michael Smith, 2006
9:11 p.m. 08/feb/06

What do you guys think?

I feel that the paper had a right to publish but I am sceptical about their
reasons for publishing. Just because you have the freedom to do or say
certain things doesn't make it OK to exercise that right in any way you see
fit. For instance I wouldn't like it for any one to exercise his right to
free speech by calling me a monkey nigger(harsh eh?). Some things are just
morally wrong and equally insensitive.

Was it their aim to create controversy? Probably. I find it difficult to
believe otherwise. I cant see any thing positive resulting from publishing a
cartoon depicting the prophet as a terrorist(I am referring to the cartoon
drawn with him having a bomb with it's fuse lit for a turban)? Especially
considering everything that is going on in the world today between 'the west'
and middle eastern countries. That is just wrong.

Strive for peace,
Clifton

P.S On a more lighter note......birds are chirping outside my
window.....cool :)



CA, love your conclusion. I concur, cool. Monkey nigger doesn't quite work, doesn't quite sting though. Maybe the nigger part but not the monkey part because monkeys are actually quite beautiful with extremely pleasing personalities and extremely bright smiles.

Is this the cartoon which set off the rioting? I'd been wanting to get an up-close of this whole conflict. Interestingly though, it has lit the fuses of Moslems. I saw them on TV, so many and so violent, I found it frightening. I had Moslem friends at Memphis State though, who taught me to be intent, serious about a cause. It is their energy I suppose, in my very first book, Bicentennial Blues.

I was Commissioner for International Students in MSU's Student Government and represented their concerns as well as all the other intl. students' and went out on a limb whenever necessary - even to the point of being asked by authorities to leave the USA. How I've changed, or have I? Suppose I'm still a justice seeker.

Moslem fervor though, I do find startling, frightening. They're seldom prepared to laugh things off. I remember them wanting Salman Rushdie dead for The Satanic Verses which I have read and did find sacrilegious and very well written but no more sacrilegious than James Joyce's Ulysses but I don't remember the pope or any other Christian head making much of a fuss about it except that for many years it was banned in the USA as was D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Loves - made into a film not long ago and I'm glad to say, I do have a copy and love it.

Get Off

it is at once rape
and it is masturbation
it is vulgar, it's obscene

people pulling up, going by
with music booming

everything, everywhere, everyone
vibrating, shaking

unavoidable intercourse
with someone unknown

who comes around
who comes along


© Obediah Michael Smith, 2006
3:34 p.m. 08/feb/06

"April Haven"
Fri, 03 Feb 2006 22:05:49

The poem does not mean what you think! I am basically saying that for most or some poet we get our thoughts from our surroudings. We bring out things that are invisible to the eyes of many. We use our form of art as a voice. Sometimes, we only can write how we truly feel; therefore, I use those words. It was not intended to be a disappointment. I am sorry you felt that way. The poem is really saying where I get my motivation to write. My surroudings; what I see and how I feel. I express my thoughts how I view things. Sometimes, we speak and yet people don't listen, but when we write we give people a chance to read over and over to replay what they are reading in their head. Thank you for your reply.



April,
this explanation, though I thank you for it, is an insult to me. You needn't explain what your poem means. And was all I wrote written in vain? We, this time, are not communicating. My disappointment has nothing to do with what you attempted to say nor did I misunderstand what you attempted to say, in fact I've rewritten your poem to tighten it and to make it clearer, cleaner.

My concern has to do with your seeming not to know what a poem is or the difference between one which is pale or anemic and one which is dynamic and vibrant - like a child just born, spanked, which kicks and screams compared with one which needs a respirator, an incubator.

Is this clear april? If it isn't, things I convey to you about writing must have been and I suppose would be of little help. A lack of comprehension is a frustration thing. My attempt to improve the language of your poem follows:

I need to be heard
my surroundings, source of my vision

what have I been missing

must write my story
must live my life

Even though the language is clear, clean, precise, it is still empty of images. Images convey: the rusty pliers with bright-red plastic handles, sitting upon this counter here beside me. Images transport us to as well as through as well as into the world of the author.

Do you understand this? Compared with: "I have a feeling I wish I could share;" wherein what I'm thinking of is hidden, not conveyed. The only redeeming element of my second example is the rhythm of the words, of the language, the music - which is another tangible entity - as sound can be metallic, even rusty or silver: like the sound of the saxophone or clarinet or trumpet.

April, feelings, thoughts, must attach themselves to objects, to tangible things in creation to be conveyed, to be experienced by a reader, an audience. This is so because we experience what you convey though and with our senses: color: butter-yellow butterflies; sound: screeching carriage, screech owl, squeaking rabbits [or is it a rat which squeaks?]; Smell: onions, roses, candles burning; taste: dilly, tamarind, juju, apple juice; touch: hot, cold, smooth, rough [descending a coconut tree, with bare legs wrapped about it].

I'm offering assistance for which you did not ask, for which you have not paid. Forgive this imposition. OBIE.

Writer's Mind
by April Haven

I am a voice in need of hearing.

I use my surroundings as a source.

A source for vision,

To see what I've been missing

To write my story

To live my life.


April, this is disappointing. ants crawling on paper; rubber band in a pattern of twists and turns, resting on THURSDAY on the big desk calendar; noise the water cooler makes against the night's quiet; the jitneys and other buses in the dark, just before 5 a.m., beginning to go by, speeding; two-storey, red building across the road, with its white cornices. These accurate descriptions convey emotions as well as the world we occupy to who eventually reads what we've written, clear and sharp enough to cut into a reader a minute from now or three hundred years from now. This is what you have to capture, not some thought process, already faded before its written down.

When I think you've gotten it, I find you haven't. Is it a lack of talent or a lack of reading? Do you read? What do you read? You must read the best works ever written and you must know what succeeds from what doesn't. Also, you must go to art museums. Do what a painter does when you're writing, what photographers, and the very best cinematographers do when you write. Let sculptors guide you, as well as dancers, composers, as well as nature.

Where April, are you going with your art? Many who became great artist, were at your age, working miracles: Mozart, Schubert, Rimbaud. You need a jump start, a great leap. I need poems from you I can sink my teeth into like donut, like muffin, like a triple from Wendy's with extra letters, extra tomatoes, light mustard, light mayo. Let's go, love, spin the top of your poem. Split my top with yours.

Interesting how you embellish a weak, non-poem with ANGEL, sparkling, light streaming through it. This though is deception. What you've done with ANGEL your poem itself must do. The poem itself must contain the fire-works. When you write, when you create, you compete with God's creation. You are actually adding to it. Make what you write therefore as real as rabbit, rat, mouse - as real as mosquito - a poem so stingy you have to slap it and kill it and make the blood spout.

Open your pores, April, open your mouth, let the poems have wings like a flock of squawking geese, like paper-light, white and yellow peanut-butter-flies.

In response to Desiree Cox's CD, "Forbidden Love":-

Is Desiree Cox's aim fine art or pop art, success or vision? Is her guide Joni Mitchell, Anita Baker, The Beatles or a combination of processes: the kind of thing Miles Davis does or did, across albums, across his career - at times, and usually, the finest of fine art, on a couple of occasions though, "On The Corner," for example, indulging in pop music.

On Desiree's first CD or test CD, she has four versions of her composition, "Forbidden Love". What is "the love that dares not speak its name?" comes to mind. There are four tracks, three of them, mixes. I've listened to tracks 1 and 4 about two dozen times. I've listened to tracks 2 and 3 just once each. These two are not her creation. They are artificially made and for me, unpleasant to listen to. They are the noise I wish less of.

I listen when I'm up, when I work, between midnight and dawn. Tracks 2 and 3 do not fit my needs, my knees, my prayer-like life. They seem designed for the night club, for the pop market - designed to make money - manipulative therefore, artistically dishonest - when her own art, the original song, bares as well as bears her heart and soul.

Some words in lines 4 and 5 of stanza 3 of the song in print, need fixing to say what Desiree says when she sings, what makes clear sense.

Rhodes Scholar, Dr. Desiree Cox, with this added, surprising dimension: I welcome this fellow artist to the alchemy of creativity. She can better help us artist to convince the world of art's ability to heal even in these modern times. I am grateful to our maker that she and Christian Campbell, fellow poet, are artists in a place where many imagine artists as intellectually second rate, conceive them as hardly educated.

Dear Editor:
a few ideas I get out of bed, switch on the light to write down:-

Is it not enough disruption, disturbance: vehicles going by, going through our main streets especially, through the quiet and stillness of the night?

How irreverent, persons going by, through the night, not satisfied that their engines disrupt, disturb peaceful sleep. Since they must go by, they should tiptoe pass, like occupants of a house, like members of a family in a house, having to wake in the night and move about. Maybe a parent has to enter a child's room but enters and leaves upon tiptoe.

Entirely without sensitivity, so many at all hours, pass through Kemp Road, which is my street again, with music booming. Such persons, had they bombs, they'd drop them, they'd throw them upon our peace of mind, upon peaceful sleep, upon our way of life.

And who is paid, is hired to enforce the law, wait until these criminals, these insensitive persons, do something homicidal before they act.

With children to raise, to discipline, we do not wait until they've destroyed the house we're living in before we react; when they spill something, we make them clean it up. We in this country, wait until blood is spilled before anything is done or said.

This second matter may only be connected in part.

There are Haitians here illegally, hiding out in various corners, in Haitian communities, out of sight and keeping quiet. There are Haitians who have become Bahamians, who are integrated into Bahamian communities, who have embraced our country and its culture, who have come to love, respect and defend our way of life, our traditions.

We had a tradition of respect for each other, for neighbour. We had reverence, especially for Sundays. In my own family, we were encouraged to be fun-loving. We'd play music, we'd dance, whenever we desired, right here on Kemp Road where I grew up, when there was not work to be done. On Sundays though, there was no dancing and no dance music. These, on Sundays, were not allowed.

Now, on Kemp Road, Sundays are the noisiest day of the week. It seems there is little or no reverence for it. Tradition in which I was raised, in which I grew up, seems to have broken down or to have evaporated.

Has who has come into this street, into Nassau's inner city areas especially, not caught on, are not carrying on because they've come from elsewhere, with a past, not ours but imported?

Is this disrespect and disregard resultant from disconnection but coupled as well with deliberate defiance? This might be far-fetched, a long stretch but is nonetheless an impact which cannot be underestimated.

And this is the observation of one who embraces Africa and the Caribbean. Our history and traditions have one same root and similar patterns. The us-and-them equation therefore is not one which this writer irresponsibly enters into or takes up.

I wish to invite focus though upon Haitians here without status. Though their parents were quiet and hid themselves away in fear of being rounded up, detained and deported, there is this category of persons who were born here, educated here and though they've not been given status, they cannot be apprehended and sent back. They do not have to hide like their parents. They do not have to be quiet. Entirely to the contrary, there are many who choose to be boisterous, disruptive and possibly in protest, possibly to bring attention to their plight, to their situation.

They do not have to love a culture, traditions, to which they do not belong. They do not or cannot embrace easily what/who does not embrace them. There is therefore this layer within our body politic which is foreign to it, which does not belong and is making it/us sick.

There is this group among us which is restless, determined to make us all as restless, as well as, as without rest as they are.

Something has to be done therefore. Who is unapart, must be excluded, cleanly and completely. But who is a part of us, who belongs to us, must be included. We could then expect them to be loyal, to love, respect, as well as to defend Bahamian culture and Bahamian traditions.

I rest my pen, my case and shall try again to rest in what has become a very noisy Nassau in The Commonwealth of The Bahamas.


Obediah Michael Smith
bestwordsmith@hotmail.com
3:26 a.m.
January 29, 2006