Caribbean Elephants

I have always loved words, especially reading and listening to poetry, but only started seriously writing myself in around 2013. For any new writer, the first time your work is accepted to be published, is a special moment and mine came on 8th July 2015 when The Caribbean Writer journal informed me that my poem Caribbean Elephants had been accepted to be published in Volume 29. So Thank You to The Caribbean Writer team. The latest version of the poem is below.

Caribbean Elephants
There are no elephants in the Caribbean:
Our guileless watery eyes, dare not speak
of imaginary friends, nor of ivory bones
piled high in tightly closed closets;
nor of primary coloured elephants, crouching
in living rooms and corridors
of power; trampling our innocence,
hopes and honourable hearts.

Guilty fingers dripping gold,
at the end of arms popping
from pinstripe Armani suits, point
at our granny’s fragrant, flower bordered pit latrine,
as the source of foul and festering country odours.

There are no elephants in the Caribbean:
Ringmasters, in dazzling red coats with gold fringed epaulets,
resources scarce for even basic needs of troupes,
cannot feed the voracious appetites
of colossal concrete creatures; starved
of attention, abandoned, they crumble from neglect.

Primal forest, in self-defence, strangle
skeletal remains of these sun bleached elephants;
covering their cracked and cratered tracks with
moist and mossy carbon footprints.
Cursed empathic curios from comrades,
and granted ostentatious follies;
full extent of burden on our island’s breaking back, is yet unknown.

There are no elephants in the Caribbean:
Our islands, repeatedly raped by
foster parents; pillaged, plundered, left
for dead; scrapping up guilt coated pennies tossed in gutters,
slowly drowning from changing tides
we had no hand in.

Now waking our abusers with death rattle
reparation whispers; we are terrifying
herds of elephant ghosts, tormenting
the dreams of our colonisers,
who played ping-pong with countries,
and traded us, their bastard babies, for
dollar bills and bases.

There are no elephants in the Caribbean:
Our sensitive souls seek solace in alcoholic stupors,
chase away pink elephants; hallucinations escaping
from frustration broken necks
of empty rum bottles.

Shamed we cannot stand
unaided, clutching crutches handed out
by controlling, co-dependent care-takers.

Once we were warriors,
feeding families with fish, and food
farmed from fertile soil.
Now futile future, frozen
on our faces, captured by tourists.

There are no elephants in the Caribbean:
Ancient gommiers grumble
premonitions into green elephant ears,
and majestic chatanier trunks, trumpet
warnings; fossilised echoes of our fallen
Maroon revolters.
Fern fronds nervously unfurl, shaking
out infinite fractal korus.

The forest quakes, mythical elephants trembling,
weary from the heavy burden of corpulent world.
Hungry sisserous screech, take flight; scared
by the rumble and the distant dust
of a stampeding kind of progress.

There are no elephants in the Caribbean:
Our long in the tooth West Indian matriarchs,
elephant whisperers; wise, skilled, stable,
respected rational riders of mammoth emotions,
keepers of sacred knowledge;
with coconut oil indelible memories,
sit in concrete jungle cages,
telling stories while babysitting captive
migrant members of our herd;
of prehistoric times of community and care.

Instinctively I know when to return to the forest,
seeking ancestral graveyards,
to end, solemn, solitary, days.