Poem Quote Bank 1

Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us…

Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent…

Exposure: opening

Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army // Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of grey

Exposure: weather is attacking

So we drowse, sun-dozed, Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses. —Is it that we are dying?

Exposure: in a sunny paradise

Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born, For the love of God seems dying.

Exposure: nihilism

Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice, But nothing happens.

Exposure: their loss

Dem tell me Dem tell me Wha dem want to tell me Bandage up me eye with me own history

COMH: Opening

Toussaint A slave With vision Lick back Napoleon

COMH: Victory in face of adversity

Dem tell me bout Columbus and 1492 But what happen to de Caribs and de Arawaks too

COMH: Crimes against the Carribeans

A healing star

COMH: Mary Seacole

But now I checking out me own history I carving out me identity

COMH: Ending

I wander thro’ each charter’d street,

London: Opening

The mind-forg’d manacles I hear

London: Mentality hold them back

Every black’ning Church appalls

London: Christianity has lost its way

Runs in blood down Palace walls

London: Soldiers die

And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.

London: Attack on the men in the patriarchy

Sink walls in rock and roof them with good slate. This wizened earth has never troubled us

SOTI: Opening

So that you listen to the thing you fear

Forgetting that it pummels your house too.

SOTI: Tit-for-Tat violence

You might think that the sea is company, Exploding comfortably down on the cliffs

SOTI: People hardening to violence

Strange, it is a huge nothing that we fear

SOTI: Ending

Paper that lets the light shine through, this is what could alter things.

Tissue: Opening

the back of the Koran, where a hand has written in the names and histories,

Tissue: A religious book

Maps too. The sun shines through their borderlines,

Tissue: Geographical segregation

find a way to trace a grand design with living tissue

Tissue: The final solution

and thinned to be transparent, turned into your skin

Tissue: Ending

On another occasion, we got sent out

Remains: Opening

I see every round as it rips through his life —

Remains: The actual act

One of my mates goes by and tosses his guts back into his body

Remains: Cleaning up

And the drink and the drugs won’t flush him out —

Remains: Intoxication

But near to the knuckle, here and now, his bloody life in my bloody hands

Remains: Ending