The Barzakh

 The term Barzakh (بَرْزَخ) in Arabic literally means a barrier or partition that separates two things. In the Qur’an, barzakh is used in a general sense for any barrier – for example, a barrier between two bodies of water. When talking about life after death, Barzakh refers to the period after a person’s death and before their resurrection.

Every grave is a room
Its corners filled with days of memories passed, past
A clutter of kitsch and curio aplenty
Echoes of journeys taken and favors sought

Lights on... flick the lights off
The inhabitants yearn for nothing here
Windowless, no peering out
The occupants have no more desires in this place

Every grave is a room 
Filled with flowers, weeds and worms
Tear-filled nights and beautiful mornings 
Thoroughly beloved 
Are echoes here of another place

Your grave is your room
With laundry piled high and pairs of shoes left askew
Ties tied crooked and dress hems, dropped
It is a state that will never change
No it never improves

Time takes all things away
Sold sight unseen, it is as is it
In the blink of an eye, a twinkle perhaps
So make your bed


- CocoaTea Poetry🌱

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Check out my first book Respair: The rain after drought

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Upward County

very much newness.... much

many things, aplenty

it rushes past me

I catch a glimpse

                            but I don’t know its face

altogether unfamiliar, dissimilar

a stranger

oh my, how new

this fresh flush of the first new day

crisp, cold and voluminous

foreigner

new

newfoundland


-CocoaTea Poetry🌱

Check out my first book Respair: The rain after drought

Available on Amazon ✨
Available for Pre-order (local) ✨

craven and cold

I was reading this article on Pornography is a Public Health Crisis by Zahra

Paragraph 5 stirred this poem.

The brutalisation of the imagination

unwitting, but inerrant

…..desensitization

numbness creeping in, cold air sinking to the bottom

a society’s number internally rotten


-CocoaTea Poetry🌱

It calls for all

 

The tensions are high and ratcheting up again
Clink, clank
The industrial complex creeps forward 
Like the rapid rail
The death rattle of the zone
Death rattle of the peace
Hospice care, CARICOM cares
Commercial mice swear
…fealty
To other gods?
The price of their benediction
The lives of men, mighty and mealy

Cross the line, borders drawn
Radars down, eyes alert
But closed tightly, squinting in fear
While others are others are wide open
Pupils dilated with euphoria
Pockets fattening as they sip
Pinkys up
Get a grip, get a grip
Clink, clank, clank
Ebenezer.

The slow moving push
Waters rushing from the heights of La Seiva
To Town, hitting the pipes with such 
Velocity, every atom is embossed
Known by its name and number
Positioned to plunder

Will wonders every truly cease?
Gaze upon heaps of deceased men
Memories, mothers and families
But the resolution goes on 
Clanking, creeping
Quiet and then, screaming
Dissenting approval, delegated authority
While the people chant
Their hands are raising
While their voices fade away

With an atomic red haze


-CocoaTea Poetry🌱

Check out my first book Respair: The rain after drought
Available on Amazon ✨
Available for Pre-order (local) ✨

Launching Respair: The rain after drought

It’s crazy to think that it’s finally here🎊

My first book!

This is the result of many big feelings, much writing and the hand of the Lord (on my neck😅).

I present to you Respair: The rain after drought

What does Respair mean?

Its an old-timey word for fresh hope or recovery from despair. It is the opposite of despair and encourages optimism in the face of difficult times and moving beyond them.

Respair: The rain after drought is a poetry collection exploring spiritual transition, love for God, and personal journeys. It covers themes of creation, faith, overcoming challenges, and seeking spiritual purpose. As a citizen of Trinidad and Tobago, I infuse my work with caribbean roots and peer at the complexities of the christian faith.

AVAILABLE ON AMAZON➡️ https://a.co/d/co33ShT ✨($9.99 USD)

AVAILABLE LOCALLY➡️ https://forms.gle/DufCTTEseMYjGXJCA✨ ($70.00 TTD)

This book chronicles in poetry, my faith walk through hard times, battles with mental health, self discovery and finding purpose in God. This work was inspired by God and He penned it through my choppy prose and coskelle colloquialisms.

As you read, I pray that you feel seen, encouraged and take even greater courage in your own journey.

-Ayanna from CocoaTea Poetry🌱

Time bound

 My skin still stings 

from lessons learnt 

So bitter, I gag

All these years later

- CocoaTea.Poetry

One hand does slap

Hazardous is

The hand that sweetly caresses your face 

Comforting, is

the same hand that presses you down

-cocoatea.poetry

Own- Kendel Hippolyte

A road razzled with restaurant signs and menu boards,

lights twinkling in the eaves, winking a come-on at the tourists;

glimpses—between the tall hedges—of hotel staff, busy

in black and white, a slash of colour, slice of a smile;

the strip, a tourism hotspot, cools down in the evening,

 then flares up, a febrile condition, in the night.

i try to understand a whole economy based on fantasies—

beach umbrella, sipping a culture on the rocks, Stella’s groove—

and ponder: for some, in fact, we did begin as fantasies—Cipango, El Dorado—

then were traded down to sweating-stink, slave-holding colony.

So centuries later, on a tropical Friday night, what now? What?

You can’t dissolve history in a fruit punch, make it delish.

Even the sugar in the coffee has a bitter aftertaste

when you know. The charcoal briquettes make the barbecue

then become ash. You see it everywhere, in everything.

See what, though? What exactly do i see?

This hedged-in hotel, with a glance of bustling workers,

and built on the remains of what had been the village cemetery,

is locally owned. A Black industrious couple from industrious families

and captains now of the twinkling industry of fantasy.

No absentee plantation owner’s property, this—a native enterprise.

Why my disquiet, then? Skeletons under the tiled floors?

Gravestones and bones crunched in with the numbers?

Wincing, the thought of that but—no, what stabs the mind

is that the buried could not hold even that final patch of ground as theirs.

And their descendants hustling in the palace of fantasies above them

don’t own it—not even in fantasy.

And I’m thinking that what may finally resolve this history,

shred the black and white raiments it is clothed in,

is when they own

not only the hotel, its ground, the other ancestral grounds,

but also

their own history.

-Kendel Hippolyte

https://www.bimmag.org/stories/own

I wait for you

 

I wait for you,

Like a flower waits for the sun.

I open my petals,

And spread my arms wide.

I wait for you,

Like a bird waits for the rain.

I sing my song,

And dance in the wind.

I wait for you,

Like a child waits for Christmas.

I count the days,

And dream of our future.

I wait for you,

With all my heart and soul.

I know that you will come,

And our love will be forever.

-cocoatea.poetry

The Child Ran Into the Sea - Martin Carter

 

The child ran into the sea

but ran back from the waves, because 

the child did not know the sea 

on the horizon, is not the same sea

ravishing the shore. 

What every child wants is always

in the distance; like the sea

on the horizon. While, on the shore

nearby, at the feet of every child 

shallow water, eating the edges 

of islands and continents does little more, 

little more than foam like spittle 

at the corners of the inarticulate mouth 

of some other child who wants to run 

into the sea, into the horizon.

- Martin Carter

Pain is a humane thing

 

Pain is a humane thing, It tells us we're alive. It tells us we're feeling, It tells us we're human.

Pain can be sharp or dull, It can be short or long. It can be physical or emotional, But it's always real.

Pain can be a warning sign, It can tell us something is wrong. It can be a sign of injury, Or it can be a sign of disease.

Pain can also be a teacher, It can teach us about our limits. It can teach us about our strength, And it can teach us about our resilience.

Pain is a part of life, It's something we all experience. It's something we can learn to live with, And it's something we can learn to overcome.

So next time you're in pain, Remember that it's a humane thing. It's a sign that you're alive, And it's a sign that you're human.

-cocoatea.poetry

The Yard Man: An Election Poem - Lorna Goodison

 

When bullet wood trees bear

the whole yard dreads fallout

from lethal yellow stone fruit, 

and the yard man will press 

the steel blade of a machete 

to the trunk in effort to control 

its furious firing. He will dash 

coarse salt at its roots to cut 

the boil of leaves, try slashing 

the bark so it will bleed itself 

to stillness, and yet it will shoot 

until the groundcover is acrid 

coffin color, the branches dry bones. 

Under the leaves it lives, 

poverty’s turned-down image 

blind, naked, one hand behind 

one before. The yard’s first busha

was overseer who could afford 

to cultivate poverty’s lean image, 

but good yard man says since we 

are already poor in spirit, fire for it. 

http://bombmagazine.org/article/2533/four-poems 

Stress

 

Stress is a killer, It can take your breath away. It can make you feel like you're drowning, And there's no way out.

But there is a way out, You just have to find it. You have to find something that makes you happy, Something that takes your mind off of your troubles.

It could be anything, It could be a hobby, It could be spending time with loved ones, Or it could just be taking a walk in nature.

Whatever it is, Find it and hold on to it. Let it be your escape from stress, And let it help you find peace.

Stress is a part of life, But it doesn't have to control you. You can control it, If you just find the right way to deal with it.

-cocoatea.poetry

Montage - Mervyn Morris

 

England, autumn, dusk –  

so different from the quarter-hour 

at home when darkness drops: 

there’s no flamboyant fireball 

laughing a promise to return; 

only a muted, lingering farewell, 

and day has passed to evening.

I been there, sort of: New and Selected Poems – Mervyn Morris  

The Sleeping Serengeti

 

The serengeti sleeps

harmony between predator and prey

except for the night prowlers, maw open

tip toeing through darkness

unseen, unheard, unknown

by the sleeping serengeti

-cocoatea.poetry

10.2.25

Cane Gang - Olive Senior

 

Torn from the vine from another world 

to tame the wildness of the juice, assigned 

with bill and hoe to field or factory, chained 

by the voracious hunger of the cane 

the world’s rapacious appetite for sweetness 

How place names of my servitude mock me: 

Eden, Golden Vale, Friendship, Green Valley, 

Hermitage, Lethe, Retreat, Retirement, Content, 

Paradise, Phoenix, Hope, Prospect, Providence 

Each with the Great House squatting 

on the highest eminence 

the Sugar Works overlooking 

my master’s eye unyielding 

the overseer unblinking 

not seeing the black specks 

floating across 

their finely-crafted 

landscape 

At shell blow assembled the broken-down

bodies, the job-lots scrambled into gangs

like beads on a string O not pearls no just  

unmatched pairings the random bindings 

like cane trash no not like the cane pieces

laid out geometric and given names

and burning. 

http://www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/0106/olive_senior.htm