Do you remember
A thousand stingin mosquito bite
While coil smoke chokin yuh whole night
Not sleepin under jug lamp light
Early mornin fowl cock fight

Do you remember
Sweepin bottom house with pointer broom
Wedding day shoe hiding of the bridegroom
Nastyin yuh school clothes an thinking yuh life doom
Playin ketcha when is full moon

Do you remember
After school water fetchin
Saturday mornin donkey ridin
Backdam fish ketchin
Plant waterin of the kitchen garden

Do you remember
Yuh lip pasting after eatin pepperpot
Playin cricket on the beach with coconut branch bat
And the village elder feather in he felt hat
Do you remember all ah dat?

Do you remember
Big big neighba cuss out
And the short cut rout
Drinkin home made stout
Ol people telling yuh big people yuh must'n doubt

Do you remember
Drinkin mauby an cane juice
Goin school with yattin boots
Pullin cassava root by root
Three piece fish tail suit

Do you remember
Evening time road corner joke
Black black fire side smoke
Cook-up rice, roti an curry and garlic pork
Runnin home de rain mek 'yuh whole skin soak'

Do you remember
Waitin fuh owara fall
Phoulrie, black puddin, souse an egg ball
Do you remember it all?
Want tek a lime pun de seawall?

Do You Remember: Part II
Do you remember
Ridin go cart an wood scooter
Eatin other people's juta
Winin down to Roll Up De Tassa Bissesar
An goin up to Bartica fuh Regatta

Do you remember
Nyamin plantain chip wid hot hot sour
Green mango an salt an pepper
Walter Rodney an people's power
Lloyd an Kanhai beatin ball at Bourda

Do you remember
Cheddie in de opposition
Buyin Robin Hood flour when was contra-ban
Fat boy Comrade President LFS Burnham
Cassava bread, tamarind ball an guava jam

Do you remember
Emptin posey in latrine pit
School teacher givin you first round licks
Labourin over de pistle wid yuh martar stick
Plunging overboard in black water, doin back flick

Do you remember
The harbour bridge floatin down the Demerara
'Produce or perish' as part of our culture
Ploughin rice bed wid Massey Ferguson 290 tractor
Catchin lukanani, hoori an patwa

Do you remember
Burnham exercise book
Callin stupid people 'packoo' and 'mook'
You and yuh friends mekin bush cook
Spendin holidays in Bachelor's Adventure, Supenaam an Clonbrook

Do you remember
When Club Illusions used to carry the swing
Eatin Chiney fry rice by Wong Tang Ling
Big fat fat gold ring
Christmas day radio programme 'No Big Ting'

I know you remember all these things

Do You Remember: Part III
Do you remember
Breakfast of fry fish an bake
Swimmin in de Hot an Cold lake
Gambling card an dominoes at every village wake
When yuh never buy Christmas tree but yuh used to make

Do you remember
When every church had a big wooden cross
Not a blade of grass
Drinkin daisy tea an sea moss
An when yuh mother pick black sage and buss yuh ass

Do you remember
Playin Phagwah
An lightin up diya
Catchin cockle and grasshoppa
Getting away an goin to cinema

Do you remember
When yuh kite always had razor blade on de tail
At GCE few people used to fail
Seein a lil labaria in de bush trail
When only in envelopes yuh used to get yuh mail

Do you remember
Cutting grass fuh de cow
An for 5 cents you an yuh brothers and sisters used to row
Crossin de river on Malali on de bow
Was piggy bank an not Nasdaq and Dow

Do you remember
Talkin nancy story
Wedding house beef curry an dhal puri
Bruce Lee in Fist of Fury
4 Oclock whistle of the sugar factory

Do you remember
When you used to throw box hand
Playin football on de beach sand
When locust did tek ova de whole land
You better realize that them days can't come back they done and gone

Freedom
I toss in my bed
As my brain tosses in my head,
I want to see smooth white but all I can see is a deadly red,
The future here is so dim, so dead
There is no hope, nothing to which I can thread

No! I do see a glimmer of hope, but only at the embassy gate
The woman across the glass shall set me free or make me wait
She will decide if it is now or later that I make progress towards my fate
For this appointment no one of us is ever late
It is our destiny date

Those words never seem so devastating as they do now
They tear away at your very flesh, your head in pain you bow
The house, the land, the borrowed money in my account. Why? How?
Why must you do this to thou?
I am being strangled here like a tangled cow

Another six months till I can come again
I shall hussle and struggle and bear the pain
I shall survive here till then, albeit in vain
Back to vending on the pave in the streets, any corner, any lane
Why must you condemn me to this clogged, stagnant stifling drain?

One day, one day I too shall be set free
One day, my day shall it be
Patience my love, I shall soon be with thee
One day the last thing of Guyana I will see
Is " Departing Cheddie B. Jagan International Airport Timehri"

Missing You
I miss you
Like I miss the beaming afternoon sun
Glowing on the mighty Essequibo
Like I miss the sound
Of black water gently slapping on mangrove roots
Like I miss twilight falling
On rusty brown beaches

These things put my soul at ease

I miss you like I miss coconut water
Dripping down my chin
And cane juice
Dripping down my arm
Sweet cane juice

Oh how I miss you

You are like cane juice to me
If only I could
Hear black water slapping
As the Essequibo glows
With you in my arms
I won't need cane juice to taste sweetness
Sweetness in my soul
Oh how I miss you

Moonlight Love
I stare into complete darkness
And see us so bright
The clouds take signal
They move on
Darkness slides

The soft moonlight hugs my soul
The way I dream of you hugging my body
I clutch back
My soul finds the warmth of your love
My hands pierce cold, thin air

This is sweet cruelty
Half of me knows your measureless love
The other half yearns
It needs to feel you

The moonlight seems to gravitate
Somewhere beyond the darkness
Love tells me it is you
That moonlight follows

If only I could see
How moonlight glows off of you again
Cold, thin air shall be a warm smothering breeze

Oh Beautiful Guyana
We can unite to play a cricket match
But as we country fallin' apart we just standin' by and watch
We does come together and mash like hell when is Mash
But we don't force we politicians fuh account for
every cent from scratch

We spend we whole pay check pon lotto
If that mean that we kids got to starve well then they got to
We talk 'bout how we proud ah we motto
But if we got to forget it to vote race then we got to

One People One Nation One Destiny
Can never be a reality
If we continue to have those selfish politicians lead we
Never, never will we live in real unity

Aids, suicide, the police and highway murderers obliterating we
But we don't care, we just goin' along merrily
We becomin' a nation full ah sheer deportee
A land of absolute poverty

We done already turn the Wild Wild West
A major trans-shipment point for guns cocaine and all the rest
You have money? Well then you can do as you please
But if you don't have the cheese
Then you gun have to feel the squeeze

This is the truth about we country, nuff nah want hear it
But I will talk and I will tell every bit of it
The politicians them does thief we the taxpayers money
But they will continue as long as we allow them to ride we

Is sheer nepotism and corruption in this country
I don't know what will become of we
Not a saviour in sight
Not even a flickering light
We done give up the fight
And day rapidly giving way to night

Racism
It was once silvery and new
But it has gradually transformed
Into an old corrugated roof of black mock
As the birds dropped on it
It became green
Then brown
Then gray
Now it is black mock

There is nothing there but black mock now
Remove the mock and you remove everything
There is no more silver
The black mock has absorbed it all

The rain tries to wash it away
But in vain of course
Unconsciously building the black mock as it flows
The sun with all its brilliance tries to pierce the black mock
But only hardens it

And as it rains again
The black mock slides into the gutters
And into the tanks
Into the taps
Then into cups
And into silvery and new corrugated sheets
As the birds drop on them
They will become...

Return to Soul
Send in the surgeons
Operate on my soul
A cancer festers
In that smut-clogged hole

Pump in breast milk purity
Replace this cursed malady
With naked sanctity
Rescue me, please rescue me

From this abysmal glow
Of hollow life
Beaming, sunny-faced strife
Imprisoned am I

In the nothingness of life's false values
Meaningless fortitudes
Success eludes
Into a river of mounted prized deluge

Renew my existence
Give worth to being
Value to smile
Essence to living

A Nation Torn
Conspiracy theories
Political trickeries
The root cause of this bordered catastrophe
Talk shows, letter columns
Poisoned tongues spitting clandestine explanations

Gutter mouth convoluted analysis
Stiffens the national paralysis
Hate, hate like stink watery diarrhea shit
Is what the verbosity amounts to
Useless, vengeful, bitter to an inevitable foe

Butchered are our mothers' wombs
Seal my brother, seal another tomb
Seal our nation's demise, its pending doom

El Dorado
once was she
Never found, lay her to rest peacefully

Carter's proposition: bring in the
Atlantic
Rebuild from the Pakarimas brick by brick
In our abandoned souls relight the wick
Burn the scabs from our eyes
Light fires in our bosoms like fireflies

Imran's proposition: march, burn, loot, grab as you get
Let us blood let
Reconcile, forgive and forget
Then our wounds should be allowed to heal
So we may search for El Dorado with renewed zeal

Imran Khan is a young Guyanese freelance writer with a deep interest in West Indies cricket and Regional Media and Politics
The poem "Moonlight Love" has been published by the International Library of Poetry based in the USA.