I don't look Haitian?
By Prosper "Makendal" Sylvain, Jr. of the Maroons

You approached me with a smile on your lips
and slapped me five, gave me jive
and a pound of your ignorance
by telling me that I don't look Haitian.

You shook my hands to welcome me,
and then shook my soul with your audacity,
stating that I don't sound Haitian.

You asked me if I was sure I was from Haiti
when you are not sure where you are from
and you carry this mentality
to the doorsteps of your white houses
and your media coverage
showing me impoverished
barefoot and hungry
seeking food and water in the slums,
you show the negative of my voodoo drums
in a light of despair.

I don't look or sound Haitian?

Why?

Is it because I do not have the seawater of Biscayne Bay
dripping from my tattered clothes,
or is it because I am not as dark as you perceived me to be,
did I mess up your entire theory of relativity,
to hell with Einstein, you need to press rewind
so you can see that all relatives of Haitians are not hungry, dark and
comely, like the tents of your media's Kadar.

I don't look Haitian you say?

Is it because you did not catch me with a bucket on my head
working in some factory with an accent on my tongue until I'm 40,50,60
dead tired, no I think your notion of me should have expired a loooooong
time ago.

I apologize if there is more to me than voodoo dolls,
and I apologize if there is more to my country than slums, poverty and
hunger, and I apologize if my poetry makes you wonder
if I am really Haitian, product of years of miscegenation.

I apologize if your idea and concept of me
is not what I have proven to be,
100% dark skinned, accent on my tongue,
with an apprehension to stand straight or look you in the eye, no fear
of being hung.

I'm sorry if you thought you'd find me in some sugar cane field,
I know how many of your own people must feel,
catching me with a pen and a college degree in my hand instead of a
machete, turning your lies and stereotypes into silly confetti, you see,
I AM Haitian, doctor, lawyer, teacher, accountant, nurse, and engineer,
my goodness, I think we have instilled an absolute fear deep within your
socio-political pseudo-humanitarian heart, because we have evolved from
your views of primitive art because we were the ones to draw the freedom
chart, is this why you want to keep us apart?

Because we don't look like what you expected us to be?
Or are you still upset because we declared we were free after riding the
freedom train to it's 1,804th last stop, upset still because we made the
world's mouth drop?

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!
Haitians have declared themselves free.

Napoleon and Leclerc embarrassed internationally!
Haiti becomes the original Statue of Liberty!
Denmark Vesey inspired by Ayiti!
Gabriel Prosser inspired by Ayiti even he used August as the month for
his rebellious activity!

Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

We held truths to be self evident before the first shackle, built an
above ground railroad way before Harriet went Underground spoke to
American pharaohs like Moses to let our people go, stood side by side|
with Arawaks and Tainos yes, we invoked our Petros AND Shangos, spoke
with the same tongue as Patrick did, give ME liberty or give me death
and before your 13 colonies we built our capital of freedom on 15 hills
of wealth and called it Port of Princes.

I don't look Haitian (sarcastically)
and you don't look American,
you don't look like the indigenous Indian
but you do look like an international comedian
because you've got jokes and jokers in your white house
and punch lines filled with coke lines in your congress
political white lies that are blasphemous
stand up comedy in your judiciary that needs to understand that they
need to stand and step down
running your house like a circus with father and son clowns.

My country is a country of rainbows,
mixtures of Arabs, Africans, French and Italianos
side by side with Polish and Jewish
and we all have a fetish
to always be known as Haitian
and not your amalgamation and misrepresentation.

I don't look Haitian (sarcastically)
with my multi-lingual self, English, Yiddish, Kreyol, French and Spanish
filled with powerful history I look so Haitian that you fear me.

Vespuccian sons and daughters,

CAN YOU HEAR ME???!!

Look past my face into my heart and you WILL see,
My only nationality IS defined in three letters.

I E T! (Ay-I-ti)

Haiti the Rebel
By Michel Sanon

Who is to tell me when
To celebrate my history?
Who is to tell me
When to dress my wounds
And to reminisce
My trials, my sorrow
When to shed tears
Over my brave children
And to glorify their names?
They suffered and died
Every bloody month
Of the bloody year.
I was born
Of abject inhumanity
With the noble destiny
Of carrying the sword
Of precious humanity
In a New World
Cursed by the West Storm
And raped by the powers
Of greed, wickedness, and death.
I am the mother of martyrs
Of survivors and overcomers.
Alone, I faced the wrath
Of this worldí's powers
In March of 1802.
Their mighty venom
Could not cripple me.
I stepped on the snakeís head
In May of 1803
And created for ever
The symbol of my pride.
How many now really know
My history?
How many care?
Alone, with my hurting hands
I broke the first link
Of the mighty chain
Of human curse
Called slavery.
Alone on the traitorous hill
Of the New World
I carried the cross of a race
Into this century
Of furious revolution
And industrialization
Refusing to get crucified.
Ií've been chained
Ií've been robbed
Ií've been raped and stabbed
And I have fought back
Fearlessly, continuously.
Alone I have paid and paid.
I have paid the senseless price
I have paid the endless price
For my vital exploits.
Humanity at large
Enjoys the benefits
Gratelessly, pompously.
Every bloody month
Of every bloody year
I have fought constantly
With a burning spear
Stuck in my chest.
Sometimes it weakens me
But I always rise
High above the pain
And the wickedness
Of powerful forces
From near and far
To claim my dignity.
I have friends
Who suck up my blood
When tired I fall asleep.
They set my house ablaze
To scare my children away
From my wounded heart.
Though today I choose to stand
And stand in pride and love
With my dear family
To celebrate in harmony
Our common history
In the month of February
I was alone when in Vertières
I rose to face the Devil
When hell broke loose
Unleashing its fire storm
With waves of flame rushing
To engulf me whole...
Alone in the vast universe
I froze hell over
And walked on its ashes
To create my own history.
Nobody stood by my side.
I alone remember.
It was the eighteenth day
Of a month called
November.

Lasous O M Pwale
Going Back to Root
English Translation by Ezili Danto

Danbala Wedo
I 'm returning to the beginning
Ayida Wedo
I'm returning to the beginning
On the way ( I haven't arrived there yet)
I've metamorphed into a tiny fish in water (been reborn, disappeared like a
tiny embryo in water.)
How can they see me, I ask?
Hear me o Do, I haven't arrived there
I haven't arrived there, o Do, o Do
Before I go
O Do, I salute the flag
I salute the flag before I go
Now, I'm there.

It's midnight. She's driving home with her three year old son. A car knocks her vehicle blindside and does not stop.
A tree trunk stands between her car and the lake.
She lays on the side of the road screaming: 'Help me! Please, somebody help me!'
Two Haitian men stop.
A woman dials 999 on a mobile phone.
The lake waves lap.
Her mind stills.
An ambulance man puts a collar around her neck. He says: 'wriggle your toes.'
Her son is crying.
Her toes wriggle.
A tow-truck pries the accident vehicle away from a tree.
The ambulance drives off.
She moans: 'Please don't go too fast. I can feel everything.'
A paramedic listens.
An high-school friend doctors her in the Emergency Room.
The pastor gets out of bed and prays.
The godmother stares at the X-rays.
A paediatrician gives her son the all-clear.
A nurse hangs another morphine drip.
Someone in England sends Reiki healing.
A son kneels with praying hands: 'Please make my mummy better. Please make my mummy better. Please make my mummy better.'
The surgeons operate.
She is the awareness in, and by which the entire experience and content of her life flower unfolds.
Her life is a flower of the One Life that takes temporary form to experience the physical form of a person, or an ocean, or a tree.
She cannot possess or lose life.
She doesn't have life. She is life.

Dr Desirée C. T. Cox is the first Rhodes Scholar of The Bahamas, and the first woman to receive a British Caribbean Rhodes Scholarship. She is a former student of Queens College, in Nassau, Bahamas. Dr Cox received a BSc (Hons) from McGill University (Montreal, Canada) in Chemistry before going on to qualify as a medical doctor at the University of Oxford. Dr Cox then went on to the University of Cambridge where she received her Master of Philosophy and PhD in History. She is also a Jazz singer and a writer. The author welcomes comments from readers. She may be contacted at: dctcox@hotmail.com or telephone: 242-328-1728/9

The way they were forced to live,
to die,
tear us alive.

Like so many before them, battered hope floated high
against ending in a watery grave
when they saw land.
Then, stomach-knotting-searing-agony swooped down. Just like the 101 Haitians
the week before
who had landed in Miami,
the most hated humans in the Hemisphere met hate.
From the imperial Euro/U.S. colonies,
still surrounding them,
containing them.
Still,
after 500 years.
Still,
unlike Haiti,
bowing to imperial kings, queens, and the
white settlers' authorities.
This time the British colony, Turks and Cacos Islands, was the patrol boat that
rammed them,
towed them away from any sanctuary
into deeper waters.

All aboard
crippled at birth for being of and from the first slave and colonial lands and
peoples to fight and win in-combat against the greatest superpowers on earth,
throwing off the yoke of European enslavement, colonialism and white cultural
domination;

All aboard thus
exulted at birth, are scorned by the feudal lords, administering neighboring
Caribbean/Latin American client-countries for the imperial powers.

All aboard
maligned by would-be allies so mentally colonized
they don't even dream of throwing off the yoke of Euro/US financial
colonialism, (neoliberalism) to own the lands, patrimony and natural resources
where they live and labor.

All aboard
singularly subjected
to over two centuries of unlimited European/US indignities, cruelties that
neighboring imperialist client-countries inflict at will and with impunity.
But still strong enough to endure without hate,
hope and faith crowded on that overloaded Haitian boat that was
coldly,
criminally towed,
capsized
and
abandoned to the sea and sharks.

No remorse.
No mortification.
No distress.
Selfish to the bone.

Asylum, justice, sanctuary eternally denied their kind.

Now,
they suffer no more.

They left
that part to us.

To consume us now,
to tear us to pieces now
as Western sharks did them.

They're hope gone, pain gone, suffering gone.
All those parts -
left to us now.

(c) May, 2007 - Ezili Dantò

Poem by New York based Jamaican, Melonie Hall.

So Much more!
A Tribute to all Service Workers
I now realize the greatness in me.
I am so much more,
so much more than
what your eyes see,
Today I find myself
in a position of servitude,
but I am so much more
than that. I have
dreams and aspirations,
you would not believe,
with my tenacity, I know one day that
I am bound to succeed. I am
so much more than what
you perceive. In pursuit of the
American Dream, I found me.
I anticipate success,that awaits.

Peace and Blessing to all. Please let this be an inspiration to anyone who circumstances may have forced you to detour from your dream. 'What you do for a living does not defines who you are. Nanny, House Keeper, Maid, Au-Pair. You are an integral part of the American culture, I hope one day the Domestic Industry will be given the long over due respect. One Love!