And

There is so much to be said
sounds without words
cries without tears.
Hot dogs with onions somehow remind me of someone with a serious body odor.
I am dipping into the pockets of my brain as to why this similarity should occur.
And my thoughts are suddenly displaced by this man on the maxi, who reaches across me to hail a woman on the pavement.
This morning my neighbor, as she always does is shouting frigg you/ frigg you/ frigg you, welcoming her childrenÕs arrival from night death, to a new morning that resembles the one before.
And the friggs and fucks and mother cunts in addition to the smell of some indistinguishable food fills my house at 7 am.
And I wonder if her cooking tastes like her words, and if she licks fingers with the abuse of succulent vowels.
But that was two hours ago, I am now on George Street, smelling the vagrants in time to dodge them.
And I wonder what Carifesta smells like, now that it is over.
I wonder if it smells like money in pockets not mine, you could turn mine inside out without disturbing the silence of souls.
Or maybe it smells like smiles not mine I wearing mine upside down.
Huh another doubles for lunch, and saliva to swallow, cause during the day coconut vendors resign under duress.
Don’t they know that in an attempt to beautify Port of Spain, they are making it less Port of Spain, having to wait till night to ease midday doubles pepper.
There is so much to be said
sounds without words
cries without tears.
And some fools still expect to see happy faces in the (expletive) beautified capital.
While the number of street children increase, and a large percent surviving on bare necessities.
There is so much to be said
sounds without word
cries without tears.
And being a poet, I am prone to observations, to reality.
It is my unpaid job to transmit the joy of a man who flying out, thinking that the grass greener in foreign.
It is my unpaid job to make you count the wrinkles in the old woman up the street.

Paula Obé Thomas