OIL OF REGRESS

Put down your hoes

Put down your cutlasses

And dig deep

Put away your cocoa 

and coffee

Forget your sugarcane

and rice

And dig deep

Until your palms

 are greasy

And the fulcrum

 of economy suffers from

 dependency

Dig deep

Call  the neo-colonist

With tax concessions

To join the gang

 of riggers

For this

Multinational’s treat

Pay Leasers and farm 

outages

for high quality 

water concoctions

Prices that are

Steep,steep

Let local small boats 

with double tanks

and no catch

sell it down the islands

cheap,cheap,

Until your palms

are greasy

And the panorama

of T&T suffers from

dependency

Dig deep

Dig out the eye

of progress

Dig out the eye

 of redress

and enjoy 

this oil of regress

The only losers here 

Are we

Copyright©2017 by Camille Caliscia Patrick

When Oil Spills Over;When Gas Ignites

WILD FIRES

The flames roar

the smoke  soars

And wild fires 

Paint the skies of St Joseph

Black

Babies choke in Shanti Town

As admin records singe

And no amount of water 

Oh Wa sa! Oh! 

Can wash away the dinged

walls of secrecy

Like no amount of 

commonsense

can cover the nonsense

of agreements

To tote pitch off to China

for a few cents

with liberty

Wild fires run amok today

And  no amount of water 

Can put this shame away

Nor exorcise the ghost 

which received pensions

On dead people name

Oh! Wa Sa Oh!

Let government files flame

To burn social development.

And burn the salaries of the incompetent

And burn the contracts of the recalcitrant

And burn the comforts of the patients

And burn the whole of Hope Gate  of students

And burn the remnants 

Of shortsighted  Public servants

Memories of past booms 

Choking sensations of present dooms

In St Joseph’s skies

Oh Wa Sa Oh!

Wild fires rise 

to burn ,to burn, to burn…

Burn!

Oil money

Burn!

Copyright©2017 by Camille Caliscia Patrick

When Oil Spills Over;When Gas Ignites

OVERARCHING VISCOSITY

The sun rises to awake the morning

with a joyous heat which warms the ocean

And pelicans refuse  to touch waters 

which no longer reflect their skillful  catch

An overarching viscosity

fumes with toxins 

at the  Gulf of Paria  

Where stomachs ache over  disunity

as black shadows of crude 

 hover the tearful worries of hunger 

when Caribbean fish rest

in floating shoals of oil batter

And angry fisherfolk chatter 

Of crude restraints

 on propellers of futile lip syncs

 of State Entities 

And careless acts of humanity 

Now at the foreshore

of this Waterfront

Where greasy palms intertwined

To seal pacts of silence

with ghost gangs of workers

subsidy gags
bid rigs

and  Petro - dollars

So when Trinis cry this century

from  toxins 

which burn their eyes

and upset their stomachs

and empty their pockets

and deploy their economy-

to wanton diversity

They will cry in anger

as they cry in sadness,

over past  bliss 

now masked

by fluid regrets

of Oil Spillage

                                        

Copyright©2017 by Camille Caliscia Patrick

When Oil Spills Over;When Gas Ignites