WINSTON FARRELL
PLEASE TEACHER
I
You believe God black sir?
God en got no colour right sir?
Two ah dem boys never went to church
God white you know sir
So wha colour Jesus is sir?
Just like us
Who say so?
You never hear ’bout Michael Angelo
Jesus brother sir and he white as snow
Sir sir Jesus was a spirit that walk de earth
He en got no colour
To some he brown
To others he white
One day he black
Next day he is a bright light
Sir sir which one you does pray to?
Selassie sir
Olodumare who is he sir?
II
Where can I find Egypt? The teacher asked
A hand restlessly high in the air shouts heaven
The Bible sir, another voice from the back corner
The classroom of vibes and dice
Laughter bursting through ignorance
Quiet! The teacher bellows
Please, it’s becoming a marketplace
Silence! The teacher bawls
It’s a nightmare
Nobody is learning if
Nobody is listening
III
Sir sir I bored sir
Sir can I go to de bathroom sir?
Please sir look at that boy
Sleeping on de desk sir
Man my head hurting man
I beg your pardon
Don’t beg me for nothing sir
You wait till I reach eighteen
To tell me that my God black
That Egypt not in heaven
And Africa is where I come from
Wha is that sir?
My Granny never teach me dat
I never heard dat in Sunday school
We never learn dat in church
IV
Sheltered like little sheeple
These boys confront the truth
In the Black History class
Toppling over desk and chair
One boy rages through the door
Running from his story, laughter trailing
We can’t afford to lose another one
The teacher quips like the good Shepherd
Find me Egypt on that map before I venture back
With my rod and staff in my hand
Young man! The teacher calls out
Sir! Sir! A chorus of boys in the class
Leh de foolish guh long
Like lamb to be slaughtered sir
Sir?
THIRD-WORLD POEM
At first glance the globe seems top heavy with its
Skyscraping towers and tycoons
Bankrolling trillions in a G-spot
Of influence and transnational dominance
North sits stoutly on the south reigning
Trickle-down crumbs and crooked foreplay conditions
They fart on us with pleasure and disdain
Sometimes there are no farts at all just a shifting
Of the goal post screwed over our own reserves
Downgraded to exotic squatters blacklisted
As invisible as the dung they pass down
In goods and good
The gods of war and right
Sucking the minerals out of our green light
Breaking us down to build us up backwards
Insuring our deaths to gross domestic products
And we the people down south stamped poor borders
Head facing eastward hands stretched out to the west
Labeled third world and unable to balance
The scale of our structural adjustments
No refuge from regulatory tyrants
Those who rob the elephants of their tusks
The virgin soil raped of rights and devalued growth
Sargassum seaweed stench up to our door front
Devoured by hurricanes the oceans rise warm
Looking again citizens see, saw the cruise ships’ sail
Where north never meets south like east meets west
On second glance down south
We sacrifice our homes for the tourists
Nesting on their dollars like sea turtles
On the edge of high tide
We are the gold and silver joy
The birth of the first waters cradled out
Of diamond wombs and veins of sweet crude oil
We house the lungs the living jungle
The heart and soul, the hands that hold this living globe up
A GAZE AT GAZA
I gaze
from my gallery
in Paradise
the young men
laze
with their gadgets
pose and posting
in Paradise
so distant the news
in Gaza
those young men
can only be
young men
in Gaza
What will their gadgets be
cellphones
rock-stones
tablets
bullets?
In my Paradise
young men
sell their word-sound
for firearms
graduate
towards the big guns
in my Paradise
Young men
romanticize
a new terror on the streets
name their own turf
after militarized struggles
blood and resistance
In Gaza
in Lebanon
in Beirut
the Red Sea
they see no peace in the Middle East
the West simply not the best
peacekeepers
negotiators of the right
What’s the worth?
soon another Paradise lost
Today it’s Gaza
tomorrow
Venezuela?
Guyana?
Trinidad?
Jamaica?
Haiti?
My Paradise?
Winston Farrell (Theatre and Development Studies (Leeds) is a theatre arts practitioner and published poet from Barbados. He enjoys reading and performing his work on and off the page. He engages his audience with the power and the rhythm in the word. He is a winner of the Frank Collymore Literary Endowment Prize, the Governor General’s Award for poetry 2015 and the 2020 and 2023 Gine on Peoples’ Choice Poet of the Year.
