Poems

Music

Horns are blowing,

Drums are rolling,

Strings are strumming,

Voices are humming;

The stage has been set;

Appetites are whet;

The speakers are clean,

And the bass is mean;

There is a mystic about music,

the way in which we can use it

transforming frowns to smiles,

with its rhythms interlaced

with a range of vocal style,

organized so neatly

like a Rolodex file

It can be used in the changing

Or the rearranging of lives,

Making you feel quite different

through the eclectic vibe;

it’s an energy that’s real

more than ever,

with a collage of brilliant minds

coming together under one umbrella, with women and fellows;

Music, it represents the inner truth inside

and not the outer lie

It can melt away pain

Or discard your hurtful shame

Or create a new home

For those who live in a house but feel all alone;

Music can bring a grin to those who moan,

pull out people trapped

underneath a pile of stones;

It gives a place to be heard

Lets you speak,

even without words

It brings out the best

Giving hope to many who

are tired of being depressed;

Music doesn’t choose

a special class

or turns up its nose;

With music, you’ll feel a magical kind of flow

and see that it’s ever real

helping you to express the authentic self and heal;

Bettering the state of your

physical and mental health;

For some, music represents

a space for what has been felt

For others, it’s a dancing array of colours that show,

they see it in their minds

similar to an aurora-like glow;

When music runs through your entire being,

whether you’re seasoned,

fresh or green,

There is a positive difference

that you would not be able to deny;

because when music hits you,

it hits you deep inside,

causing a great realization and understanding to coincide;

that music can provide

a mental elixir that transmutes our energy inside;

So famous, beyond the sun that shines,

it’s been noted too as Heaven’s past time;

It’s very hard for one

to deny,

just how much value,

music has in our lives.

– Angela Yap Chung

Salt and shake

The sounds from my great grandmother’s kitchen:

the crash and clang of pots, her children all too grown

to be watched by the others, too grown to still be all squashed

in her kitchen, huddled over the stove, waiting for boiling pots.

Their children are outside with the coal stove, and bitter words

dropping in time to the dull knife beating on the cut board.

All this family beef, like, who only brings wine, or

who only makes vegetables for the holidays;

or is always in pain or too sick to help in the kitchen

and still the brother trying hard to make it all fit in the pot.

The sound and struggle wafts upstairs to their children—

a too young generation to even think of cooking,

too caught up with playing, to wonder if one day they’ll be

fighting instead, wrapped up in the Christmas country air

complaining at dinner that the food is too fresh

but my great grandmother says

child, things like this are nut’n likkle salt cyaa fix.

Jayda Pitter

Second year student

The University of the West Indies, Mona