There is blue skin in a tin,

painted a la mien, like fire drumming,

like ten tons of blue devil crying, Ah!

Think melanin.

Think, that they pigment was blue.

They was man before.

Then bleeding out from the hills,

in this rusted paramin color, negro birthed;

in the towers of a chant, was a church for the misused.

And this too was a human being.

Crowns of flambeaux weathered a pious road.

“Kiss a flambeau, tell the dead where you bury them,

break a bottle, start a spark on the pitch, mortar, pestle.”

Once for freedom, how the yoke was twice dignified

and men culled the death of freedom with they smiles.

Tell the people justice and they satisfied.

Look a Jab feller dead with kaiso in he breath.

Not one of them fellers could stop morning congregation;

obeah, pulsing, jumbie body tempered for heat like this.

And if you look out you window it have a calling for you too.

You see,

for hands, dancing la dame Kalinda, extended from a blue mass,

crimson tongues beating santimanitay, la voix, kaiso and jab hymns

on the rusty drum of they chest. Guised as beggar,

Dawn sat where the war was fought.

There was a Jab killing in Paramin.

No one took notice.

Of course.

Kwasi Shade is an Auteur Sociologist interested in representing the true myriad of Caribbean dichotomies in their stories and testing the parameters of Creole dialect vernacular. They are interested in communicating the Carnival Aesthetic.

Their poetry, short stories and drawings have appeared in Pree Lit, Moko Magazine, Enby Magazine, Tamarind, Pinkwashed zine, Prismatica, and Culturego Magazine.

They were a 2010 Trinidad and Tobago film festival Ident award recipient. In their spare time they sell pelau crackers, mango chips and RumChow. They are also known as 'A Rainy Weather' the Jab Griot, a carnival character who sings House Rapso and New Wave Kaiso.