A coup called covid

THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY

BC PIRES

A small tribute, in rhyme, to those who perished in 1990, in the forlorn hope we may have learned a lesson. We have not.

THIRTY YEARS plus one/ (lagniappe – or in the chamber?)/ Have we learned one thing at all/ from five days of blood & siege & danger / As a country, as a nation, as a group of firetrucking jokers/ Who say that wicked Hosay day changed a thing with power-brokers/

Thirty years (plus one, we doesn’t bother to remember)/ July 27 cyar hold an ember to 19th of November/ Opportunists seeking Michael-waves brought the people out (to loot)/ Fanned the flames to sack Queen Street and burn it down to boot/

And if you think it ent have Trini equality in troot/ Verily I say unto you/ You shall know them by their fruit/ Hi-Lo’s doors were broken down by white boys from Cascade/ Massy Days swiftly undone just like the underpaid/ And the churches, how they prayed/

(And the temples/ and the mosques/ and roadside pastors, too besides/ Sucking blood at ten per cent/ of the earnings of vampire brides)/ But 30 years (plus one) have passed to our shame/ And hardly that total amount/ Of people bowed heads at the eternal flame/

Looking back again, what was the firetrucking point?/ Burnin’, Catch a Fire, but no Confrontation, look now, just roll another joint/ If we can’t make it out of here with just a little push/ We will get by somehow (ie, with a gramme or two of cush)/

Rewind, press pause, advance, hold on, freeze-frame/ Mecca’d illusions revealed as just one more Trini game/ Play yourself, jump up and wine down low/ Now is Uzi diplomacy & SLR love that Trini know/

The only things we liberate through we Trini-style jihad/ Was murder, crime & home invasion good too bad/ The only thing the "Good Imam" spawned from his tenacity/ Is one criminal gang called “Muslims,” and a next one, “Rasta City”/

What did we gain from our week of bullet-backed invective?/ Nothing at all, it seems to me, except Freetown Collective/ Lou Lyons & the Mu (offspring of an upriser)/ To me (admittedly a fan), it’s really no surpriser/
that the son’s pop songs could greater change mindsets and attitudes/ than the dad’s million WWII bullets and pious platitudes/

What is it about ourselves as Trinidadians/ that make us fete-til-you-drop defenders and its guardians / What value do we place on ourselves and one another/ when, to date, we have not troubled ourselves to bother/ to count the dead/ and name them, too/ (Look, BC, don’t make me tell you ‘bout yuh mother)/

Raoul Pantin, poet, playwright, newspaper man and hero/ lined up for execution five times/ Lived on at less than zero/ In fragile hands and head he carried for long years/ For us, the cumulative effect of the 1990 tears/

You want to know what living here/ and dying really means? George Francis: driver; SRP George; MP Leo Des Vignes/ An eternal flame burns, yes/ for vagrants to roast pigeons/ 1990 corpses move/ from smudges to mere smidgeons

Lorraine Caballero/ is just one dead assistant clerk/ No horseman comes to rescue her/ No lantern in the dark/ SRP Solomon McLeod/ Malcolm Basanta in his league/ Arthur Guiseppi, totally shrouded/ broadcaster Mervyn Teague

What to do with people killed? What medal or what plaque/ Could ever take away the pain/ or bring dead people back?/ 30 years (plus one) and what really can it mean/ That we haven’t even learned to take a life-saving vaccine?/ Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it/ The first time as tragedy/ the next as mere horse-excrement/

Real virus, fake coup, a boo slacker, Dr Fauci/ Firetruck science, believe the Facebook page of your bhowgie/ 30 years (plus one) of a very Trini coup/ Where “make as eef” is the onliest thing/ Could beat back “wha’ you go do?”/

Only Trini would burn down his house/ To warm up KFC/ Only Trini would pay for thing/ When he could get it free/ Whether he denying virus or assisting coup d’etat/ It have nothing more dangerous/ Than a Trini dunce who feel he smart/

30 years (plus one) and ignorance is still king/ A generation of dotish bobolee and thing/ We never will have a thing we could call “our finest hour”/ But at least we should recognise when water more than flour/ If you want to raise yourself above the true obscene/ Hush your RNA/DNA mother-a-- And take the damned vaccine.

BC Pires is a poet and he didn’t even know it but he couldn’t help but show it and if you have a beat now throw it or send an e-mail (no letter-bomb) to him at bc@BCPires.com.

The verses with the names of the deceased appeared in a completely different rhyme 20 years ago.