Callaloo and coup-coup

THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY

BC PIRES

THIRTY-TWO years pass now since the Old Abu uprise/and every year, July 27 is still a shock but no surprise/Babies newborn when Muslimeen first shoot up the place/Watching the mirror now, seeing lines in they face/A new generation grow up “after de coup”/but we ent find someone yet who could tell we what to do/What law to pass, what guideline to enshrine/To make sure we never again hear bullets whine.

Is not to say we ent fling money all over the firetrucking place/Is pelt we pelt cash, uno, dos it vanish without a trace/Like hospital, school system, bus route, even Piarco/No government ever change procurement to see where the cash go/This is how we does do it and always has done it here-oh/If a actor man have to act we, it ha’ to be Robert Dinero/(Although, if we’s a Robert, we’s a Roberto Duran/Excepting we cyar say, “No mas” in this here island).

Commission of enquiry come like DEWD for PNM lawyer/Million-duller brief sharing in a season of guava/And the onliest thing that come out of all that bother/Was a small-fry book from a big-time mermaid author/How much money spend, how many files and statements read/And nobody still could say up to now how many people did dead/What it is about this place we call we own country/That we put up quiet-quiet with that much of pure effrontery.

The first five years, the anniversary wasn’t even observed/Three-four people no one noticed, excepting one-two vagrant roasting bird/We put een eternal flame to make sure we would never forget/Whereby the Woodford Square homeless does use to dry clothes when they wet.

My Lords, I will be honest, My Ladies, it’s the truth/I will not misspend old age same way I misspent youth/Thirty-two years, yes, 32, and every year it gets harder/To see the point, the firetrucking point, of this here Trinidad-er/And Tobago, too besides, you had your role to play/ Tobago you were our anchor but you let us get a weigh/Now we’re drifting, always drifting, deeper into misery/How can we be both marooned and simultaneously lost at sea?

Bossman, Madam, Mistress, Doctor, give me something I could hold/I don’t take basket to carry water, hot or cold/Give me a inch, I’ll clean the yard, I’ll tie all them goat without no rope/But Comrade, Citizen, Soldier I cannot make without a hope/If there’s a chance, however thin, for this place we call our own/Then I will band belly and replace nose to grindstone/Sisyphus rolling boulder up the hill still, and ent have nothing else to do/But, like my son did point out, every day, man, what a view!

It have tasks much more harder than the one Sisyphus did do/ANR Robinson did get one and, when his time came, did it true/What it is about this country, whereby for which Old Ray would die/that would see plain heroism and not celebrate it, but deny?

Raoul Pantin, poet, playwright, newspaperman 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.

Loraine 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.

They didn’t die for us but they died here to our shame/Forget the anniversary, if you must, but recall each and every name/The other deaths may not be countless/But should be counted all the same/Not everyone who died was blameless/But it’s we who take the blame/ For everyone who was not called/But mano-mano or friken-friken still came.

BC Pires is into written word. Read the full version of this column on Saturday at www.BCPires.com.

The verses with the names of the deceased appeared in a completely different rhyme 21 years ago and again last year.