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DREAM WITCH

“What you dream last night?" she asks.

Then cackles as you tell.

Two dollars a night at Dolly's house.

Beats any cheap hotel.

 

"Ooooo, dat’s ten dem, six and fotty-two."

Dolly makes your dream life pay.

Scrawny dream-divining witch

Wins at numbers almost every day.

 

That’s her new house by the shanty there --

Empty, she prefers the old.

Washing dainties for her girls

At the Club Maracaibo.

 

Sixteen-year-old pregnant niece

Sitting sphinx-like over dinner.

Dear Dolly be my Valentine.

God Love me for a sinner.

 

Had her a Honduran gent-man once

But she shot him to get free.

“Did not try to kill him though,

only wing him in de knee."

 

Dolly's ancient, eighty-some.

Black as coal and looks the part.

Tell her what she wants to know.

Dolly knows your dreams by heart.

 

 

 

 

 

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PALM TODDY

Kapier hopped frog-like

Up the scaly trunk

Tracing a parabolic arc

Into the fronds above.

 

Here, above the tumult

Of the villages below

He kept his assignation

With the budding nuts.

 

Tapping the tiny orbs

For nectar tears

That dripped

Into a coconut shell cup.

 

Decanted in a soy bott1e

Fermented and transformed

This disarming dew

Kept Kapier a happy man.

 

Until the day he dropped

O'erripe

Onto the beach below

And climbed no more.

METEOR SHOWER

These Perseid nights this perch upon the cistern tower is my bed

Galactic shots come sizzling in from space

Trace laser beams on retinas and erase themselves

Overhead Aquila’s eye is bright

As Cygnus makes a swan dive down the night.

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HAITIAN MANFRED

Haitian Manfred 

Backbone straight

Plays Segovia til it gets late

 

Kerosene light 

Through shanty cracks

Culture’s one thing

This jungle lacks

 

Eggs on the table

Chicks are cheeping

Judy’s in bed

She’d rather be sleeping

 

Have a drink

Smoke some cream

Haitian Manfred’s

Jungle dream.

H.H. Howze

All Poems, H.H. Howze © 2017

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