Howling Gloom
By Michael H. Kew
stop car
<my friend, you want to smoke something?
no
<my friend, how are you? where you stay? where you go?
hops in
<we go for a drive?
yes
<my friend, is very hard for me to make a money
<sell a little bit of compost but we struggling
<my friend, this why I want to talk
<saw you were alone
<maybe want somebody to talk to
<maybe we help each other
arrive at my hotel
<my friend, can you help me?
<buy something to eat?
<I don’t steal, you see
<I can talk about these things
<I don’t rob
<can just ask you instead of being thief
from pocket I fish a wrinkled 100-rupee (=US$7) note
dubious link twixt two worlds
<my friend, you can give me 200 rupees?
another wrinkled 100-note
<my friend—
Photos: Kew.
tradewind duality of trashed surf and cooled brow
on blinding white beer beach appears a genteel Creole
silver mustache grin
lacking leg—limps with cane
points to blue boat out a-bob in chop
says he charters through luxury resort
says business is now bad
says Arabs are to blame
says Seychelles is now run by <rich white-robed desert dwellers
their island playground
this man says:
<when it was called Plantation Club, we Seychellois had job. now? no job
<we brought our clients to that beach to barbecue the fresh catch
<but now, since it is Arabs, they try to prevent anybody else from going on the beach
<all resorts the same. Banyan Tree? Arab. Four Seasons? Arab. at Maia right now? full of Arab
<the Arabs want to buy everything here
<they bring their own staff on private jets
<only the resorts get the money
<our young Seychellois will stop this in the future—
<foreigners buying everything
<you should tell all the people in America about this
<please tell the big world Seychelles islands is being ruined
say nothing
symphony of sleeping death
quite alone as later we are all meant to be
I step outside and bleed from this rain
oozingly dripstickily
watch holy clouds cry
suck from the green sweat of body
borne of droopy black sky
dance in the howling gloom
silhouetted with yesterday’s freedom
shadow of mortality
sitting and gazing
high swells flexed,
surfed with torqueing blues
mashed into palmy gray capes and secret coves
granitic bust of paradise
yonder is
not Eden today
not never
Eden is alone,
an exoplanet
cradling corpse of an island mind
