Till “I’m Laid To Rest

She arrived in Miami on a summer night that was lit and sparkling like a Christmas tree. She wore her baby pink dress. Mark was there to meet her, his belly bulging under a loose-fitting polo shirt, his hairy

legs bold and strong, jutting out from a pair of white shorts that was almost tight. He chucked her luggage into a large shiny car without the slightest complaint.

“How the flight? All right?”

He slammed the doors, wound the windows down and eased the car into the traffic.

“OK, I guess,” she said.

“Feel just like Jamaica. Hot same way.” He piloted the car adroitly amidst a maze of underpasses and meandering highways.

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Wake Rasta

The Rapscallion and the Sea

Now my cabin was below deck level so I had to climb one flight of stairs to get to the level of the main deck. When I get there, the first thing that come to me was to go outside and check things.

So I start open the door to the outside and the ship slam down again as the door open a crack and water begin spray through the door. Is then I realize that things was really rough. So I climb two more flights and go to the third level of the superstructure and open the door to the outside. Now I was two levels above the maim deck and in the shelter of the superstructure. But that did not stop water from spraying me. As soon as I poke my head out, I soaked.

The water never had much force at that level though, just spray, spray from wave or rain I could not tell, but spray any way; spray and wind every where and the sea stand up like man before me. When me say stan' up like man me not joking. It stand up like a ugly sensible being; vex, vex, vex.

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Such AS I Have

She fell silent again - funny kind a silent. He had a good mind what kinda silent it was. She wore jeans. Her legs stretched out in front of her along the side of the smooth stone ledge to rest in the grass. There was surrender in that look. He could tell. Or, if not surrender, there was a certain expectation.

Her eyes seemed to cloud and she watched him closely stared boldly at him. He knew she was watching for his next move, and he was sure, that here and now, in this her private place, there would be little resistance.

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For Nothing At All

I walked slowly down the hill. The gunman behind me was not the boy who was my friend or a man I could ever know. But in a strange way it was as if I was retracing my life for a final time. The half of a moon had slipped way over Kingston.

Off to my left and up the hill was White Marl School where Mrs Campbell would stand like a sentinel, and the white unpaved road of marl stretched up to it like a silver path up to the sky.

And the dust that stung my legs was the same dust in which I played chevy chase and marbles with my friends. And the corner I passed was the same place I dusted Red Head in Mr Allen’s yard that day when we all sculled school together.