Badman Dub

Badman forward,

Badman dread.

Badman rising,

Bad man red.

Badman watching

Badman turf.

Badman don’t front,

Badman splurge.

Badman chroming

Badman ride.

Badman blinging

Platinum smile.

Badman sexing

Badass bitch

She can’t slip up

Else badman licks.

Badman crossing

Badder man gruff.

Badder man calling

Badman bluff.

Badman swell up,

Screw up, grill.

Badder man packing

badder thing still.

Bo-dow was the last thing

Badman hear,

Death was the last thing

Badman fear.

Badman pull-up

Stumble then drop.

Dead-man bleeding

Block get hot.

Baby mudder bawlin,

Sister in shock,

Mother there praying

brethren shut up.

So now badder man forward

Badder man dread

Badder man rising

Badder man red.

©2010 Debra Providence

Note: First attempt at dub poetry in the spirit of Linton Kwesi Johnson. Inspired by the recent death of a ‘real’ bad man.

Un-Haiku 5

1. For Shake Keane

Exercise your

Potential in the land of sweet fools

With Nonsense talk.

2. 21st Century Proverb

The stone the builder

refused will be the missile

that breaks his glass house.

3. After reading Foucault…

Poo on the telly

breeds diet-doctored neuroses

in Anal Britain.

4. After watching Solar Storm on Five

Blue, green, purple,

Dancing lights of an aurora sky,

Angel of Death.

5. Authorship Anxiety

Heavy tongue made

heavier still by vibrant mind,

stayed by fragile heart.

©2010 Debra Providence

Anatomy

So much depends on

fat backsides

squeezed blue into

low rider jeans

Laced through with

rhine-studded belts.

©2007 Debra Providence

Phoenix Rising

Grey dust stirs

as her feet leave

fiery prints

in a well scorched earth.

Weed and orchid

insect and bird

frozen in their last

terrified gasp,

ashen,

then crumble

before her stare.

Behind her

the world is

sucked dry.

In front

none will escape

the glare of

crimson death.

Inside

caged, bleeding,

a redbreast,

fluttering frantically,

balance thrown

by a broken wing

pierced by

a poisoned

iron tip….

Her song

is taken,

in its place

a shrill wail

shatters

unwary ears.

She,

once burned,

rises to

sear

a stale, flat

and wicked

Earth.

© 2009 Debra Providence

The Lining

I have waited,

and in waiting

have decided after

much consideration

that silver leaking on a

rich navy blue

does me proud

on a star-lit, moon-fit night.

© 2005 Debra Providence

Scorpio Descending

Scorpio descends,

Squatting on a rusted

moral pillar,

stomach stuffed and distended

with narcissus pies,

blunted stinger misses

mark that blind Scorpio will

not see and while Scorpio sleeps,

The Macrocosm still

burns along its orbit,

the periphery has shifted

considerably beyond

peripheral vision,

Stiff-in-the-neck Scorpio

may not oblige,

cannot comply,

Squat under the

weight of

bloated self-absorbance

Scorpio’s stinger misses,

bleary-eyed

youth will stumble

through the

streets of old in

unromantic isolation,

The Macrocosm wills it.

Earless Scorpio

retreats to a palace

of smoke and mirrors

with the dream that

the parochial is sufficient,

Indigent,

Thin ice it seems,

but Scorpio slights it,

and when the weight of

waiting Karma yields to

Universal Law,

bitter brine will swallow it;

blunted, sterile stinger and all.

©2006 Debra Providence