Afterword: I was struck by the turn of phrase used in a standard year-end recounting of those recognized persons who have passed away this year and it started me thinking about what else has been lost, some things perhaps irretrievably, and what might come to pass. Are we entering a liminal time?
Also, The British Economist in their “On language” feature just has published its word of the year for 2024, it is kakistocracy. Here is the concluding paragraph: “Kakistocracy has the crisp, hard sounds of glass breaking. Whether that is a good or bad thing depends on whether you think the glass had it coming. But kakistocracy’s snappy encapsulation of the fears of half of America and much of the world makes it our word of the year.”
Today I thought I would live forever. The man I thought I would marry lives in Cambodia now. His mother wrote to me this morning.
She texted me a prayer. She is eighty years old. There are millions of refugees in Sudan. That won’t change overnight. My mother made a birthday cake for a vagrant. My father is eighty. Trump is president of America. My sister is Europe. All my letters, she never reads them. All my love for her is returned to me. This broken clock and silence is all that I have. The hours that stretch before me and behind me is all that I have. My parents love. A niece and nephew. Other mother’s children is all that I have. The memory of wildflowers in your eyes is all I have. You are the sun. You have replaced the energies of the man who was going to play “Husband” in my life. You and your brother.
I have never felt more alone. I spent the morning with my father and the child. She is a bundle of tireless energy and novel words. One day I will not be enough for her and she will seek out the world. Perhaps men, older men in the same way that I did when I was in my twenties in Johannesburg. I think of my mental illness. My dream of becoming a poet that came true.
You are exceptional. You are extraordinary except you are not my daughter, you are not my son. You, C., are a teenager now. It’s been a year since I’ve seen you. We spoke once on the phone. You sounded happy. I miss you. Our long talks and our conversations. You making spag bol in the kitchen the way your mother taught you or making grilled cheese sandwiches when there’s nothing in the house to eat. You grew up in this house but those days are over. Long gone.
I don’t think of V. as intensely as I once did. How fleeting and temporary grown-up happiness is. Daddy is eighty. Mummy is slowly catching up to him.
I am the woman who was married to a soldier for an eternity, and didn’t even know it.
I have forgiven you already. Do you, can you understand that at your tender age? And now I am waiting for the return of that. That you forgive me. When the man of your dreams meets someone else you begin to wonder and try to justify what you saw in him in the first place. You begin to think to yourself how quickly perfection was ruined, summer afternoons talking, sharing, listening to each other but that of course it is going to be alright. You tell yourself that you will meet someone else. It becomes non-negotiable but it is not as easy as it looks. You think you have a connection with every person on this planet but that is not true.
It is important for you to meditate. Apostle Paul says, “Pray without ceasing”. Your loneliness appears on the surface to be the same as mine. I remember your breath inside my body. It was a declaration. It commanded the day, the light shining through the glass of the window. Things were not as they seemed. I called it love in my spirit, then falling in love, then it was done. Finished. The divine power that began the journey of us ended and then the prosperity removal of struggle and despair from my life began.
I often wonder if you are lonely. Are you as miserable as I am? Do you suffer from clinical depression? Do you seek help from a therapist? When I am dead no one will remember me. Not my smile. Not my soul. Not my laughter. Not my spirit in this room or the heart that I carry in daylight. I write a poem and turn it into a personal essay, much later, I turn it into a prose poem, even later, I take it apart, deconstruct it.
We ate lamb shanks for lunch with white rice that honoured my worth and mashed potato that overflowed with abundance. My brother ate his with an open bottle of beer near his plate. I watched the details of him eating, taking it all in. My brother complained that the rice was soggy. It was not to his liking. I looked at his tired, sad and handsome face as he lit up a cigarette standing at the kitchen door.
I eat cheese curls with my mother as she sits across from me. How can I still be in love with someone who ignores me, I say? Well, that’s your fault, she says. Everything is my fault.
In the evening I pray for my family, purging the shroud, the children that are the light of my life, the supernatural instinct and as my body changes shape with time I move forward into an unknown future, flowing streams of enlightenment in the natural, in the flow and ebb of the tunnel of my consciousness. I rotate these living tools for growth and energy with ease.
I will always carry you like I carry the clouds in the sky that day that you left me. I remember that night. I know it like I know the subtleties, nature and the backs of my hands. I can still taste the moonlight at the curve of the back of my throat. The pink light of its cave that develops each time I open my mouth. Yes, I know you and will carry your secrets with me for a lifetime in every fold of my clothing tenderly just because I feel that is what you deserve.
Deconstructing Elmo
I am on the path to enlightenment. The path of inner knowing. Truth leads to inner power, teaches us about knowledge, the preparation and discernment of goals, a declaration of hope and spiritual reality and awareness. Trust in God. He is the absolute deliverer. The spirit is one of the resources of the universe that leads us to our values. Mother Mary is a poignant image, as is the angel Gabriel. I look at the woman, at her slender body, her slender fingers, her open mouth, a gaping hole, a leaf, a wound, her legs and thighs as sturdy as branches, yes, I look at the woman, my sister, my mother, M.’s mother, all three of them beautiful, stared at by men with adoration, and I wonder to myself have they ever felt pain like I have felt pain. You see, I don’t think they have felt pain. I have never been desired like they have been desired. I have never felt the desire, carried a child in my womb for nine months. I think that it’s going to be ok not being in this cold, cruel world amongst people who do not love me or who show any love, care or concern for me. The child who is not my own sleeps next to me. Elmo is on the screen but I have no appetite for Elmo, Cookie Monster and Big Bird. I am determined that I would have moved with grace in the world if I had been loved.
Human value. They say that money solves everything in the world. They say that human welfare does not allow this. You cannot do anything without money. No matter how much knowledge you have, you cannot live without money. Even those who acquire this knowledge sell it for money, and the owner of clear knowledge is left behind.
A child of an ordinary person has the most knowledge, but a child of a rich man knows nothing.
Why are you always a rich man’s son? Why do you say that if a man with money is his father. Did you see, my friends, this story of mine will still be answered in the Day of Judgement.
Bukhara region Jondor district of the 30th school 8th “a” class student Maftuna Rustamova
J.J. Campbell (1976 – ?) is stuck in the suburbs, wondering where all the lonely housewives have gone? He’s been widely published over the years, most recently at Horror Sleaze Trash, Yellow Mama, The Rye Whiskey Review, The Beatnik Cowboy and Lothlorien Poetry Journal. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)
Photo c/o Jacques FleuryPhoto c/o Jacques FleuryPhoto c/o Jacques FleuryPhoto c/o Jacques Fleury
Why the Afro-Caribbean Diaspora Celebrate Carnival
By Jacques Fleury
As a young boy growing up partly on the francophone island of St. Domingue or Haiti as we know it today, few things gave me more pleasure than seeing random festivities making a raucous in my neighborhood. I would later learn that they are colloquially referred to as “raras.” Rara is defined as a festive Haitian musical category, religious ritual, dance, and sometimes a system of political dissent that originated in Haiti.
I remember running to my mother and saying in French : “Maman, il y a un tas de gens qui jouent de la musique et font des bruits joyeux dans les rues ! Et d’autres personnes les rejoignent en chemin ! On dirait qu’ils s’amusent ! Pouvons-nous les rejoindre aussi ? ’’ Which translates in English to: “Mom, there are a bunch of people playing music and making happy noises in the streets! And other people are joining them along the way! Looks like they’re having fun! Can we join them too? “
I never asked “why?” I just felt the joy in the deep part of my youthful soul, replete with then a plethora of auxiliary wonderment. It was the few times that the border between adults and children blended and we all became simply humans just being. It never occurred to me that there was a reason why the historical legacies of these prima facie “happy” islanders were rooted in pain, which they would then deliberately mitigate by suffusing their hearts with joy rather than congregate to commiserate in an amalgamation of anger over egregious hurts from their historical past.
This is the island I remember as a child. Running naked with my cousins in the rain, playing hide & seek during blackouts and flying kites under the perpetual summer sun and of course CARNIVALS: an equally festive but much bigger version of “raras.” A colossal event that encompasses floats of popular bands replete with polemic reciprocal banter all in good fun, lavish costumes and a time when they forget about dictators, and the politics of malicious foreign policies and governmental undermining of bigger more powerful countries that seemingly condemns them to a state of perpetual hardship and political unrest.
It wasn’t until I came to America on a student visa that I learned about America’s relationship with Haiti, which was and still is not so good. As I watched the American news media portray the Haitian people as sorrowful, pitiful peasants who “need” to be “rescued”, an ideology that conceivably corroborates “the white savior complex.” Even after over one hundred years of genetic research from top universities like Harvard have traced the VERY first human civilization back to the deserts of sub-Saharan Africa from which all other civilizations evolved 50,000 years ago! According to generative artificial intelligence, this is defined as: a mentality where a white person supposes they need to rescue or “save” people of color, often by belittling or meddling in their lives, while concurrently denying agency and authority to those they claim to help; fundamentally portraying themselves as the generous force needed to uplift demoted communities, which is often seen as a detrimental typecast and a form of racial despotism.
Key points about the “white savior complex”:
Patronizing attitude:
A white person with this complex may view people of color as incapable of solving their own problems and needing white intervention.
Performative actions:
Their actions might be more about self-image and gaining praise than genuinely helping the communities they target.
Ignoring systemic issues:
This complex often fails to address the root causes of inequalities, focusing instead on individual acts of charity that may not create lasting change.
Examples of white savior complex behavior:
A white person starting a charity in a developing country without consulting local leaders about their actual needs.
A white individual taking credit for the achievements of people of color they are “helping”.
A fictional narrative where a white character is the only one who can solve a problem faced by a community of color.
Why is the “white savior complex” problematic?
Perpetuates stereotypes:
It reinforces the notion that people of color are helpless and need white people to save them.
Disregards agency:
It denies people of color the ability to advocate for themselves and solve their own issues.
Centering whiteness:
It puts the focus on the white person’s actions and motivations, rather than the needs of the marginalized community.
When it comes to Haiti and other predominantly “black” nations, the scenarios above are what I’ve come to know as an adult through the American media and personal interactions with fellow Americans across all racial and cultural backgrounds. What America fails to tell the world is that despite Haiti’s people being enslaved and brutalized for over a hundred years by the French, Haiti managed to single handedly secure its freedom by becoming the FIRST BLACK REPUBLIC in history in 1804 after the pivotal Battle of Vertieres. From the authority of generative AI:
The Battle of Vertières was the final major battle of the Haitian Revolution and the establishment of Haiti as the world’s first independent Black republic:
When and where
The battle took place on November 18, 1803, near Cap-Haitien in northern Haiti
Who fought
The Haitian army led by General Jean-Jacques Dessalines fought against Napoleon’s French expeditionary forces led by General Rochambeau
What happened
The Haitian army stormed the French-held Fort Vertières and eventually defeated the French troops
Significance
The battle was a critical blow to Napoleon, forcing him to focus on building an empire in Europe. It was also the first time an army of enslaved people led a successful revolution for their freedom.
Monument
A monument was constructed on the site of the battle in 1953
And it was money from the then richest island in the Americas that France used to supplement the American Revolution against the British, in the late 1700s, Haitians came to fight off the Brits in Savannah, Georgia for which they are memorialized in a colossal monument erected in 2000 (better late than never, eh?). Not to mention that it was a Haitian American trader by the name of Jean Baptiste Point du Sable who is regarded as the primary permanent non-Native colonizer of what we now know as Chicago, Illinois, and is documented as the city’s founder.
Despite all these accomplishments, Haiti is still being portrayed in the media as pitiful underachievers who need to be “rescued” by the self-proclaimed superior powers that be.
So why does the African diaspora celebrate by throwing lavish “fetes” or “parties” in the form of Carnivals? As an adult, I had to research and educate myself about “my story”, no thanks to my American “His-story” classes of yore. The carnivals represent a joyous middle finger to their oppressors, much like when during the tempestuous epochs of the civil rights movement, black people used to sing negro spirituals as they were being arrested to reclaim their individual power, joy and dignity. The idea of “the carnival” was conceived to celebrate the liberation of the Afro-Caribbean Diaspora from slavery…something I didn’t know when I was child in Haiti.
It is a reclamation of the Afro-Caribbean power as a people, to tell their OWN story. I once read that until the lions possess their own historians, the history of the hunt will always extol the hunter. Hence the carnivals represent the formation of the hunted “lions’ historians” and they are “glorifying” themselves by telling their OWN stories through song, dance, fabulous customs and costumes!
Dedicated to my brother, Dr. Guy Claude Fleury for his inspiration and advocacy for Afro-Caribbean culture.
Jacques Fleury
Jacques Fleury is a Boston Globe featured Haitian-American Poet, Educator, Author of four books and literary arts student at Harvard University online. His latest publication “You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self” & other titles are available at all Boston Public Libraries, the University of Massachusetts Healey Library, University of Wyoming, Askews and Holts Library Services in the United Kingdom, The Harvard Book Store, The Grolier Poetry Bookshop, amazon etc… He has been published in prestigious publications such as Muddy River Poetry Review, the Cornell University Press anthology Class Lives: Stories from Our Economic Divide, Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene among others…Visit him at: http://www.authorsden.com/jacquesfleury.
Jacques Fleury’s book You Are Enough: The Journey Towards Understanding Your Authentic Self
