Poem: What Is Love? by Orville Lloyd Douglas

Off the coast of Montego Bay, I see the turquoise sea and the ships filled with westerners in the distance.

The rippling waves of current splash by our window.

I want to taste Jamaica, to feel unified in this desolate place.

We are on our honeymoon although people like us are viewed like parasites here.

Crawling, moving in the distance when night falls in the shadows is how we survive.

Drug dealers, murderers, rapists have more rights than us.

We are too foreign and too different.

Is Frantz Fanon right, are we the wretched of the earth?

We are just as black  as they are.

Your family is from Kingston and my family is from the parish of Hanover.

Aren’t we  also Jamaicans?

Isn’t the prophecy one love?

This morning though, you try to ease my melancholic state with frantic kisses.

Your mouth is  tender and warm like sweet honey.

On this chaotic juncture perhaps we will reach the road to maturity?

I enjoy your charm and  enthusiasm it makes me hopeful for the future.

Sometimes  I dream  we are in our apartment and you are making love to me.

I want to feel your dark hairy chest against my smooth midnight skin.

I need to touch your manhood and surrender.

I desire to taste the real you.

I can’t go back in time though, to another place not here.

You are frantically packing the suitcase telling me we are leaving for the new world.

I am in this slumber, not really taking the shocking reactions on your face seriously.

At the bottom of the hill,  the mob are screaming kill the batty men!

The torches are a bright red, glistening like a pack of wolves ready to kill the prey.

Our innocence is over tonight. We run into the house and lock the gate.

You quickly hand me my passport and plane ticket telling me we are going away.

But where will we go?