RED BLACK & MOONLIGHT
@2000 Marguerite Laurent; Windows on Haiti special edition
a) Much like here b) Bwa Kayiman
e) Vodun Woman i) Rolling on j) Beyond 2004
l) Self-Defense
VODUN WOMAN
...i’m that Black girl who couldn't understand Nietzsche. But i never had a problem understanding you're my jailer, not my rescuer. In the beginning i was unnamed, unseparated and undivided in an eternal womb, anba dlo. There's no description that fits it for me except anba dlo where i was, it was Black - i absorbed all light even while enjoying all the light tricks above me.....Then you came, with words you called eternal verities - lights erasing Erzili Dantò.
...i’m the pagan you called Catholic. Most of your approximations of me so deforested me, they could not raise up my irreducible essence anba dlo. So one day, i found myself in my ancestors land bringing development when i’ve always been totally against European development.
Back in my autumnal equinox days, i didn't know the lexicon for deconstructing ideological walls, but one night, a lifetime after the glory-in-the-flower days seemed gone forever, when reverence and splendor had flown and freedom wasn't liberating and kindness was called weakness, i caught a break. The tools for combat crawled from my body when i went back to where i was born, both physically and spiritually. Back at Bwa Kayiman, it was an internal trip, see. Merciful Papa Legba opened a door and internally i came across intuitive flashes i could not know through thought. Ezili Dantò, an aspect of my higher self i don't have access to with my normal sensory being, she came forth. And then i was that umbilical cord, that vertical axis intersecting the horizon, creating a nexus between the spiritual and physical worlds.
The imagery of red twisted around in my head, like rising red moons. Black radiance shimmered out from every pore impaling the swelling and waning Moons to stillness. Red, Black and Moonlight swirled like waves, percolated and hounded me, harassed me, and followed me, pouring over me like the waterfalls at So Dlo. Until I lost my way within the internal struggle, entering this here poetic dreamspace where the curved core of my belly's flesh drew forth a knowing, uncoiled, something.... A center I’ve got to get to? A past to rescue? A crashing plane to undo? Papa Legba swung wide another locked door lan gran chemen a and that one night all the African Tricksters re-entered my dreams...
Now they say i’m a Vodun Woman... Now they say i’m a Vodun Woman.
A man told me, he said:
"What's your Vodun's done? What's your Vodun's done?
We've gone to the moon, cloned a sheep and invented TV.
What's your Vodun's done?"
The frogs outlived the dinosaurs, i replied,
A cockroach can survive a nuclear blast.
And yes, a man cloned a sheep and can even decide the sex of a child.
But they say i’m a Vodun woman 'cause frogs and cockroaches are mine too and i can stretchhhhhhhh a smile 'till… eternity comes.