I have built a place for you
Where the inside of your shoe
Is softer than the thick and multicoloured moss
We find upon fierce northern rocks
Softer than a pygmy lullaby

A place
With doors of living wood
Trees that sway away
As you enter
And shut themselves behind you

The leaves that ornament these trees
Are full of poetry
Green words written in gold
By delirious princes
Lost in love
Warrior words
Recreating distant homes
Worried words of mothers
Words of friendship
Written in the deep dark ink of trust
Promises made and signed in blood
Upon thick parchment
Sleeping words awoken for you
Shepherd words about their camel herds
Wise words by men who live in isolation
Sailor words about the ocean
Exotic flower words
Words that describe the flight of birds
Words of pain
Glass words
Last words
Vast words of regret about great loves that could have been
Tombstone words
Words written on the morning of the birth
Of the first child
Of a new generation
Of a noble family
Words written to be free of tyranny
Words for you
Written by me
Collected in the leaves of giant trees
That sacrifice their bodies
Just to please you
As a doorway to this precious place

And when the wind blows hard outside
The voices of great poets rise
Inside the leaves
Perfect polyphony

I have built for you
A kitchen lit with the bright hopes of youth
Beneath three Russian chandeliers
A living feast appears in the dining room
The table is of ancient marble
The food always renewed
Endless degrees of taste spring from the plates
Explosions of first love upon the tongue
Sushi subtlety
Culinary architecture
The taste of adventure
Mouthfuls of meat
Potatoes meant to make you feel at home
The maturity of cheese
Recipes
Rediscovered on the dusty shelves of libraries
In prestigious universities
Strong bursts of lemon
Seafood fantasies
Elegant pastries
Candy store variety
Every single type of tea
Blue Mountain coffee
Subtle flavour blends
Perfected through conservative lineages
Of Moroccan mothers
Identity
Can be lost or found at this table
It is always here for you
In this place I have built for you

On winter evenings there are cozy living rooms
With carpets so thick you could lie down and sleep
Carpets woven by nights of mine
Great nights that lived and died to soften your time
Long logs of loyalty burn in the fireplace
Spreading deep orange across your face
Solo piano on the stereo
Wild beasts lie obediently
Rest your head against warm fur
The depth of lion breath
The slow rising and falling of his chest
Loosens every muscle in you
Now you can relax and laugh
If your little arm is tickled
By his mighty tongue

For you a green lawn on summer mornings
To sit for hours with me
Orange juice and coffee
Lazy newspaper stories
Of a strange and distant world of hurt
Far far away from this garden
Where the stream laughs like a schoolyard
The pond welcomes giant swans
And mountains stand guard on the horizon
Keeping our enemies out
The smell of ocean is ever-present
Its breath like a drumbeat through the days

Afternoons when horsemen compete for your amusement
African dancers capture you
Between two pages of this poem
You are torn from tranquility
Stampeding through some dusty plain
Fire on your face
Laughing loudly
Plunging through a mirror framed in Timbuktu
Emerging refreshed from the pond
The swans annoyed at your intrusion
You drip across the lawn
And find me swinging my pen like a sword
By the patio door

Memories invade you on the beach at sunset
Ocean tips at my feet
I stand with my hands in my pockets and my pants rolled up
My face red with sun
Singing some nostalgic Spanish melody
While you weep at the passing of the day

I have built for you a place where people always pray
Evenings are filled with the memory of God
Friends visit
We drink sweet tea
And live in poetry

Hallways speak of past adventures
Pictures and artefacts

I have built a place where your clothes always fit right 
Magnificent
Comfortable
Pearls of wisdom grow from your evening gown
Traces of gold surround your eyes
A veil of moonlight covers your hair
Upon each finger is a jewel for every type of little joy
You are different and more beautiful
Every time you cross a mirror
In a house of poetry
All things explode from oneness into lush diversity

On some days you find yourself in a simple wood cabin
With the smell of leather and pine and total food in a heavy black pot
I chop wood for the stove
Outside
Through the window of wide eyes
White snow shines for miles

On the table by a can of coffee cream
My pen sleeps on a napkin
You wake it up
To find new poetry in its sheets

For you a place with a sleepy cat stretching on the kitchen floor
Instant coffee and sliced bread in the toaster
Crumbs in the butter if you need reality

For you a place that is lonely without you
Rooms that are dark without you
Ghosts everywhere
Nobody likes an empty house

For you I’ve built a place that needs your beauty strength and grace
A place where you are noticed
Every day admired
A place inspired
By you
A place of poetry
A place of possibility
A place between a dream and full reality

Jason Sparkes © 2003

L'on me demande parfois comment la théorie décoloniale est pertinente dans un contexte occidental? N'est-ce pas plutôt une préoccupation non occidentale? Voici un extrait de Discours sur le colonialisme d'Aimé Césaire (1955) qui discute de l'importance d'une démarche décoloniale pour les occidentaux :

Il faudrait d'abord étudier comment la colonisation travaille à déciviliser le colonisateur, à l'abrutir au sens propre du mot, à le dégrader, à le réveiller aux instincts enfouis, à la convoitise, à la violence, à la haine raciale, au relativisme moral, et montrer que, chaque fois qu'il y a au Viet-Nam une tête coupée et un oeil crevé et qu'en France on accepte, une fillette violée et qu'en France on accepte, un Malgache supplicié et qu'en France on accepte, il y a un acquis de la civilisation qui pèse de son poids mort, une régression universelle qui s'opère, une gangrène qui s'installe, un foyer d'infection qui s'étend et qu'au bout de tous ces traités violés, de tous ces mensonges propagés, de toutes ces expéditions punitives tolérées, de tous ces prisonniers ficelés et « interrogés », de tous ces patriotes torturés, au bout de cet orgueil racial encouragé, de cette jactance étalée, il y a le poison instillé dans les veines de l'Europe, et le progrès lent, mais sûr, de l'ensauvagement du continent.

Et alors, un beau jour, la bourgeoisie est réveillée par un formidable choc en retour : les gestapos s’affairent, les prisons s’emplissent, les tortionnaires inventent, raffinent, discutent autour des chevalets.

On s'étonne, on s’indigne. On dit : « Comme c’est curieux ! Mais, bah ! C'est le nazisme, ça passera ! » Et on attend, et on espère ; et on se tait à soi-même la vérité, que c'est une barbarie, mais la barbarie suprême, celle qui couronne, celle qui résume la quotidienneté des barbaries ; que c'est du nazisme, oui, mais qu'avant d'en être la victime, on en a été le complice ; que ce nazisme-là, on l'a supporté avant de le subir, on l'a absous, on a fermé l'oeil là-dessus, on l'a  légitimé, parce que, jusque-là, il ne s'était appliqué qu'à des peuples non européens ; que ce nazisme-là, on l'a cultivé, on en est responsable, et qu'il sourd, qu'il  perce, qu’il goutte, avant de l'engloutir dans ses eaux rougies, de toutes les fissures de la civilisation occidentale et
chrétienne.

Yes, we can: Non-European thinkers and philosophers
Walter Mignolo weighs in on the debate on the relative strength's of Eurocentric and non-Eurocentric
philosophy.
Walter D. Mignolo is William H. Wannamaker Distinguished Professor and Director of the
Center for Global Studies and the Humanities, Duke University. 
               

Words about the endurance of your support cannot meet you 
Words like birds flutter around a sturdy tower
Your cause has never held my consequence
You have never held me back

Oakwood cherry wood brass and marble
Leather seats of warm love comfort me
Reinforce and let me be
As a boy
I never saw you cry
I never sensed your question marks
And now that as a man I can intuit them
My gratitude and admiration 
Grow deeper roots
Bear sweeter fruit

We didn’t meet
We didn’t need to
I have always been in you
And in me parts of you shine through
Our distance is nearer
Our proximity clearer
And the bond of love remains unshaken
God bless the years you have forsaken
In silent worries over me
God bless you and awaken 
Endless thanks in me
 
Jason Sparkes © 2002


 

An article by Professor Sherman A. Jackson:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sherman-a-jackson/what-is-shariah-and-why-d_b_710976.html

Like a city you are alive
Like this beautiful island you surround yourself
In tears and song
Festivals in your eyes
And your heart is a mountain

Like Montreal you dream of winter
And explode in summer
Your seasons move swiftly

Your smile is wealthy
And your hand cannot hold
Birds and traffic moving north and south
You dream of wolves and bears
Like these streets you remember them
And when you climb into the mountain
Your words are a thousand nations
Your thoughts creative conflict

I am but a neighbourhood
Born from your drive to be alive
Without your gentle hand
Without your government
Without your breath
Without the bread of your womb
The wine of your tears
The spice of your words
The markets of your mind
The traffic of your life
The temples and the strife
I could not
I would not
I am not
How do I begin?
How do I dare describe
The thanks I owe you?
The love I do not show you
Is self-evident

Does the bird need to tell the skies?
His love is manifest when he flies
Nothing in me could be without your love
And how can a fish be worthy
Of the ocean?

Yet if it honours you
And soothes your soul
If it moves you
I will stand on the roof
I’ll take to the streets
I’ll blister my feet
Proclaiming the truth
That I love you
So deeply
I love you so widely
I love you so wholly
For who cannot see
That the body that holds me
Is the proof
Of love
Flowing through the blood of me
From you?

Were we ten thousand miles apart
How could our bodies part?
My note and yours are one
They join when they are sung

What more to say?
You are the sun
I am your ray
When I shine
It is your day

The rose that settles softly on my tongue
And honey water drips into my soul
Flames that arise when melodies are sung
And make me think I’ll surely lose control

The night when sweat perfumes a glass of tears
I drink until the freshness in my spine
Explodes into a galaxy and years
Have vanished in a sky of ancient wine

The bubble universe is left to die
Upon the finger of a perfect child
The canvas spread across my darkened eye
Is dignified by colours you have smiled