Featured in Art Etobicoke poetry month exhibition: Power of Words
It’s Summer 2021. To escape the heat of my then-fiancée-now-wife’s studio, I aired out on the balcony. I heard a loud screech that pierced through the air like Roman spears marching into war.
It was the neighbouring train yard. Iron caterpillars were creeping in from near and far with cargo to be bought and sold.
There’s a thing about trains. We need them but the cost? Stolen Indigenous land. Displaced people. Overworked (and exploited) workers from various corners of the Earth. Forceful impregnation with iron rails foreign to the soil.
Which made me think of parallels between Canada and the long-lasting legacy of the Caribbean slave trade. The import of slaves and labourers by colonial powers to attack nature with cash crops such as cotton and sugar. And the continual extraction of resources, with much of the wealth being taken off shore.
This is how the visual poem, Train Games, was conceptualized. Using audio samples taken from Madlib’s Medicine Show 2: Flight to Brazil, I wrote a poem that’s interjected throughout the video loop.
Train Games: A visual Poem
Complete poem:
Train tracks
Roll Past
To find its destination
Crickity crack – each leg
Wheels hum in pendulation
An hypnotic rocking
The load
Bares the cargo
For survival
But we complain when it breaks
Ear-piercing shrieks
Shrill at a moment’s still
The air fills
And stops at the depot
Atop the people
A supply chain
Again we repeat this cycle
And apply stains
Wants and needs,
Heading to the next station.
Rationed movement
Finding fallen grain
And seeds
Planting pleads
Growing up,
Next to and
Aside from me
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