Threnody

“crossing that bridge with lessons I've learnt, time is a space between me and you”
~Seal: Prayer for the Dying

“Those who are dead, are not dead, they're just living in my head”
~Coldplay: 43




Good Afternoon, Good Evening and Good Morning, I hope you'll be still enjoying the lovely weather when you get a chance to read this, be huddled at that seat at the shop, or sombrely warming up to that shot of JB which you'll be happy to have excuse to drink, “A Wedda, A Wedda! U nuh see seh time chilly.” Or maybe you're on your verandah, I hope the breeze doesn't hamper your reading too much, but where ever you are I beg and beseige thee, take a very solemn walk with me, a path some of you maybe vaguely acquainted with, some of you not so acquainted with. Our scenario today reminds me of a Stephen King series I read named The Dark Tower. It is a tale of a Gunslinger, who has seen all his friends die and seen his country and his lovers, home and family dessimated and is on the chase to reach a place called The Dark Tower, to defeat a Red King and call out the names of all his fallen friends and reset or restore the order to things. And some things stood out in that book for me and one was an expression he used frequently to describe the changes that he saw took place in his world, and it was this “The world has moved on.” He never said from what, but it was from the point he had marked as the better years of his life.

Now death and loss are things I've always known of, however in my early twenties I realized that I was ill-prepared for it. Because I never realized that as early as 19 and 20, so many of the ones I knew would be gone, and I've come to realize that I have lived under the naïve belief that me and all my friends would grow old, but now I know better. This year I've had to learn of death all too intimately.

A threnody is a song or hymn of mourning composed or performed as a memorial to a dead person. The term originates from the Greek word threnoidia, from threnos (lament) + oide (song). Ultimately from Proto-Indo-European root wed(uued or ooed)- (to speak) that is also the forefather of such words as ode, tragedy, comedy, parody, melody, and rhapsody. And that is what this article is gentle people all across the land. My Threnody for Paradise Lost. I don't know if it is because we are in a leap year or what but the tragedies this year seemed a many. It all start last year this time. Decemeber 7 to be exact, when a police battalion rolled through Paradise and killed one Cedric Thorpe, also known to many as Goosey. I had seen him, just an hour before, stood and spoke, then continued my journey downtown, by the time I had reached the top of Union Street, people were talking about a Goosey dead, and I paid it absolutely no mind, after I had just spoken to him, must be another one. By the time I was at Perry Street my phone was ringing of the chart, “Yuh hear she dem just kill Mankind!” That set the trend for the year to come, I would be standing out by Likkle Dread loitering before getting food when a friend of mine Homie's father would drive pass in his little red car as per usual, stop get a cigarette at the shop up the road, he would complain of not feeling well, and I would watch him drive off in his little red car, only to have a heart attack and crash less than 4 seconds later. He would drive off into a column and crash and die of heart complication. Just like that life will blindside you, and it is just earth runnings and the way of the world, and leaves us to wonder, what is man...

I would later have to watch my close parri, suffer through the loss of his mother. Then to bear witness to some kind of secret wars being waged in Paradise and watching innocent and young lives spin out and spill out in bloodshed, and then to not really know, what secret games and deeds they had played and been punished for. To watch the life of Sticky Bean get snuffed out for mistaken identity on a rainy day, to hear Bess a shopkeeper's life being wasted away at 6:50 in the morn while drinking tea, to get up the following morning to hear a pretty little girl you watch grow, offer proper council and advice when you could, Madeeks, get wasted away at the same taxi stand you and everyone whoe probably knew her, all before the age of 20. To then watch the spirit of a community die. Shortly after some respit from the urban prowl only to return and hear my good friend, a very spirited old man, very short thin and pixie like, full of verve and life a man that sat amongst thieves, murderers, weed heads, rum heads, youths, gun toters and average Joe's, a Roman Catholic at that, who would always be in spirited debates with me and my entourage about politics and God, and it was always good natured and never got bitter, no matter who we persecuted his belief or angle. His name was Dandy... and he lived by that name, he was always dandy. No one knows how Dandy real died, he just became ill, thin and died. In the space of 2 months that I had not really seen him, he just upped and died. Then there are Jerome (Amoy) and Gwangy (who the front page of the Mirror named Wong by some error in calculation or translation and they even gave him a career as a cane vendor). They gave away their life carelessly by persistent pursuit of bad things. But they were human, they had families and friends, some of whom I am very close to, I knew them. They died. Byron Balfour who I knew, he wasn't fond of me who wrote next to me in the Mirror write on the next page there, so close to me in some regard he died too. And my cousin/unlce on Tate Street... my fallen friends and soldiers are many.

Most days I feel like Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, weeping for all the sorrows I've seen in this world, all the lives we must touch and live to see shattered, for all those who curdle up on the street, under taxi stands and make the concrete jungle their posture pedic, for all my friends who have tossed way their lives to coke and now roam the town like ghosts for all that to die, for it has said, many more will have to suffer and many more will have to die, don't ask me why.

I close with a Peter Gabriel song “I Grieve,” 
“it was only one hour ago
it was all so different then 
there's nothing yet has really sunk in 
looks like it always did 
this flesh and bone 
it's just the way that you would tied in 
now there's no-one home

life carries on 
in the people i meet 
in everyone that's out on the street 
in all the dogs and cats 
in the flies and rats 
in the rot and the rust 
in the ashes and the dust 
life carries on and on and on and on 
life carries on and on and on”

Yannick Pessoa
yannickpessoa@yahoo.com
http://yahnyk.blogspot.com