The tourist stops for uphill directions

Through British transplants

Strawberry Hill, Irish Town, Newcastle
Don’t turn off, keep straight straight

The woman tells him

One hand a lateral plumbline

Along a road of 300 corners legend

Bob Marley took upwards, fleeing bullets

Descended with song to become both

– legend and fugitive
They smile Jamaican

He aping comprehension

She in the local’s sheer satisfaction

Of setting foreigner on the narrow and winding
For straight only is not of sufficient rigidity

To channel these drivers from lands

Of broad tarmac with lanes enough

To be hell bent on destruction
They need a double

A repetition spell check would highlight for deletion

For Microsoft Word knows not our once

Much less twice spoken ways
cabba cabba

chaka chaka

dibby dibby

goody goody

back back

lay lay

meke meke

placka placka

panka panka

sawka sawka

jukky jukky

pyay pyay

fee fee

weddy weddy

passa passa

fool fool

dege dege

I an I

blabba blabba

puny puny

good up good up

one one

kreng kreng

wetty wetty

pum pum
For we are a plural society

Literally, reading a dancehall posters

Achieving ignition with a matches

Nursing the ache of a back teeth

Soothing a bees bite

Begging a smalls

Claiming a customers

Declaring singular possession

Dis is mines
We do not imitate English

In descriptive degrees

Of very and extremely

But pronounce doubles
slim slim

fat fat

white white

black black

reverse back

Loving bad bad

Even unto death
So straight straight means

There are more temptations than accustomed

To turn aside

The traveller must be steadfast

An Argonaut, deaf to siren song

Looking neither left nor right

As would be sojourners inside the US Embassy are

Unlike Lot’s wife and her sodium ways

A pillar of salt looking back at Sodom
High blood pressure has long been our affliction
We learnt under hot tents, on open lands

With calves brushing hard pews

Hemlines swaying

To be steadfast

See and blind, hear and deaf

For it is easier for the camel

To go through the eye of the needle

Than a rich man to enter Zion

Yeah, wanty wanty cyaa get e

An getty getty no want e
If the tourist goes just straight

He might yield to temptation at the first left

And get to a US state, Maryland

Beyond that return to Britain at Cambridge
For the road into the hills doubles back onto itself

Like our colonial masters

And our tongues, interrupting our song

To forward it back
All this she tells the tourist

With a smile, traffic barrier of an arm

Emphasis on two words

In the same exact way

Her sharp mind tells him to mind sharp

And blesses in parting

Have a good good day