Jah Rastafari

This poem is a series of 18 haiku poems that are strung together in a series to tell a story. I call this style that I created a haiku chain poem. According to Dictionary.com, a haiku is a major form of Japanese verse, written in 17 syllables divided into 3 lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, and employing highly evocative allusions and comparisons, often on the subject of nature or one of the seasons; or a poem written in this form.

This piece is about a religious movement whose adherents are called Rastafarians.

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“Jah Rastafari”
By Tyrone Turner
Copyright 2012
All rights reserved

Haile Selassie.
He is the second coming
of our lord, Jesus.

He will take us home
to Zion, in Africa.
Not Jersualem.

Ethiopia
is where Zion always was.
The birthplace of man.

The body is a
holy temple. A holy
place is not hand-made.

A reasoning is
a group of rastas smoking
ganga and talking.

Upfulness may be
a topic of discussion.
Do you overstand?

The downpression of
Babylon doesn’t want us
to puff the ganga.

When a fire is sparked
it makes I and I feel calm
and gives clear thinking.

Don’t worry about
a thing because I and I
will make it all right.

Some choose to wear hair
in natty dreadlocks and live
a Nazarene code.

Many Rastas don’t
eat meat as to touch dead flesh
means that you touch death.

It is best to not
partake of alcoholic
drinks. Babylon’s tool.

Alcohol causes
confusion and strife among
Jah’s chosen people.

Plus fermented drinks
make your body unclean and
a cementary.

There is no Heaven
in the sky. It will be here
on Earth in Zion.

A chosen few will
have life everliving in
their current bodies.

All men and women
are created equal in
the eyes of our lord.

Misunderstood and
sometimes feared. I and I be
Jah Rastafari.