SO it’s any port in a storm, is that the best shot? No, Miss Politician, come better than that! Jamaicans have been ‘swapping black dog for monkey’ for decades of lunacy. Our people have been the jumping jacks of democracy, juggling two powers to drown in their own fantasy. The only difference is that, as Miss Politician, you stand to realise your own selfish ambitions. The masses have nothing to get from politics, save antics and semantics. However, if you are tipping your hat thinking the idea is original, you can ‘wheel and come again’, because that is so not true.

Miss P, hear this: Your game can be read like a book in this context; if you can’t source the milk via one nipple, you can certainly stretch and stress it from the next. You always have a plan B in earnest, isn’t that correct? You realise that you can put pot onto your kind of fire, guaranteed that your cows must give no matter what transpires. For these bovine creatures don’t kick, so you can always hit and hide your stick. One school of thought was quick to decide, ‘you can’t sit in the saddle and beat while you ride’. But you believe otherwise, as you set to work to gourmandise, digging heels deep into their sinking sides. And you tell yourself you don’t need to count cows, since drinking milk is out of many one vow. And with cows like these of national birth, you don’t worry about a thing on God’s green earth. Once you bind their hind legs before pressuring the glands, your milk is sure, even if you decide to change hands. These cows chew cuds while you have it your way. There is nothing they can do to ever keep you at bay. Later, you relax and sip milk in your pavilion, counting two point five million from which to rake billions! What a life you have had up to this point in time! Your grass is always greener, not costing you a dime! What a difference playing Jamaican politics makes? Run for a party, you eat and still have your cakes!

This one’s for you, Jamaican cattle. Miss P gets your vote, but life’s still an uphill battle. She can’t help it! Oh no, not one iota. She’s part of the pool, so that’s her living nature. Like the others who are of similar blood, she believes cows’ only thing is to keep chewing their cuds. Say what? She needs to supply you with servings of steak? Oh, goodness gracious, for heaven’s sake! Sure as day, you can never give and take. Your fore-masters during slavery had already passed it down that you are destined to be worth no more than a quarter of a pound. No matter how they spice it up to make you feel like kings, you will never untie yourselves of all those fettering strings. That’s due in large measure to the fact that these oppressors are still under the weather, brought on by the bug that ruled the minds of their predecessors. The slave masters’ mentality has not been extinct; instead it has taken root using some totally different links. In other words, they’re now on to new and improved methods to access the milk.

In these times, it might even come down to simply swallowing some pills. The mindset is still the same: Herd them to the slaughterhouse, or down to the milking plains. There you’ll find that fingers are no longer being used to squeeze those already tender teats until they further bruise. Instead, machines of suction tubes clamp while you stamp, and blood running through your veins can’t but begin to ooze. It doesn’t matter to Miss P, in the interim, whatever pain you are in; not to give your pint of milk is such a cardinal sin. Hence, Miss P can never behave any better while she is putting you on the stretcher. Notice she only comes around during election time to lecture and to pester. After she gets your vote, she hits the boat and that’s it until another five years of ‘murder she wrote’.

Miss P, you know that you can afford to beat us Jamaicans at our own ruse, since according to you, ignorance is no excuse. So you detect the wind direction and jump in line to seethe the reflection. The galloping is near, and from what is clear, your party might not be anywhere there. You have been out of office for a very long session. You’ve been timed out by now, so it’s time for aggression. And you think, “What the hell do they take this thing for? Do I even care whether both manifestos are at war? Every election, when push comes down to shove, the electorate swings, and it has nothing to do with love. So here’s to me and my deserved turn. Nero even twiddled while Rome stood to burn.”

Oh, Nanny girl, you with the Maroon spirit. It’s so clear that we’ve now totally lost it in this pit! Whatever happened to you and your combative crew? Your reincarnation and return is so long overdue. We need wisdom and power to make us overcome. Sharing this island in the sun, the fight to keep us down under is far from done. Miss P, Miss P!

Vernon Brooks, author of Tricks and Trades of the Jamaican Man, is a Spanish tutor delivering conversational Spanish to hotel workers. He also holds a master’s degree in counselling studies from the University of Derby, UK and an undergraduate degree in social science, language and literature from UWI (1985). Send comments to: brooksvernon@hotmail.com