"…all the muttering kinship:
Things with things, persons with objects,
Ideas with people or ideas."
- John Ashbery, "Vaucanson"
I
A country boy's secret, a reason late to school:
his hand was squeezing smooth udders.
Early
rising he milked his father's cows, a little
business on the side which was fine once city
boys didn't find out; though in the lining of that chore
silver grains of shame heart beat fast grinding.
After our Bunsen burn this parting sign ̶ his secret
safe, our gang of two ̶ right hand raised, fingers squeezing
air fat ̶ our way of forming futures unnamable, premises
of extraction we could count on to yield.
Who's to say such gestures, muscling youth dream
fibres, don't shape the man?
True, much depends
on where heads low at night, the man up poke rise
of you; the old money belt way hovering.
II
Your nation at war or stand still, dehydrating under tents
and you not sure what to do with your hands?
which normally would signal to the pocket system
find paths to guns, or farm fruit picking;
dentistry, or palming off soccer balls. So country
boy now sits in brooding khaki view of District
Security ̶ a standpipe they go to for missions: search
and redress. His squad men donned in black,chase
raiders in braids like livestock loose in Chinese rice fields.
At a family dinner spread I shook his wife's pain
baking hands. Her body clothes pinned moist in mesh
veil packs full his pipe call frequency.
Those mornings squeezing
udders? the school yard secret sign? silent, active
like heart conditioning, sugar; like dust folk fables
from radio days.
III
At times you lose interest in what's on the table.
You start wondering what holds in store for all assuming
all lies pieced together in a cloud somewhere. Oceans swell,
forests strip, things get done with them. Micro tears, worming
our chip based loves, secrete like enzymes ̶ it's conceivable ̶
ideas we pursue fold rear; names we follow; that faith we grip
and breach and fuse as submissions serve or stall.
Still waiting for updates, mounds golden
ripe per pound? from nature improved
pods? go ahead ̶ click Enter ̶ hope sun
seeds stream. Not before, not after, dare you
wash your hands who still can't help yourself.
That
or, simple as this sounds, consider the cow.
-W.W.
TO THE CRYSTAL BALL IN MY HAND
May your body's cool purity temper my
body's fires as they
warm your wisdom, and your sphere-clear perfection
pierce the core of this
dull diamond and so seed it to a shining
of its inner sun,
so that, when I zigzag through the world tilting
between night and dawn
and noon, this presence of my bones loose among
my fellow future
cadavers shall be in lightening service
to dense shadows and
dark masks that signal a running from the night's
certain returning
fall – which you survive simply by swallowing
its dark into your
belly's limitless memory of dawn's light.
(from "Within The Wind" © by Brian Chan)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 