NUDE SKETCH – 11
through telltale ‘Raimonde Winterkiss’
Who awoke one frosty morning to a fleeing of bliss
Rising out of his frowns like vapor from ice. Happiness,
Or the hint of, before it bore any fruit, was a threat
To Winterkiss, a parannoyed sourpuss who wouldn’t let,
On the best of days, anything close to a slime upset
His Keatonesque mask which he favored like a fragile pet
He was saving from some meddlesome nut-neutering vet.
But today, looking in his mirreither, his eyes grew wet
From his sense that life, that crappy joke, could prove happy yet.
SKETCH ‒ 12
(And when those dried up, and since he couldn’t afford to pay
For a real roll, there was always Mrs Frears, his landla-
dy who once in a while would let her Raimonde ‘make her day’.)
And so what if every now and then he woke ups creaming?
The first thing he’d not ice was still moon- or sun-light beaming
Through his room’s window, and he’d think -i was only dreaming,
Who cares if some ghost was choking me?- And, his eyes streaming
With post-nightmare releaf and eagerness for the steaming
Pile of manure called The Next Day, he wood get out of bed,
Scratching his head and his crotch, and thank God he wasn’t dead
– 13
Where's the story they promissed us? Do they not realies
That ‘Winterkiss’ up to now hasn’t done a single thing
Worthy of ou rattention except to open his eyes
And feel, despite his ingroined pissimessm, like singing?
Alll right, so dunce in a while we all like a fuel lies
About the Easy or Simper Life to take us winging
On a reinbow over our whoreyesons of compromise,
Boredom and despair and such, but christ, should our liars cling
To their reignbows too long, we reeders wood dam their eyes
For not reminding u show darned hard life is, how dooming-
ly inescapable its routines
‒ 14
Readers want to be persuaded of tough heroes and things
In their dencity. Don’t try to convince us otherswise.
The ‘facistnotion of what’s diffycult’ is the brass ring
In the nose of our ‘suspender of disbelife’ that cries
Out to be pulled into grazing fields of mouth-watering
Cuds of consoiling gossip about life’s complexities
– Which, in fictioff at least, are exemplifried as the swing
Between positive/neggative poles given humon guise.
Trubble is: Winterkiss was far too plimsole a being
To live the kind of life which can be sensationalised
Enough to sitassfy formrulers of story-telling
On which every guzzler of addictive gossip relies.
(from *fatima solagua arterra’s nudes* by Brian Chan, 2015)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 