NUDE SKETCH – 43
Sorry if such airy fish don't match your taste, for i love
Imagining the changes the least significant thing
Must go through in order to continue its becoming.
Take the still androgynous mind of a god still clinging
To its angelhood, though wriggling on the hook of ‘his’ fall
Into flesh with ‘her’ first slap on the bum that makes ‘him’ bawl
And gasp at ‘her’ insignificance, to make room for more
Breath of complaint that will last a whole lifetime, rich or poor,
What does the god’s soul know?
SKETCH – 44
Raimonde was no longer such a disappointed being
But a guy who could still bear taking the bus, though seeing
Quite clearly through the blurs of his vision that he was not
Ever quite present as a full-fledged bloomer in that hot-
house of orchideous humans uncomplaining in their
Routines of a blindness he, since childhood, could never share.
Ever since he’d realised he had eyes, however flawed,
The child Raimonde had known he could see through what overawed
Him in all its shining resonant clumsy quiddity
– 45
How did a mere wingless word-fledgling witness and survive
Such a cruel cavalcade? Now, he was only alive
– On that motorised coffin of corpses breathing stale air –
In the most limited sense of being able to blink
And move his head from left to right and look around and think
About what he could see and couldn’t see and didn’t want…
– Not that none of it was wantable
– 46
And yet Raimonde like a beggar kept peering for some hint,
Some recognitive glint of real gold or some winter-flint
That would spark like the wings of a magpie bathing in snow
By flashing its scintillating feathers of yes-and-no.
The memory of one such bird leapt into Raimonde’s mind
Now as his gloved fist accidentally touched the behind
Of a woman in white pants and a black leather-jacket
Too loose at the neck for his cold-scared liking, but fuck it,
The gal had chosen to open her protective collar
Before climbing onto the dirty bus-steps, in all her
Crisp clean fashionable glory (not to mention her sharp
Shiny black boots designed for angels who don't play the harp)
(from *fatima solagua arterra’s nudes* by Brian Chan)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 