On our island the pothole near Lamp Post 59 plays dumb
strike | the signs are there for everyone, Don’t stop to piss
here! People passing.
Jar money firming jam spread so, hazards
surprise only the load roles of shackled heart axles.
Our neighbor frets ‘n’ slaps his tablas, wife night
back less gown. Everybody fancies wheel control; buses
stop for folk with low blood leisure, getting on . who’d
off line bump alerts about time share polyps.
Or take the market
stall trip : fruit fatty vendors call you Darling tugging
at your leave; they tender plant reaps, catch pen meat
sweets | fish they know, what corks duck well.
Canal takeoffs ? crow head peckish; still, one last bird
bath in our Ganges > web wing hoarders snap . fly . high
on blades shave icing; road hours that trip iguana sun
sets, tambura wait lines.
Anyone can with fear run anywhere . a whole series
of tests for pain change; raags first under basement Saddhus
form / forks you’ll tune, game side pick / no flow sound
system wrecker.
One bill to pay from folding. And there
you are ! streams go Hello.
– W.W.
LESSING ~ MARA
Yet, again, absence of mutuality
In his people was one of Cartoon’s bȇtes noires.
But Lessing recalls Mara saying that once
She had spotted, in a park in Leeds, Cartoon propped up
On a bench and looking numbly half-asleep
And paying attention to nothing, no-one
In that space of Summer’s native foreigners.
Lessing, defending the Common Man’s Wordman,
Asked Mara then –You sure-sure Cartoon wasn’t
Listenin to dat place, tekking it all in?
– Nah, she said, he tought it had nuttn to do wit he,
Nothing to say to him, Mister Otherness.
(from “Charon’s Anchors” by Brian Chan)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 