Pretend this story's a river, and if you've got this far
On it, reader rower, then it will take you where you are
Already, no more – but the air about you will have changed,
As after a long deep breath, no furniture re-arranged
In the space you’re reading in, but its moment might then feel
As ripe as an unrained cloud, lighter and denser, as real
As only an uncalled-for pure kiss in a dream can be
~
But Raimonde estimated that, for every thousand books
Left strewn about the store (by ill-mannered schmucks and dumb schnooks),
Only about ten others were sold, the cheapest at that.
But Raimonde didn’t understand, he only oversat
The con of moolah sanctified by perverted numbers
Like deadly spiky cacti disguised as smooth cucumbers.
*
Ain't it a drag how a few fools never learn the bourgeois
Business of escapism as inescapable law,
And this sketcher must confess to being one of that breed
Of dunces no less hypocritical than those who feed
On escapist fare (that allows them to bear their despair
Or ‘quiet desperation’ from day to day, year to year),
Since we earthbound non-escapists know we too are only
Made up of words that help us pretend our thoughts aren’t lonely
~
- Call it noisy desperation, this breaking of silence
To prove that people need not settle for being islands
Of unbridgeable separations, horribly discrete
For informing the most tyrannic mode of self-deceit.
Since (as Tom tells us) people can’t bear much reality,
We fool ourselves that discreteness, not mutuality,
Best defends our frailty pretending in turn to be tough,
Though only tenderness constitutes true strength.
But enough
Of all that blinking thinking (as the thoughtful blinker said)
(*fatima solagua arterra’s nudes* by Brian Chan, 2015)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 