Stilt men dressed like volcano deities launch
from the favelas, spiderly crimson strides / poui
bosom stir^up cups, crossing land air sea / down
Chippen Hill Parkway . bottom bunching.
Torso daub, soursop waist^wrap, head in bread
fruit balls – just go to show . while douen^haunt type
sets perform Off page who taps conducting?
* One view : back when tennis court
held cool ‘n’ safe they passed in law rope^skipping
form | to feel the kalangang steel shake the wine
glass flutter O my heart!
Such frenzy ! too bad
they didn’t bank yesterdays in need reserve . store
shifts for service entrance key ? ahead case
files uploading.
^
Shipped to labour islands raised plight
hands in the air, at night flamingo^strolled | bamboo
exorcising dew^break . Koki-yo-koko lips so.
* One day imagine how! the ocean
jump^wave ends . belly foetus slosh, calabash hell
ketch bailing.
+ One last wind . sky light
open, platform halo verified ~ cane slash souls
stitch^healed Trade News! source wings on
time unfolding.
– W.W.
.
[ In mem. Gordon Rohlehr . 1942 – 2023 ]
I SAY
The limiting lister of learnt labels, a slave
of stamps not utterance, cannot conceive or feel
The List’s absence as womb of Poetry’s lava
or as pasture of freedom of the Other Voice
that allowed the Master to plunder the other
tongues of Europe, including his own tribes’ babbling,
with an innocent spontaneity denied
the slave freed who yet bows to The List’s fenced shadow.
That style is voice, l’homme même, is the gift of guiltless
theft, a colonising annexure, a collage
of influences bound to be betrayed and so
put to the service of a wide unfettered mind
itself in service to a surrealist world
stubbornly fettered yet able to entertain
……………………………………
(from “Readiness” by Brian Chan, 2013)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 