“…men dreaming and living
and hungering in a room without a light
who could not die since death was far too poor.”
- Martin Carter, Looking At Your Hands (1951)
\ Would show us how to catch ‘n’ clean lung fish;
explained reports from foreign . how churches
making room for condos now. Can’t compare, nah
cyaan complain.
We didn’t sweat his ninety
year old head band . night dark arms long
never caught moon hanging . found his way.
^
\ This place . ask why island breeze feel
like Admin breath policing the air | how jumbies
walk, fig leaf form . wanting to be tree whole
dance.
With pheasant eyes + hassar gills
we’d bicycle . search all ‘bout. The discovery sea
changed ground tracks < back to Estate overlord
house bottom . bending blind.
^
\ How best to millions follow ? on hinge
post titles flying bad . cows for green | help
mothers worn . sheet neck to toe mosquito sucks
control.
Yo, Carp . frame saw a climate proof
Ark | or signal an uber spacecraft . like mammoth
over the island, hover lights flashing . out wide
everybody staring
– W.W.
YUH RAP SO (2.7)
One way or another, Dilys would decide,
God was the only way to transcend a world
That was doomed to sink under a swamp of words
More complacent than the ebb tide’s furbelows
Dawdling till their moment to surge + swallow
Every meaningless dead fish + brick + bone
Stuck in the placid silt-beach of smooth disdain.
In her heart she knew there was no only-One
Anything, but One God was the Exception
That knocked on her mind’s door, entered and remained
(from “Raponani” by Brian Chan, 2023)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 