From one cage to the next – through whose doors i move
needing neither to open them nor to slam
them behind me with bogus finality
in sentimental gesture to the idea
of being done with at least one frustration
to freedom – one more bedroom or house or car
or café or office or toilet where stains
from the spills of habitual performance
are mixed up with the deliberate markings
of desperate loneliness’s need to leave
evidence of its once having been – leave proof
once and again and again that life once knew
itself this grooving way of dodging time’s grooves
though it speaks of itself as already past
(from “Limboa”, a sentimental anthem,
by Brian Chan, 2023)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 