Author: FarJourney Caribbean

            
                       *In a part of the solar system where they
         shouldn't be . report our universe cell chargers / fore
         head counting variants / with labels to mark altitudes
         at which migrant strains rim over . regenerate.

                  They harbour stable orbit homes . these stars,
         ideal for our island / oxtied to memory ploughs, cane
         strip rut / assuming they’d want to bottom sync line
         chipping, plan their next move from here.

         Ground up, blue on green heart pounding, like geese  
         flight pattern how we’d welcome alien lights . ring
         finger tests. Not that we’re in any position to grant
         land permits.                        
                                    *Our yearn designers, slanting to man
         Friday nights with gay beach turtles, swear they could
         word mince the shell . like arctic whales sea warmings.

                                          Still, if out there you/they can 
        read this . at the Enter Pin point try Fireball_Find.

                                                Set down deep breath! blood   
         stream quiet; key strike babies / scrolling keeps us
         up all night / in cicada cradles wipe, wrap . starry
         through port systems Send | back space, no . oh God
         tracking.

                                                                       – W.W.

   
        LESSING

         Losing it with thoughtless tossing of its dice –
        *AS THOUGH dice were akin to the blindly dropped
        Or impatiently flung unimportant things
     (But all objects aspire and demand to be portents)
        Which he has strewn behind him, without minding
        That he might have to turn around and find them
        Yearning to be as vital as obstacles,

        Toe-stubbers and foot-trippers and head-thumpers
        And other discarded near-thoughts left lying
        Around disguised as shoes, iron-weights or gobs
      Of butter with enough time to rehearse their new roles

         (from “Charon’s Anchors” by Brian Chan) 

   
      
          But you can take the boy out of the confessional, yet
       Can't take …et cet.    So, as regards Duelle and Queen Mona,
       Stew finally confessed to me that it was a mistake
       To consider Good and Evil as two independent
       Forces forever in conflict, as they had before seemed

                                                                     ~

       He wasn't quite ready to see them as two currents
       Connected to an authority-source higher than both,
       But swallowed his own text’s hint that they could work together
       Towards some point even they had not been given to know.

                                                                     *

       In this sense, a not normally speculative Stew guessed
      That Evil was integral to the world’s ecology
      (As far as he could fathom that fashionable term with
      Its purist reek enticing even the worst polluters).
      And with that realisation came a self-consciousness,
      A watching, as though from above himself, of that self’s own
      Wantings and doings and gettings and losings and screw-ups.

                                                                     ~

         So in Stew's psyche was planted, it might be said, a seed
       Which, within the right atmosphere of readiness, would sprout
       And root and grow into a spreading tree of awareness
       Of his partnership with that wider ecology known,
       By its thousand names, all translations of the One, as God.

     (from *fatima solagua arterra’s nudes* by Brian Chan, 2015)

                                                                          
                                                    "…wheat field, swath of light, violet
                                                     stains, the night someone wiped her hands on."
                                                             - Ishion Hutchinson, Second Return

             
         Passages rite . cased in the head / who hears who
         cares ? on the plane train play platform / knot
         tight the scarf, scroll your bewares.

         Gauge what distance keeps anxieties dry . how lava    
         issues fold as morning cold shower runs | flip
         the omelet quick before it burns.

                      The pet couch, trust gets you used        
         to tunnels, light mirage | one day ~ that leap,
         the cleave through custom, arms air kiting ~ tuck
         legs extend, polar like flag planting.

                     Inside your storm saviours tour, feel 
         Sorry . mate gap fill. Ten, twelve years on slices
         thin / fingers stall, tip dust / faith clasp like
         child to feed.
                                                            And oak beam
         ceilings curb until, doubts swung, joint hips make
         room | release . restart OK.

                                             +

                 *Sun clock dings, now who was it ? ordered 
         pawns to go / gambits open fixed wing chest
         pain endings, kills confirmed / off line each grace
         state waits . what a drip drip.             
                         Range, moon walk the square . fresh
         Queen | Rien pour rien . time liens.

                                                                 - W.W.

             CHARON

            *NOW closing his eyes and surprising himself
             By actually sinking into a kind
             Of sleep, one conscious of its own shallowness,
           Charon sees Pablo’s Reading Girl in the rocking-chair
             His mother used to sink into at tea-time,
             Either because she is actively yearning
             For her Chineeman to bring some chocolate or

             For baby to done born and lef she in peace.
             In this vision he senses the roots of his
             Insoluble sadness locked to his mother’s

             (from “Charon’s Anchors” by Brian Chan)

             
         Wide in front flat screen vacuum eyes bag dreading
         the metamorphose . nerve of arms up linking dark
         matter / some common show faith stage / while crop
         heads dry rub myth backs.

                  But See, at any chance they snake ring you,    
         any egg lay . stray beyond skirt luck boundaries;
         spread feather curious.
                                     Dorsal like snapper new to river
         plates, flappy breath signals our wish for pouch
         friendly pelicans | half empty . they’ll assume.

                      *At prayer sites, in brushed cow postures
         we choose handlers to whack any encroaching swamp
         inkhead | wells kept under cabbage sleeve . peel
         perfect for receiving. 

                                               +

                      *At night soldier face spouse fucking . barely
         a peep | these aren’t those Demerara slope windows,
         ol’ house hot airing . cupidity shift sticks. 
                         Which makes for lasting not long swells,
         but See, pardna ships trade best in crates marked ours,
         theirs | though who knows, plight ‘n’ appetite could
         alter
                              As ocean rise fire blood on testing
         course / thirst, vine versions you’re supposed to savour /
         there must be drawers . knives I know, right? tables
         timing fate somewhere.
                                                              – W.W.

         LESSING

         All in nature, with every unconscious breath,
        Are killers, with fangs either snarled or filed down,
        With pocketed fists, whether naked or gloved,
      Gripping smug switchblades of blindness assumptively set.
        But murder as universal principle
        Sparking exchanges of energy does not
        Console Lessing in his creeping awareness

        Of his own conspiring with murder’s régime,
        And, if he heeds this bad faith, one day he’ll have
        No choice but to cut off its breath (his bad faith’s:
      The régime’s bad breath will take its own foul time to fade):
        Then, at least, it will be seen (though probably
        Not said) that all have a choice in the matter

           (from “Charon’s Anchors” by Brian Chan)

           So it is no surprise that, finally, Stewart Galenza
       A determined and determining god of potboiler
       Resolutions and fates, should change the encounter between
       His Duelle and his equally fantastic Queen Mona
       From a hate-lust cat-fight (lesbian sex so safe, he thought)
       Into an amicable meeting (in a hotel-lounge
       Or cheap café, whatever, who cared) of ‘matching’ angels
       Entertaining and plotting new strategies for ‘saving
       The world’, from its injustices, with mischief of their own
       Righteousness.

                                              *

                              Which one was Good and which Evil no longer
       Mattered:  Stew even designed two new uniforms for them:
       Naked Duelle got herself inked into a black pants-suit
       And Queen Mona dumbed down into blue-and-pink underwear
       Which Superwoman herself wouldn’t have been caught dead in.

                                              ~

         But despite the cowardly kitsch of Stew’s graphicnovel,
       We can see how his pussyfooting flatfooted approach
       To depicting issues of female power and desire
       And transgression led him to tilt beyond the simplistic
       And simple-minded duality of Good/Bad fictions
       - His enemy, his own dulled mind, become the sharp ally

                                                                  *

       Not that Stew would have admitted to caring anything
       About ‘duality’, ‘spirituality’ and such:
       After all, he was a no-shit Allbirdy boy (though born
       In repressed München of Polish-Portuguese parentage),
       And it was years, thank God, since he had been an altar-boy

      (from  *fatima solagua arterra’s nudes* by Brian Chan, 2015)

         

                                                   "Tension of the ‘dead’ in the living, and of
                                                    the ‘living’ in the dead… the sputter of space  
                                                    now. The gibberish of the stars. The naïveté
                                                    of eternity."                                     
                                                                 - Wilson Harris, The Waiting Room

             Despite being swept over the crest, Fin fast
             Activating / as weed wraps pull us under claiming
             ocean back is what we always wanting / the breast
             strokes . torso Now! not a good time torques.

             Spouting air . hot for portfolios who stops to trace 
             what the helicopter shaft light identifies ? wave people
             like they rubbing up mermaid Earth sucks below
             waist.

             And who hides mishaps in a lab ? like in tea bag     
             skin thin. Core bits crack, futures spread . cries go
             out for bible sourcing, Yes! to painless fade.
                                                   Our island immortelles stir,
             trust a lost responder bends plucks. Salvia Divinorum.  

                                                  +

                   Head pillow helped . fruited body near last place,
             breath herd stampede | flat on slab, the sound of blade
             bone scalping . a scraping sound like plate giving
             up grain remains.

                  *Solar sails sense there’s wind just past beyond           
             even as / gathered in fields Confio en Dios / hands grip
             balls of kite twine; tail razors cloud thresh.  
                                                                               C’est moi,
             Angeline. J’arrive | dust rings form, brighten.

                                                                         - W.W.

                                   [ In mem.  Jacob Desvarieux . 1955 – 2021 ]

              LESSING

               Look, he hadn’t been able even to be bothered
               To fight with his landlady who tried to and did
               Prevent him from moving out without paying
               What he owed her for room and water and heat.

               She had let him have his cage cheap in exchange
               For his driving her to Safeway once a week
               And to the funerals she couldn’t avoid
             At her age on her own stage of cemeterosis.
               A twig of stubborn Lithuanian bush,
               She might outlive her younger chauffeur who knew
               They both were just rehearsing their final drives.

                (from “Charon’s Anchors” by Brian Chan) 

                                                                           "Falling is the consequence that we accept
                                                                             for our decision to leave the ground."
                                                                      -  Lor Sabourin, 28, Professional Rock Climber

              
            Staring up in the eyes of her lover, bedtime work sheet
            joint sliding, Puritee wonders . Is this port for anchor
            lease age right. Fingers trace his shoulders grip, Closer,
            there yet?  print . layer piercing.

                                                                                 Ordinarily
            nobody hangs within wedge range to catch tumble
            suddenness; alone you could poke fun ways out or
            cat curl through dream, billing cycles | moon full,
            a scrolling goat herder might notice something zeit
            geist intended.
                                                                                 Waiting
            in place / partner hasn’t called, waist cord in lift
            tug readiness / vows go light heady. Doctors say
            It’s a sign . strong empathy nerve ends; like sea crow
            wired for migrant boat run, our island prayer beads
            keeping score.
         
                                                                                   Don't
            avoid falling, the rock fellow adds, Learn to fall
            better . sounding like a famous playwright
            you might hear echoes of | off the beam, high
            time n’est-ce pas to lower exculpations, canopy
            pilot lines; blaze, fade level crossings.  
                                                                     – W.W.

             LESSING

            *BUT don't get Lessing the cockeyed fantasist
             Started or he’ll tell you fantasy is just
             A reality that hasn’t yet condensed.

             As faithful Sci-fi aficionados might
             Swear, or as a non-literalist reader
             Of Genesis might imagine of pre-Fall
           Adam+Eve, that wraith of androgyny before
             Its nipples got split and set from two to four
             And incest and Murder, hatched of frustrated
             Nostalgia for the One’s freedom, were seeded.

              (from “Charon’s Anchors” by Brian Chan) 
           

            
         So all his thwartings hung about him like a fallow fart
         Whose yellow odour refused to fade (like that sepia
         Photo, of his just-wed not-yet parents stiff as corpses,
         Which his less iffy but equally harried sister kept,
         In an album, beside a shot of her and her lover
         Projecting fearless toothy smiles during a Pride parade).

                                              *

         In this sense (of a legacy of bland labels), Stew was
         As densely diseducated, as ripely mesmerised
         As a newly freed slave or serf who, in his liberty
         Now, unwittingly, finds himself under the tyranny
         (Called ‘freedom’) of yet another yoke of terms (in perhaps
         A new tongue of negotiation demanding a wrench-
         ing and twisting and knotting of the muscles, the habits
         Of his throat's voice-box and vocal cords, of his very tongue;

                                             ~

         Or perhaps in a birth-tongue that overnight has under-
         mined the the dreaming changes of its magmatic foundation
         And the volcanic force of its lava-like surprises
         Of utterance to construct and impose the fearsome rock
         Of false fire whose walls are policed by disdain and silence)

                                              *  

         Terms new but tied to old nets of words as survival-tools,
         Things that proved he was not a fool, if he used them rightly
         And, in doing so, broke no rules of behaviour proper
         To the breaking of old stones towards making new mansions
         And to turning the mud of lies into the hollow pots
         Of gilded promise, gilded futures denying the Now.

         (from *fatima solagua arterra’s nudes* by Brian Chan, 2015)

                                 
                                                          
                                                    "The soft of the night into morning
                                                        Felt here . remembered
                                                    Under the hoofs of the cart"
                                                         - from "Mesongs", Kamau Brathwaite

               Heard ‘bout him ? on mission post plantation; house
            him build side washed by hurricane . gunmen invade
            We neva knew was him | how he kept afloat, swore
            his hounfour stave of heart would beat . the next
            beard cutting dealer back; course set, Cow Pastor. 

            Dead plants attract the pity of the forker who reads             
            in heaven’s silence disappointment with how earth
            works – tubers / in cluster prove time priming / Listen,
            chest to ground . breakers ride slow.

            His nose tell for dust ways urged scaffold builders 
            don’t get stuck in blow charts past | women fending
            felt the dress tuck of his ‘poeia . knees in limbo
            on volcano grit bit.   

            Done! beach ‘n’ heat . retreating cruise ships out    
            at sea looking back at him / Cal'ban houm zinc
            groove marking / hadn’t a clue how he arrived, thrived
            inside island mix match, skin game scratch.

            His work, place overgrown with weeds ? Sorry,     
            indifferent island . rigor legends set, pulse charge
            Eh eh! make believable.

                                                       – W.W.

              LESSING

              To reach for the sleep he hasn't been able
              To fully enter since leaving the Fragrant
              Harbour of Hong Kong to cross the Mirror Sea
            To the Inlet Gates of Aomen – whose amen-omen
              Lessing’s Shadow, win or lose at the Tables,
              Can not unleech himself of, the clinging sense
              That’s he’s never again going to leave this
           
            Colony: it’s about to be his graveyard.

               (from “Charon’s Anchors” by Brian Chan)  

             
         Pricks for future pins / base to dome opening / that burst
         through space blue, orbit; otherwise / e4 press Start
         probing / what's the point ? rice field ankles whole
         hog grind, canal role to find.
                                                                      There's theory,
         though, to crab pause . inching. 

             *On our island inflatable rafts push night long off 
         memory bays; on stilts mud tracking days remain bare
         face like ‘culpas’ en confessionnal booth occasion.

                  Playing for pay makers chair on edge coin
         moves bite sizing; hammocks stretch like for bodies
         after a heresy hunt ? crimson blade curve Don’t ..please,
         No, no! back with prayers, no head block.

                       Ocean under pipes empiring hoist up crude         
         skirts flare, funnel – d8 line on hold | elsewhere palm
         tree top leaves curl . snap at shirtless men rod casting
         off the seawall.
                                                            *In hover still ? test
         ride this arcing wave : hips d’jeune in sound form board
         rank break; laugh at something funny.   
                                                        Dios mío ! birth place
         shift key notes not Entered.

         Patria clock watchers check their long day ‘licks, sunset   
         passion way ahead of itself; focus nowhere near finger
         tip over | moon gate to mate.
                                                                    – W.W.

              QAT

          The System has no meaning for Qat, except
          As a kind of raw floor that needs to be kept
          Well-swept so that anyone can walk without
        Hindrance – liberté, oui? : l’attitude de latitude
          With no echoes of ‘mock’ to democracy,
          Jane and Peter looking out for Jack and Jill,
          Before they climb their hill, to prevent their fall.

        (As such, Black Qat is as White as was required.)
 

          (from “Charon’s Anchors” by Brian Chan)