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                 On our wedding night we shared secrets 
             like truths unblocked to build trust. Secrets are
             tumors growing in the bond, we laughed. 

             I unsealed this long cached feeling: how once
             upon a sumptuous moon I played prairie to wild horses:
             how with lights out this girl I met,

             all search and galloping focus,
             bounced like a jockey on my chest,
             while my palms circled her globe

             her flashing cheeks, smooth as Eve's apples.
             Ceramic hands on clay reach no such paradise
             or peak; nor sculptors' hammers.

             That night we felt some unintended tissue tearing, It happened
             long time ago, I sighed. Our wedding bands delinked, It meant
             nothing really, I tried. Beauty of flesh, not heart. 

             Now in our bedroom (ceiling-fanned) the light stays on, she insists,
             "I want to see your face." Her eyes, upstaring in redress, urge
             Give me babies I will love stronger than you.

             My fingers grip and I comply; penitent, unhurried, the head
             down seed bull ploughing; at the mercy of her whipholding clit.
             She's good with the kids, I should tell you

                                                                            - W.W.

 

                     

                           HOME

                     While you are away, I prepare
                     for your return by taking, out
                     of the cage that even the most
                     sacred contract could not but spore
                     and vein and muscle, yet one more
                     passage like a tongue of the sun
                     that leaps and dips, stretches and sucks,
                     draining and refilling its glass.

                     So I clean our house by leaving
                     it behind, so stamp our contract
                     by breaking it, and so prepare
                     for the return of two strangers
                     to the open strangeness of a cage
                     dismantled like a stage swept clean
                     in readiness for its next play
                     in which strangers' hearts, tongues of fire,

                     meet, connect and lock, unlock and let
                     loose, explore and find, and give away.

                     (from "Gift Of Screws" by Brian Chan)  

 

                  

                   
                                                      

             One morning he discovered a second challenge to his beleagured spirit, the need
         to execute the merge.
             He would come down the access ramp to the expressway only to find a stream of
         traffic tearing down the right lane, showing no desire to slow and let cars slip
         in. This meant he had to wait and wait; stare into his sideview mirror, watch for   
         a break, while drivers behind him honked their horns and hinted he lacked road
         courage.
             Compelled once to wait his turn behind a timid driver craning his neck to look 
         back as if pleading for a chance to merge, he discovered his own irritability. He'd
         swear at cars in front of him…Damn Taurus sitting there….just sitting there…
         shiiiitt… Ford Escort with your stupid AAA sticker and Proud Parent sticker… for 
         chrissake, move, move!  He'd mutter and swear like this; then he'd feel chastened
         when his turn came to merge and the same thing happened, the same fearful
         hesitation; the car behind him poking its nose in an effort to show him how it was
         done in New York city.     
             He had to find a way; he had to find a way to execute the merge. One morning
         he did just that.
             He sat at the top of the ramp and watched the traffic, measuring the intervals
         between cars in the right lane. Drivers behind him wondering if he'd stalled honked 
         but he ignored them. He watched. He measured. He waited to swoop down.
             When he sensed the moment was right he stepped on the gas pedal and charged   
        down the ramp. A quick glance in his sideview mirror told him just how much
        acceleration he needed to avoid a fatal collision; and he kept going until he'd executed  
        the merge.      
            Sometimes he heard a screech of tyres as horrified drivers seeing this madman 
         hurtling down the ramp slammed on the brakes.
            "You have a good day, too!" Radix shouted, not looking back, slipping over quickly to
        the left lane and only then glancing in the rearview mirror in case the driver he'd cut off 
        decided to give chase which was quite likely, you never know, given the crazy things
        people do in this city.
         (from Ah, Mikhail, O Fidel! by N.D.Williams, 2001)
           

                    "Michael…" 
               "What is it?"
               "Somebody trying to force open the front door."
           Radix turned over, opened his eyes, listened. They both lay on their backs and  
           listened. Amarelle's fingers were buried in his chest ready to push him out to
           investigate, or pull him closer like a shield.
               "I hear a noise, like somebody banging on the door."  
               "It's probably fellows on the stoop."
               "You know, one o' these nights somebody goin' break in and murder us     
          right here in the bed."
               "All this television you watching, now you starting to hear things!"
               "I am telling you, I heard somebody banging on the front door."
               "Banging on the front door? Or knocking on the front door?"
               "Don't be stupid."
               "Look, there's nothing to worry about. We probably safer here than most people.
        Anyone trying to get in would have to walk over the fellows on the stoop…the same  
        fellows you always complaining about. Right now they like watch dog on the stoop."
               "Yes, but you don't know who and what they watching."
               Radix turned on his side, preparing to give up listening. They heard a muffled heavy 
        sound coming from the front of the building, as of something thrown against the front
        door.
               "You hear it again…?  and you just lying there?" Amarelle poked him in the ribs.
              "Is probably fellows horsing around."  
              Amarelle sucked her teeth. 

 

            When eventually he returned to the bedroom Amarelle was fast asleep; or appeared
        to be, until his body weight on the bed stirred her. She turned on her side.
             "I thought the people kidnap you or something."
             "Very funny." She was developing the sarcastic tongue. He concentrated on getting
        under the covers.
             "So…"
             "So what?"
             "So who was out there?" she asked.
             "I told you, just fellows horsing around."
             "You know, one o' these nights these same fellows goin' ride their horses right inside
        this bedroom."
              "You said that before."
              Radix turned his back to her. His mind was a rumbling furnace. He didn't think he'd           get back to sleep rightaway. He had to get some sleep before the alarm went off at six.  
       They were quiet for awhile.
              "Well, whenever they decide to break in, this kitchen knife waiting for them."
              Kitchen knife! "What kitchen knife?"
              Amarelle reached down under the bed and came up, to Radix's astonishment, with a
       six-inch blade; the kind of knife that came in a cutlery set; the kind of set stored away
       somewhere in the kitchen, not in the bedroom! She held the gleaming blade in the air 
       until she was satisfied he'd had a good look at it.

          (from Ah, Mikhail, O Fidel! by N.D.Williams, 2001)   

 

 

  

 

 

 

  

                Too old for marches teargas street barricades, I'm up
                for this, I'll sign, oh yeah, Save the Planet! 

                Save my memories from emissions; clean my arteries of blood
                trapping silt; marriage of sleeping asbestos; punditry of pointing
                finger gas.  Filter the rain I still catch on my tongue. Solar
                panels to empower  wood burning areas of darkness,
                Si senor!  And those plastic shopping bags (I double, singles split!)
                make them so that, when used, like cane trash they crumple curl &
                wisp away.

                Save the trees I used to climb;
                new trees don't appeal to boys with joystick fingers;
                who needs paper products these days?
                only old geezers in bathrooms.

                Save all you want, my planet's in storage
                anyway. Each moment lived I've saved on memory discs,
                waiting retrieval. Yes, memory discs. You mean,
                you haven't got one? You can take them with you
                when you go.

                While saviours mass, bright green the marketplace
                or halt the ice floe melt, you're watching
                playbacks deep in the earth, high in the heavens,
                frame by frame. With Skip.
                Rewind. And bandwidth to outlast the worms.
                dot Dead, of course, oh yeah!
                                                              - W.W.

            
           

           
                        IN THE GARDEN

 

                           The lives of plants are only
                           as secret as we are blind

                      to their masks, as dumb as we are deaf
                      to the crackling silence of their tongues.

                           To these this stray ladybird
                           has no trouble responding

                      with her casual but thorough caress
                      that leaves unadored no pore of this

                           geranium's flesh of fire
                           to make it, more brazen, blaze.

                            (from "Gift of Screws" by Brian Chan)

  

                    INVOCATION

                    Woman of air and rain, flood these deserts
                    with rivers of breath and pools of cool light;
                    woman of fire, blow and lick a flame
                    up the ladder of the spine to the green
                    centre of love, the blue flute of the Word,
                    the purple sun at the eye's horizon,
                    the open crown of the all-seeing queen,
                    to smooth the path of this blind nightingale
                        through the sand dragging its wings
                        whose feathers shake with your voice.

                     (from "Fabula Rasa" by Brian Chan)  

 

 

 

 

 

   

   

     

 

 

[Don’t think of boarding rituals you missed: not leaving
through the front Gate; not tasting order and civility
at Customer Check-In; the sneak peek at First Class
that’s Not For You; your first walk sideways down the aisle;
farewell families squeezing handkerchiefs; and that last mile
to the airport, the taxi speeding for takeoff on old Atkinson runways.

Scuffling to get through, at sea on subways scuttling home,
you’ll soon forget the bush paths taken, mosquito
stings, distrust and gamble. Your winged dark nights
will scout new crabways to old watchful mornings: hey, budday,
y’know where Richmond Hill is? 

      Not so, those Jean-Jacques & Jasons pushing off
Haiti’s shores, whose last look back snaps the boatbuilder’s sign
of the Cross. Nor brave Mamadous booked on Libya’s coastlines
for Papal portos, who startle stooped Neapolitan pensioners like crows
in the olive groves: out of nowhere, again these Moors!
showing up, bare face, bare bone! with nothing
to declare but bodies of water.

Bodies in waters crossed back when still stink
and stack the myth they show no proclivity for Olympic
swimming; though free them ashore, any shore; marvel
at marathons of endeavour, wailers of enduring light
chipping to the ends of the earth
The wonder and fear in their eyes once, up on deck!

No, count your stars & stripes, backtrackers. Check your hearts
zipped pockets for dry papers. Run. Don’t know
how lucky you are]

– W.W.

THE TRIP I WILL MAKE

is the one I am.
The skies will mirror

the clouds of my eyes,
my sinuses will

decide the weather,
mountains will rise up

when I fall, and fade
if I fail, in love.

I build my own boat,
stitch and hammer its

sails and anchor, flood
these rivers of blood

with fish that I eat.
They too are stewards and

masters of all my
deaths and of their own

fate: death’s but a shape
of exchange, the price

of forever, one
more gate and bridge: we

know the trip we will
make we’ve made before

and the trip we do
is already done.
(from “Fabula Rasa” by Brian Chan)

TO ENTER

another town, to wear
another tongue, to hear a strange flute
and to know all their rhythm before
their speech, their song, the familiar and
the new, and not to mind that sometimes
it’s all a stony racket, a clash
of rocks the sea will make smooth, of knife-
blades which will sharpen one another
into profiles human of the moon.
(from “Gift Of Screws” by Brian Chan)

AMERICA

A bright shore wakes the drowned dreamer
to his own questions: these are
what he seeks through deserts
of ribbed care or pitched by waves

of desire. To stake some cooling
pool or to be washed ashore
is not to tap the deep
well or discover a new

world but to frame an old still-life.
So the quicksand dream remains
the true rock of water,
the real continent of light.
(from “Fabula Rasa” by Brian Chan)

[Where to turn, in your heart of sudden darkness, when you’re locked out
the bedroom, and mosquitoes in waiting swarm over that kneeded body
shivering in Sati’s nighty? To sniffing cross-eyed bloggers in heat
for scandal? Or columns in newspapers sworn to protect
the entitlement of the nation’s First husband?

The shame of that. His wretched country. The shame.

Suniye! There’s another way out: just two clicks through the forest;
past the bastard’s cave, the victims backtracking. We choose
our mates, not our unruled desires. So be a tigress, lady. Turn
again to poets who understand one night you’d scratch
or knock on Hillary’s door; ask to come in]

-W.W.

FOR JANE SIBERRY

But tenderness is hard
to inhabit. Skins and masks
to be shed. Every act is
a pretence of yesterday’s.
The pain of love, what more, what?
These stirrings of rain cloud.
(from “Fabula Rasa” by Brian Chan)

TO A WIFE

Your obsession with your duty makes
you customs officer
to my love: I have nothing

to declare of it to you even
though the most secret pouch
of my heart is full of this

golden drug that you once discovered
and seized for no reason
but that it made you feel full

of power. But love overbears itself,
can’t stand the weight of its
own fruits of repetition

and sleep. Yet I hope mine can still move
you before you become
one more warden of the jail

where love locks itself, itself to think
free, a captive serving
life, an artist of escape.
(from “Fabula Rasa” by Brian Chan)

ANGELS

fall off their clouds
of care to become fools
who walk tightropes and fall
off cliffs only to learn
how to turn into safe
burghers who step sideways,
around and back or not
at all, till they fall off
their rugs of calm to turn
shocked back into angels.
(from “Gift of Screws” by Brian Chan)