FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN

 

            
            The whole world seemed right then a fat embarrassing failure.
         What good was the human game if few people understood
         one another, despite all our attempts at clarity?

                                                 *

         I thought and felt that Raimonde’s disappointment was complete,
         Disappointment not in me (for i’d always been only
         His paid adviser, one of many, appointed by law)
         But in any expectations he might still have retained
         Of being felt before he had to justify himself
         (And fail and fail, words being the necessary failure).

                                                *                                                                                                                      

            For a minute or two we sat in a silence outlined
         By the purring of the car-engine and interrupted
         By two or three sighs, a thudding grunt and a distinct snort
         From Raimonde’s head shaking from side to side in disbelief
         At the balls that had just rolled past an old counsellor’s lips.

                                                *

             Many lean on the crutch of melodramatic gestures
         In the face of the slightest disturbance to their balance
         Or, rather, to their sense of control over how things should
         Carry on within the limited light (it is always
         Limited light) of the way in which they have been before
         Seen.

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

    

 

 

          
          Like roads not taken / legend points, they cross               
          somewhere / it pays first to download a bush
          route foot print; wire it around the skull | futures
          like luggage lost need tree^mark time huts,
          nearby light streaming.

               * The son notes how . grand Pa^Ma act   
          least surprised each day unspools | come night
          the dog star walk, cat fur finger^fondling. 

          Control ! what hand toys mean to the boy, 
          screen^death delight unblinking | his wheel
          thumb^steer age leaves us . breadth to whisk
          broom the text shelf; French-style flip Nothing
          to be done flat bottom miracles.

               * Pre-Online models favored siestas, ties
          slack on blood or dye | startled ~ sea shore
          with rocks defending ~ they caught reflective will
          this island^world chain link spell end ? wrong
          way signs.
                           Sky not all clear couldn’t stop . jokes
          about the valley of the shadow : what are the odds
          chipping, yay.

                                                           - W.W.

         

           

               

         

 

 

            QAT

            Qat's sensation du louche continues, her sense
            That Madame’s talk is acting like a magnet
            Drawing up, from both their stomachs, iron-nuts

            Which have been fed to them as digestible
            But are really meant to be screwed onto bolts
            Replacing nails – for firmer crucifixions.
          Qat’s main mode of survival lies in asking questions,
            Bald safe questions about that you, about
            Those people before her at any moment,
            Dissolving her own history into theirs.

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

 

 

 

 

           

            What began as holiday splashing fed into
            suspicion . on the flight home he knew^had
            to decide when to squeeze the stuffing out of her;
            learn first how ! some island jockey loaf^sugar
            strong fanged . his^her turn^take vows.

                                Pray . Tell hands on throat before
            you pass to hell | gurgles struggled . up the beach
            the surf gasped ! what’s that glow in the sky.

                           New to world^weariness / duck eggs
            Done! the petit chateau^ocean pew / his Move On
            tally man fixed tail winds so flaps up ✈  Zion
            faux port Fire^burn! to ground. Bitch.

                                           *

                             What stronger back claim draws you   
            here ? unlocked step ladder ‘n’ wells, road
            limb shak^shaking.  
                                                 ) What patents kept
            off line, the sharper chip away ? light night
            draughts, separate^equal board play.                              

                         Yes, still of mind . river peace, plant 
            oils you once palmed | license^new crane saman
            yaad mind root . scoop^loot Granted.

                                           *

                           / Wait, who are you ? aghast, you ask. 
            And what on earth is your emergency.

                      / Wait, haven’t you heard ? snow falls 
           here now / no, not Lesbos, bless the stars / this
           here’s the shit, what nature deep intended;
           raise, don’t curse His hand.

                                                          – W.W.

 

 

         

           

 

                             
                 AT THE PEAK

                 For you to move, knowing,   
                 trusting that which moves you,
                 is the whole of human,
                 the ground of seeding light.

                 For me to love and yet 
                 to stray from the one loved,
                 while letting her guide me,
                 is a sprout of freedom.

                 For ones stride to echo 
                 Love’s clear eyebeam pointing
                 to the fruit of men’s moon
                 is the hymn of Heaven.

                                         - Brian Chan

 

 

 

             
         His voice trailed off:   words failed him (or he them)).   But then he said:
         – The thing was, when i could see her, i realized the bitch
         Wasn’t the tough bird she liked to make herself out to be –
         (Mia as dog and turkey?    biting and gobbling his soul?)
         – Twenny years older’n me, man, but she looked good…in the end…

                                                       *

        Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait –    i said    – you’re not telling me
        She got under your skin too –   and right away bit my tongue,
        Since i had never told Raimonde i’d ‘known’ his landlady,
        Professional propriety and all that pappycock.
       (After all my gossiping about their relationship,
        I can only say:   Beware your psycloghoist who writes
        Reports and other fiction, and ask for her his nom de plume.)

                                                        *

       – What you mean? –    Raimonde snapped, checking me out in his mirror,
       His pinched heavy-lidded eyes glinting like…a murderer’s.
       I blurted out   – Wait, you didn’t kill my Mia too, eh? –
       Raimonde turned around in his driver’s seat to glare at me:
       – Your Mia? – he snarled   – Too?  What the fuck!  

                                                        *

       He sighed loudly, then turned his head and stared out his windshield.
       A small girl, bouncing a huge green plastic exercise-ball
       Almost as high as herself, passed on the sidewalk near us.
       The hollow strangely metallic-sounding smack of the ball
       On the concrete seemed a mocking apt rhyme to Raimonde’s words.
       The girl peeped into the car, hugged her ball and ran away.

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

       

 

            
         The mission was mainly to mine emerald^like
         raptures, unknown in deserts, gorges green | danger, yes
         but who stops to worry ? high for adventure,
         consort to a million stars.

         Splits on the brain, hands^idle gun – terra   
         forma trade^face offs . like felling the tree leaf
         population; ice melt, owl fatigue.

         Those old days of ship riggings . out at sea
         dangling, shitty tasks. What kind of human risked
         the overboard pitch? we always wonder, chaired
         to gravitation watch.

                                                *

                                                    \ Up here sensors
         catch sperm whales blowing . smiles from across
         the room, meant for the stern.                           
                                                         \ Ship role issues
         not all course precise get sorted; cubicles for knot
         relief . sign in if there is need. Flight systems
         nation^tag free.

                                                 *

                                  Memo : must remote this impulse   
        to rewatch old explorations | orbit one two check
        time light blink ? the protein 2070 boost. Sorry,
        mountain bongos.

                                           / Agent Vajindra, here – moon
        listening station | this text no feed forward, please?
                             / Aren’t there shrouds to sew, strip
        urgency for masts down there ? millennial birth
        luck, happy endings.

                                                          – W.W.

         

         

           

 

             
          QAT
       

         So that you can feel your life has some purpose, 
           So that you can sleep without screaming through bombs bursting, 
           Sleep without needing to dream at all, and wake,
           If at all, ripe for one more field-day.  *BACK home,
           Qat was sometimes called Mère Thérèse sans la Croix.

           But she keeps an old rosary, just in case
           There might be more to Things than Service to Taste
           By Form and Performance – ideals of that class
        (Of aspirants never again to be slaves or serfs)

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

 

 

          
        Cause . they stopped performing^it seems the oval
      / faith deep, stain top loading / won't allow^jump
        Start anymore – wanting instead the glow . inside
        dream cleaning.   

                  ) Though who would bypass indoor plumbing,    
        take squat rump ? chances in forum with desert
        lynx, scorpions; submit . sore among deceivers
        dysenteria drying.

        Cause . they’d rather cut^try she/her fresh 
        partner grips; meringue . the hip turn birdie birdie
        swing at shield^life pins.

                                                 * 

               ) As heaven ‘n’ earth deform, breath on top    
        breath pile | breach advisory : about tests, young
        blood red for diced tomatoes . old pissers who won’t
        take stem for an answer.

                                                 *

        Cornered, cringing to receive hurt / Toyota hunt
        wheels churning dust / stumbling out the compound,
        baby in back wrap . who ran Which way? ran.

               ) Left behind the grass patch, sunset cows | night  
        time quiet like no place on earth . except perhaps
        once Dutch stabled Paramaribo.
                                                                   Though who
        sleeps like a baby anymore ? anywhere bread fruit
        heads tail fall | long poem short – ‘way too much
        reality, man . can hardly bear.’ Popo! Popo!

                                                                  – W.W.

 

 

         

         

          
       MARA

      *BUT escaping back to White America
       Had not helped Mara escape from her nightmares
       About her Indian student with her chopped-up
     Lines echoing the other choppings-up she had seen
       Done to other people whose silenced voices
       She meant to lend some utterance by her verse.
       Its ‘content’ the city Doctor had ignored,

       Concentrating instead on the ineptness
       Of its chronicler, the wannabe author –
       Who would later dedicate her first published
     Work (the grim autobiographical All About!
       About growing up in an East Coast village
       Where a girl walking to school daily passes
       A trench bearing overnight corpses floating)

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

 

                               

 

         
         I had to get over the shock of his new pinched sharp eyes.
      He mentioned right away that he’d had laser-surgery
      To repair his sight:  – Most of it:   I still need reading specs. –
         I couldn’t help wondering how he could have afforded
      The Technique or Procedure or just the Operation,
      But i didn’t have to ask:   I knew he’d tell me.

                                                      *

                                                                                It must 
      Have been with Mia’s help, tight-taloned eagle though she was.
     (When i was her Poor Boy, i used to tell her she’d faster
      Spread her legs than her fingers – which she’d then spread to scratch my
      Eyes out – to prove her point:   i was safer with her claws closed.

                                                     *

      So why, i now asked, had Raimonde left the old bird behind? 
      Or had he?     Perhaps they’d both emigrated to Loffdoff?
      – This’ll come as a surprise to you –   he said, slowing down
      The car beside a deserted playground,    – but it was she
      Who told me to disappear after she had me fixed up.
      I don’t know –   he mused, stopping the car dead   – it was as if
      She couldn’t stand the sight of me now that i could see her
      Better   – like, without glasses, i was this scary stranger,
      Can you believe?   She even gave me some dough to get lost!

                                                      *  

         Raimonde's words were so convincing, they sounded like a lie
      You’d tell your therapist, but there was no faulting his tone
      Of puzzlement, even hurt, over Mia Frears’ choice.
         Shaking my head in amazement, i asked   – And you took it?    
         – Sure –  he said quickly    – why not?   Who wouldn’t?

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

 

 

                 

 
           Our window dress instinct placed bets on Sundays,   
           climbed over stare^steps to Office chair . bare
           foot field memory wiped | praying no rain down
           sodden the bicycle lanes, our grievances sun
           pinned sheets.

           The Hoatzin bird watched flood water marks on
           plantation stilts, mud clearing feats : palm thatch
           swap for galvanized . fixtures | landings, up looks
           How paid servants steal ‘n’ hide . verandah
           articles.

           Coconut oil scalp scrubbed, port plank toil 
           rubbed; henna hands bandaged time ‘n’ again
           wounds, See'f I care . that grave won’t close. 
                
                                     Iguanas caught ! dissembling so 
           gold drudgers fire up Canton sausages | between town
           cars cattle amble, rope loose for the colony call
           back . Goodness me! new extraction flares.

                                             *

                                                     Tangled in mangrove
           littoral not for one moment could crab trustees
           imagine – beneath the ocean first aliens might
           have^buried signals, property lines.

                                 Moot now . among the wells most          
           bored on the planet our wishing towers | don’t
           dock knock_ask . why we flail for this ? high
           ebb tide balloon sail.
                                                             - W.W.

 

           

         

 

               

            MARA + LESSING 

            Like father, like son is too easy to say, 
            But Lessing is Mara’s man who got away
            With thousands of her black-market U.S. bills
          Rolled tight and hidden in hollowed-out soles of his shoes
           (One way to get money out of Guyana;
            Another, to have crooks as your fucking-friends;
            Another, to become a politician).

            No, that scunt never did deposit any
            Of Mara’s cash to any of the umpteen
            Foreign bank-accounts she had opened up, one
          For every tourist-city she had ever passed through.

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

 

 

               
          Despite the bow leg balance, the way untouched
          from defrost to door swing she carried on it made
          sense to stand aside | her air, sweep past could let
          your hair ‘n’ shoulders down . Osewa Ni torso
          politesse.

          Encouraged by heritage to hold . the pedigree 
          in clutch her intense fibres did just that | item
          open close store concerning.
                                                                                      Then this 
        #same selfie arrived, asking to coincide | fitted 
          for thigh wrap entrée she/hers secured – adding licks
          new to our custard apple evenings . finger span
          dip to deep.

                                                             / Love shed like precious 
          blood . cell change from island to island. Watch
          here now / from foreign who like fucking with us /
          fields cropped over valley all our lives mist, fern.      

                                             / Cyaan jus’ show up, night
          into sunrise stretch . strip bamboo shoot fi buss, 
          not flute^horn about | # fly leaf tag  ✈  diamond
          rough for hewing, belly fret . pirate ring.

                                                                       – W.W.

.             

       

           

 

           
           QAT + LESSING 

           No other do-gooder could reach the toenails
         Of Qat, that cool-looking but volatile volcano
           From Cameroon with whom Lessing lived for nine
           Whole months before she threw him out for pissing
           Her off with his sacrée paresse sans valeur –

           A pique-piss provoked by his complaints that he
           Was the last thing on Qat’s mind, even when ‘love’
           Was the thing they were supposed to be making.
         (Reader, some terms are just itching to be ironised.)
           
             (from “Charon’s Anchors” by Brian Chan)  

 

           

         The show confirmed for me why i don't attend galleries:         
        I always end up feeling like a prisoner-inspector
        With death-row inmates already hanging off the walls or,
        More à la mode, disembodied and rotting on the floor
        For me to actively step over and forget.

                                         *                                                                             

          I left before trying the Argentinan Malbec Bob
        Had recommended in atonement for his impatience
      – For which i couldn’t blame him:    Jill looked about to give in,
        Like a student at last convinced her young prof wanted more
        Than a sycophallic mistress and really cared for her.

                                             *

           But what did i know?   I was just a sic psychologust
        On vapid vacation, and they were mere other tourists,
        Strangers not just to me but, no doubt, to each other too

                                              *

          I walked out of the museum and into the night’s cool.
        There was a taxi idling outside and i simply asked
        The driver to give me a tour of the town by night-light.
        He nodded and switched on his meter and said – What’s up Doc?
             The voice was neither unfamiliar nor intimate
        And, in the dark of the box, it took me a few seconds
        To recognise the face above the hand held out to me:
        It was Raimonde Winterkiss without the black-framed glasses
        He always wore in the jail where i was his counsellor.

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