FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN

         

                                                   "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) 

 

 

 

                                                         But that was just it, the trouble,
       Or part of the trouble anyway, that had made Stew stall
       Work on his comicbook: he wasn’t afraid to depict
       The goriest crimes of war and murder and rape that lurked
       Around every corner of his society and times,
       Behind and under every smile a mile wide on billboards
       (They selling pills, we paying bills)

                                                ~

        Drawing a raw vengeful virago kicking some weird-
        Looking lowlife to death for his annoying (to put it
        Mildly) habit of knifing sleeping strangers in the gut
        – And planting evidence to make those wild crimes seem the work
        Of teenagers who had no way to prove their innocence –  
        Was easier for Stew than making images of love-
        Making

                                                  *

                                                                   Furthermore, which one
       Of his Amazons would represent Evil?, Duelle or
       Queen Mona, that Marnie-esque liar in an office-suit?

                                                  ~

          APT employed cuter whores than Radica but they were all,
       Stew felt, alike at bottom.   Then why had she captured more
       Of his imagination than the rest?    He couldn’t say,
       Stew could not utter, son of repression’s bitch of silence,
       Itching to break its glass cage with bricks of Art:   he wanted,
       But his neck was red with fear of being seen to want, that
       – A fear he couldn’t overcome, since he didn’t know how
       To name it and so tame it.     

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

 

 

 

                                                                
                                     "..the archaic compulsion – apparent bewilderment
                                                   – of the soul – rib of male and female” 
                                                   The Waiting Room, Wilson Harris (1967)     
                            
                                   
         Even under orthodox skin wish ticks riddle, mark | You 
         tense, Is this the stare end of interfacing ? inside
         heart chambers ~ dare you break to pee, fear you
         might miss the lapsed cord snip ~ brow lines
         beading.
                                                                                         So 
         her cave man left the wards, ran off with the nurse / we’d
         just entered the cafeteria, lifted our libation cups; quick
         sips, Oh, steaming rims / let What happened? steep outside
         gut liquid, polar bonds widening.

                                                   ~

         Hips for having, giving form consent | shards from her    
         glass dreams confirm . him teeth grind while them
         sleep.
                                                                                       How
         could ties main stay ? the vessel knot, a beehive; bees
         like Stage #1 curtains raising nipple cues, here after
         deemed non binding.

                                              Reupholstery  ? riskier than      
          shopping a new box spring, which for spring is a wild
          bet hedge.
                                                                                      Merde!
          The need to sit, feathers riffling to hatch; the longer last
          straws last, the helplessness | across the tables someone
          might serve . notice, care.
                                                                                      Aargh!
          Past gravity | wind, bills that let fate, hemorrhoids interfere. 
                                                                                   
                                                                                   – W.W.                                      

                                                                                                                                        

               

                 

 

                  
             MARA

             But, Mara wonders, why turn any challenge
             Of present-tense utterance into a safe
             Postponability? – by jotting it down

             For some future reference’s denial
             Of the Now of the urgencies of borrowed
             Breath whose return-date is still every moment,
            As far as Mara knows, having lived a thousand deaths.

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

 

         

                                                                       
                                                             "The open-and-closed shutter of dream,
                                                             the bitten cry in the night, the language
                                                             of the heartland."
                                                                  – Wilson Harris, "Heartland" (1964)   

             Antarctic / freeze flight in temper rare / sheets white   
         collapse form ice floes sending bone whales seas away
         for hump 'n' warmth . off mouth chat first rivers.

         Not much luck here – contact less on a reef, carrion    
         beaks ‘itching.

                                  Elsewhere egg curates mop stomach 
         tiles in denial; rent stays due as gorging water lines sidle
         up the silo.
                                                               Go ahead, blame
         the piano scales of measure ! those cave bat bitch strain
         droppings . see’f it matters.

                                                     +

         Fliers leaving our island dodge rocks in space | on slate 
         roof cubicle paper tests they don’t best well.
                                                                   They fire camp try
         poultry sacrifice . tent fold up incomplete. One way
         cobble stones shudder – Where’s the hard work in that?

                         Spackle the cracks on any profile . sap inside
         soup stirring oozes through  >  faith knit filaments
         sticky on the brow smooth barks were knotting since
         the dawn of damp.
                                               *Earth detour arrows point Fuck
         me! sideways again | meaning, globe rafters must refine
         hollows cool to idle, sort codes out; argue landing pin
         points for the next crust swirl moon shot | mask, ropes
         in the trunk.

                                                              – W.W.

    

                 

           

             

 

   
         CHARON

         *BUT Charon, an auto-misunderstood freak,
          Sometimes felt weak enough to tell Qat that all
          His life had been as hard as he is simple
        And that she had to imagine how anxious even
          The most settled stone must feel because it has
          Managed to arrive at that stability
          Which all atoms must need to serve and betray.

          A pebble-collector herself, Qat agreed:
          A stone’s beauté lies in its staggered twitching,
          Its slightest nicks dreaming of being full streams.

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

 

 

              
            Okay, okay, intelligent Reader, take it easy:
         I know Stew's a sleazy cliché as a character, young
         And hung-up on the mere hint of female power and so
         Making an ass of himself with every smart piece of tail
         He kept bringing home after his latest successful pass
        (Paid for with drinks) in a bar full of bitches and laughter
         At jokes about bitches

                                               *

         But please set aside your high-toned judicious anti-pulp
         Expectations (even if you must do so with a sigh)
         As encouraged by genteel albeit rusty novels
         Of persuasion with clever plots and proper promises
         Of some redemptive heroism or consoling myth

                                               ~

         Organic, germane to that let’s pretend game called fiction
         - For, if you’ve managed to withstand the wine-stain of this text
         Up to this point, it can’t have vexed you enough to make you
         Now want to dismiss our poor-ass Stew, look, rolling a joint
         (After his nemesistah Lee slammed his door behind her)

                                             *

         The birth – long overdue in the womb of his anxious mind –
         Of a SINful (worthless Stew would ever be a good Bad
         Catholic lad) encounter between his Twins of Good and
         Evil (could Stew ever prove more than a simplistic teen,
         As far as moral vision went?) in a dark and brittle
         Spun-sugar bubble of lust enacted in a car-park
         Or alley or rooftop

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

  

            

        Before the face turns to spider holes, skull . every limb 
        should experience at least once the dive > into sound
        fusion swells.

        Someone bites the reed announcing we’re just about    
        ready; bones look sharp . the balance Yes! beam set,
        arc sweeping. No, here be no cargo vessel jammed with
        gold . coast stunned eyes.

        Life lines skin crimping cycles through centuries  
        of ordure, risk . getting somewhere ? Who are those other guys.
        Later . they’ll doc. file air plein chord change.

                     On the qui vive . anchor links don’t build sleeves    
        ceiling high / like with stacks of hundred dollar bills / so
        bets all in while the fader holds.
                          And listen ! sex v. tête metabolizing your turn 
        off haunch will come, you’ll know | the source itself, calibration
        done, takes over.

        Nets cast higher, brainier gain ?  the ocean rolls vast
        blue; interpreters of gust, horns make sure north cleaves
        south wind connected | and there you are up 
        next to new . with skimmers passing and everything.

                                                                          – W.W.

  

       

             

                             [ In mem: Curtis Fuller . 1932 – 2021 ]

 

           LESSING

           A lazybones with a lust for doing nothing but
            Waiting to be inspired by the Surprise-muse:
            To worry about Mekking A Livin was
            For souls who had no trust in the Lord’s graces.

           *NOR did Lessing think himself religious, save
            In the radical sense of tending a link
            With his breathing’s solar-ethereal roots:
          His Lord was simply Earth’s nearest star, her resident
            God, kite-anchor of the day’s light, that present
            Which he feels it would be Baad Mannuhs to leave,
            Like a boat that has brought you this far, unmoored

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