FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN

 

                                                   "..the insane clatter of silk as it fell
                                    to the floor; stocking; manuscript or flesh"
                                          – Wilson Harris, "The Waiting Room"

                 
                                                                                          Evie on                         
              Mondays wears something he might have liked, his office
              rituals missed | the waist knot tug . hand to skin spark
              find, slit ‘n’ tight fit needling.
                                                                  If others prefer shape
              shifts, coffee with cognac ~ fine! ~ fireflies can afford
              to be moody; hang on one second.

              Out on the ocean, mainsail limp . who would refuse a wind    
              brisk trader; the brush stroke horizon line so you could leap
              dolphin like to shore.
                                               Bad endings clog canals . oars parting        
              the past hard as belt marks on back.

              Harder still, the faith keep . counting breath like on virus          
              wards | don’t act PhD dick heady, Nothing to do with me,
              oyster du jour.

              Week earning end, Evie’s train all heart ‘n’ arteries              
              into funnels form top Godspeed out.
                                                                      No vein tap midnight
              rush, flowers to vase complete | undress, unwrap
              insert prints spirited off ring fingers; slide valves
              heat ~ up burn pilots flare.
                                                             - W.W.

                              

                 

                 

 

             

              MARA 

              So why now her fond smile in his memory?
              She used to jokingly call him mon semblable,
              Mon frère, but now realizes that was more

              Than third-hand sub-literary smartness but
              A real recognition of Lessing as hers,
              Belonging to her as her elemental
            Hubris, her living shadow she was bound to crash through
              And later value like the welts on her skin:
              Lessing, her guy that got away, is the one
              Blind man who has led her across death’s traffic.

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

 

 

          

       Scream – not just for the next jug:   the hard-rock snarls are so loud
       You need to scream – your plight of which the pub’s owners are proud,
       Since it is the direct result of their having obeyed
       Their marketing expert’s instructions on how to persuade
       After-work drinkers to buy more beer than they really need:
       'Keep battering their eardrums, till their eyeballs almost bleed'

                                                ~

 

       All the crap you had to put up with all week long and will
       Have to again, starting Monday morning, and you could kill
       Yourself for not quitting, perhaps you’re just a masochist
       Fooling yourself you’re a saint or a hard-nosed realist,
       Don’t most people take comfort from routine torture, take pride
       In any job well done?

                                                *

       
           Yup, there's a cheap halo hovering over drudgery
        – Including, no doubt, scribbling lines of so-called poetry,
        Long-winded lines of words dragging their wings, like drunken bees
        Bloated with some bitter nectar;   or words like famished fleas
        That can’t yet convince themselves to feed off Litricher’s bitch,
        Like proper addicts of her blood.

                                                ~

                                                          But there's the rub, the itch,
        Of the needle and the needing more, the groove none escapes,
        Streak of the human spirit’s need to stray, beyond an ape’s
        Ambling, rambling contentedness (which even apes will flout)
        Into fields of painful experiment, eurekas, doubt
        – All the shape-shifting tricks that sooner or later harden
        Into habits

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

 

                                                                       
                                                                ".. touch and go like fish to bait, flame to match
                                                                  .. in and beyond the life of leviathan, half machine,
                                                                      half human"   
                                                                                        – Wilson Harris, "Heartland"

                                                                                           Soon iris 
        scanners will determine play fold disposition; bright jagged
        lines that blear in sea rooms of consent – skin cells faking;
        the plateau, on your own.

        Gay switched cylinders with gusto though by next half    
        century the word around curves could gentrify | transient
        ‘Who was that?’ bagged for street sanitation bins.

         Too ‘intensely civilized’ to leave office, few statesmen would   
         concede; upload stream in the cubicle ? what down leg
         trickle issues.
                  Bit parts linger, strain hard to pass; bent on outlasting   
         bankers pat the bedpan, pay to beat the gong.

                                         With heart cubes shaping clicks through
         world ends, trust deep . bio rhythms to jig jiggy paradise
         stuck keys; moonlight break, babies make / unfinished
         children muttering / latch the gate. 

         OmyGod high . we’ll chuckle at what in classic years         
         mattered; what passed for change : air curtain calls . hooks
         you know, like ‘Well done. Now how about some dancing,
         Comrades?’

                                                                                        – W.W.

 

           

                 

 

 

          MARA

          Her screamings may have been sordid and seedy,
          As vulgar as Mara would learn to hate them,
          But Mommy’s fear of abandonment had been
        As real as her sense of Mara’s betrayal of her
          By just thinking of wanting to go beyond
          The walls of the marriage cage Mommy had felt
          She must accept to give her daughter a name.

          And Mara’s mother’s abuses were far less
          Seedy than her father’s fawnings ended up
          Being one night when, helping him into bed
        Drunk, Mara had knelt to his too-much, in the spirit
         Of experimental vengeance, spite against
         Her mother’s demandingly stifling limits,
         And to taste, know the seeds of her mother’s shame.

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

 

 

 

         

          At one point, to feel socially energized in the Caribbean, it mattered if
          you were young and alive in Kingston, Jamaica in the 1970s, and you
          were hearing for the first time the street hailing sound of U Roy.

          Since his death, words of tribute have rippled across media pages. For
          many there was a special resonance in his voice. It was like nothing you’d
          heard before.

          Islanders in the 60s were more at ease with the Byron Lee Dragonaire
          sound. His sun-enjoying beats accommodated a need for pleasant nights
          out dancing, on hotel floors or at island nightclubs.

          Came the 70s, and a range of performance to choose from: a catch fired
          Bob Marley jamming, his appeals for crossAtlantic justice. Songs of love
          and wanting from sweet melodians (Gregory Isaacs, Phyllis Dillon).
          Straight dance party favourites, or those home galloping Rastafari drums.

          In the mix U Roy appeared and immediately it struck you: this guy was
          bold and streaking. His improvising style was not the very first of its kind,
          but original he was all the same.

          The voice overlays, the out of line affirmations – here was someone
          rising above reggae’s bass ruling manners, interrupting the call for  
          pure entertainment – “Wake the Town and tell the people, ‘bout the
          musical disc coming your way” – challenging air play predictableness
          like never before.

                     

                             

          Back then he was simply U Roy, his birth name obscure to outsiders. His
          ‘toasting’ style would find inheritors (Big Youth, Yellow Man) but nothing
          compares with discovering those U Roy 45s; with being there, eager to
          be invigorated.

          At times his ‘words of wisdom’ in and alongside popular songs came
          across as almost ‘rude’ attachments. He had something to say; he wanted
          the whole world to hear what he (not Ken Boothe, not Jimmy Cliff)
          understood about the Kingston tough life / hard love experience.

          He seemed to suggest there was nothing fate binding about anyone’s
          birth or circumstance. You could bike ride through Kingston’s top | bottom
          grading streets; or stand aside and look. Or with a little hop and scat you
          could remodel the wheel, refashion the world with ‘versions galore’.

          If you were lucky to be in Jamaica in the 1970s, the U Roy sound, tossing
          live words into streams of complacency, was like nothing that came
          before.

          With rap imitators doing celebrity laps now everywhere, generations
          late may wonder: does the man deserve a Caribbean halo? remembered
          as an island music ‘originator’?  Yeah yeah yeeeah! As he would say.

                                                                          – Wyck Williams

              

 

    

                                                                        "Can't be others till there's one"
                                                                                    – Cave painting title                 

            Here's to what gives work rest swing / the scythe right 
            Sorry left . sigh / messáging sun beds; Monday fast break
            eggs that crackle after . which the whisk nude shells
            inform.

            Soon enough, concrete still wet, new customs set : take   
            the trail not the elevator, check crab traps when not
            on line; card rafted, rip that shark head clean off
            plastic wall indifference.

            Sky glass towers get built for souls whose agents fruited           
            trees / in frontmanship, confessions missed / balls
            at their feet courting targets any flower of day . skip
            crystal gazing.

                                                                        Bone mass non
            stoppers, c’ést sûr . considering how primate torsos pulled
            upright; whose fauna ovens fatuus lit got worked over
            centuries of blood . speckled flora; snake squeezing,
            ease.

                                                               *In fields of fission tangled since      
            core cells squirt . stream into valley, world in the palm.
                           *And gun flag braiders jangle so, ankle
            bracelets swell ‘n’ heat ! you never know with these
            summit hikers | fucking neanderthals . back and forth
            with stories.

                                                               – W.W.

 

           

                 

                                        

 

                QAT 

             While fussing over her needy types, her damned
             Immigrants and blessèd refugees.  *HERSELF
             As shiny-black ‘as a fly in buttermilk’,
           And capable of uttering in several tongues,
             Qat had been chosen to work at Refugrants,
             First as one of its non-threatening counter-
             Clerks, then fast promoted to work at a desk.

             It wasn't just her good luck to have been hired
             By a Dutchman, Jewish-White (however red
             His neck), who happens to have a thing for all
           Gals Black (however pink their palms), especially when
             They are nonchalantly great-looking and smart.

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

 

 

                                                                                                                 

                                                                                 "Who are the boys we'll root for
                                                                                  when they're all dead or gone away…

                                                                                   Who are the strangers now
                                                                                   running wild in our country…?" 
                                                                                    – Mervyn Taylor, "Voices Carry" 
 

             Should anything happen to the farm child, who would
         arm our vertigo ? electro magnets let flash fill the hills : hurt
         Unimaginable hurt has found us home.

         Glove concealed intent could reach for neck wrinkles . claim
         later not enough upserve at the wellhead; shook awake
         the breast peels off . white gown fond strokes, lettuce
         bowl dressing.

         High low backsiding out too slow how much rod ride
         can faith take, word mumbles > the humble under that
         onus our best schooling years might fear reset, wafer
         tongue open . sucking the quote unquote.

                                 *Trails outletting strewn with hacked lamb   
         parts that slip under / flounder, borders beach / in pocket
         tight wrap chips of air, shots fired over head intake | breath
         gambles so.
                        *Newstanders blood absorbent, the village heaving
         with the trust of harbours . staring out to sea; promising I sorry!
         to bottle ‘n’ piss better next rage in the hold | all quiet again,
         All mask, then.
                                                       – W.W.

 

         

             

                           [In mem:  Agitu Ideo Gudeta .. Trentino, Italy .. 01/2021]

                            

         QAT

         Qat too has settled for the final version,

         For the finished product:   there is nothing else
         To do with les déséquilibrés du monde
         But to tie them down or lock them up and let
       Them drift through a chemical haze, lest they keep screaming
         Of l’enfer du monde, that blague still a (vague) plague
         To business-as-usual with its killing
         And maddening (quel dommage) swift heartless rapes.

         Yet Qat had stayed balanced, kindly, strong enough
         To leave behind her aliénée la plus in-
         time to pursue in time those other fantômes
       Of l’Amélioration and l’Avancement that haunted
         Her father’s agreeing to let her escape

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

 

 

                
                                            
                                                  But Ben knew how to keep the thing locked
           Down when it came to selling the goods that would sell the goods:
           From Asher’s product-pitches, clients emerged neither shocked
           Nor disappointed by what APT had churned out, all their shoulds
           Of expectations replaced by the of course! of effect.

                                                        ~

          Benny would sit in like a modest member of The Team,
          With his hands cupped as though two objects were his to protect
          Like the Decalogue:   the client’s product and the plump dream
          APT would turn it into.   And he’d let APT’s Mona respond,
          In her affluent-fluent way, to any last embers
          Of de rigueur resistance to APT’s proposals.

                                                         *                                                                               

                                                                             Most fond 
          Of such graceful defenses of their work were the members
          Of APT’s Dezine and Graffix team, the young geeks who did most
          Of the donkey-digitals but were like the ignored ghost
          In a multi-stone pyramid of relentless machine.

                                                        ~

             APT's successes echo one riddle of the Pyramids:
          Who built them, Pharaohs or slaves?    Not that any of APT’s ‘kids’
         (As Arne called them) saw themselves as slaves (or whores) on the job.
          To ask you, paid slave, to unmask your whoredom is to rob
          You of that White tag slapped on Negro actors, Dignitty;
          Of your right to fool yourself with myths of Maturity,
          Such as Settling for, Putting up with, Not bitching about
          – At least, not until Friday night’s beers make you want to shout

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

 

 

 

 

             
                                         No knowing there is that holds . hard rain                     
           disputes how much the grape harvest dilutes.

           In time cards face the table; fate pokers accept the call               
           putting all on hind gut notice – point made, into the pool
           strip leap . no Exit hazard hand.

           A herdsman hums and gestures to the sky; devices light up
           wave numbers. Court’s moot . who wouldn’t weigh out the cold
           night rules, slide in with Eau Cologne discreetness.

           Long before firsts came ashore someone swept sand    
           foot prints, picked up lunch wrappings; the slender leaf
           that rolls up pain drained our mud fevers very well.

                                                 Like the jaw prize in crocodile
           eyes, we had to have one like it : one tuck ‘n’ ride dock,
           chest cool metal; a dream proof pipe replacement. 

                                   Coming one day we felt this thing. I mean,
           like chandelier beyondness it wouldn't let bones rest.

                             Plumage blow up we would, heavens to hell
           raise for it; punch a salmon in the face if it came too
           close, depth fins roam charging for it.

                                                                             – W.W.

                            

             

           

             

             

             MARA

             But this same face-saving ‘operversity’ –
             As she calls her job’s philistinism – is
             What provokes Mara to try to transcend it.

             At least, she still prides herself, she isn’t one
             Of the post-war platoon of brats who believe
             That they shouldn’t have to put up with any
            Inconvenience.  And, once, she has argued Isn’t love
             The shittiest inconvenience?   Yet all or
             Most of us, can’t wait to crash into its wall –
             Beside which work’s dumb frustrations are ant-hills.

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

 

 

     
     
            When it came to rationalizing whatever new mess
         He'd blundered into, Asher’s mind was a frightened rabbit
         Of hopping opportunist alibis – a fat habit
         He had got hooked on early on, at university
         Where, indulging in one more detour of perversity,
         He once took a ‘fun’ course in Logic that helped him see
         1) that anything was arguable, and 2) that he
         Had an instinctive talent for arguing anything.

                                                                    ~

         You would think it would have made him better at listening
         To himself and putting a lid on the ‘reasonable’
         Balls he kept setting up and knocking about, unable
         To see that the green but very flat table of his mind
         Which the balls clunked around on was riddled with holes, the kind
         Less bright blind men know to avoid
         

                                                                   *

           Be that as it may, i have to admit that no-one gave
         A fart about the fancy footwork in Asher’s brain save
         Astronomo-Kanamono with whom he sometimes dropped
         His nice-guy mask to reveal the rabbit that never stopped
         Leaping and zigzagging around the hurdles in his head
         (Though no doubt his tombstone-legend would read just LEFT UNSAID)

                                                                  ~

         Not even his drinks-&-whores buddy Arne would have wanted
         To know what really lay behind Benny’s cool mask.    Haunted
         He might sometimes look, but by what wasn’t for Arne to guess
         - He was no psickcaulogist.   Sure, Benny’s mind was a mess
         Sometimes; whose wasn’t?

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

            

 

                 
            High seas relate : so many proposals run aground / switch
            keep going lift the curse / to abandon ship, jump telling no
            one might scan . first class.
                                                   Worse than cattle calls to patria,
            cabbage heads directing what looks like a concerning
            mass around the vagine . itch to cleave.

            Expiration dates work on milk cartons; you’re not            
            a milk carrier unless your tits go jello folie deux
            or teats on tug for the pail.

            Our islanders get steamish about dumplings; some stir    
            potless roots . anguillas under rocks in rivers / Allyuh don’t
            call and ask me nothing / surfacing only to witch hump, wipe
            a little blood.

                                                  ~

            Puffier, who could keep up with neck tattoos . shouldering    
            the pledge unerasable?  
                                                            From ground to air flow
            kite frames once braved sway > risk cusps you could grip
            on^off in a wind whistle.
                                                                  As file years stack it
            gets harder . sourcing how long sarong tight generations
            swish floors, parent cell skin moulting, to step free.    

                                                         So on the nose you kiss             
            your dog | Ping : dry lips not unhappy enough.
                                                            Weary though, this over
            slept life . billows flat, fluffed > ties, lies belly galvanize;
            and worth deliverance only you stock . hope knows.

                                                                              – W.W.

                                                    

           

             

               

             

 

             MARA 

                      
             One of whom Mara – made desperately am-
             bitchous (her mother’s pet tag which she once spat
             Into Mara’s mouth before biting its lips
           And turning away to hum You are my personal
             Possession, as Nat ‘King’ Cole had stamped normal)
             To escape the shame of being owned – became,
             And, with her father’s help, slaved to climb above.

             Not that he had been any less personal
             In his protection of his possession, his
             Desperate investment in his daughter’s right
           To Further Education as his last stand against
             His wife’s sullen resistance to his sex and
             Against Mara’s mother’s screaming pleas to her
             Daughter to never leave her alone with he.

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