FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN

 

                      
                Even as crow heads try out new cutlets . land
                lock our viral curves, when next you pass through the air
                fresh port ‒ call . context I shed to know
                your guarantees.

                Even as orange peelers loop . the shore lines
                bouldered, soft furrowed island beds ‒ swim
                back like sleek porpoise . renew the crystal, scrubs
                on rock refine.

                   Which side now bests deception ? whose orifices
                waive fees through fear belongings fold ‘n’ toss in drawers
                hang basket bloomers peek < how our deliriums
                hive . I wait for you.

                   I shift a little the patio chairs, conversations
                over . come evening I look out the nets I check for bowls
                fish angling ~ eels steam order run; inhibitors safe
                pin love ~ nothing left clicks Confirmed.

                Until . your fingers parting, our garden shade sun
                bursts I keep . lotus bud leaf moment choosing.

                                                                    – W.W.

               

                

 

            
              QAT + MARA  

              But the seeds of both lion-weed and lamb-grass
              Are older than their roots, as old as the need
              Of Nature’s pollinator-satyrs to mask
            Their bursting generosity with as many forms
              And hybrids of artifice as might allay
              The lust not just in their own loins but also
              At the core of the Garden’s greenest rosebud.

              *THEN, should artifice be the peak of Nature,
              There is nothing odd – as it yet feels to both
              Qat and Mara – to their fiction’s current form
            Of ladies sitting in silence

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

 

            

 

          Raimonde himself did every kind of other-glove work he
      Could get.  There were some jobs he couldn’t do – like carpentry
      And plumbing and stuffing animal-flesh in plastic bags:
      For some jobs he had no gift;   for some he wore the wrong rags
      Or said the wrong words;   then there were jobs he just wouldn’t touch,
      Not because he was ‘moral’ over them, not that so much,
      But more because he couldn’t stomach even the idea
      Of their existence entrenched in its claro-que-sí-mais-
      Oui-naturlich-goes-without-saying self-satisfied but
      Unsatisfiable self-addiction

 

                                                  ~

 

       Once a man had tempted Winterkiss, while he was still a
     Student, to take up the contract-life of a paid killer.
     They were drinking beer at a bar in a downtown-hotel
     When that man offered to help Raimonde get out of the hell
     Of debts to a commercial ‘university’ that were
     Killing him:    why not ‘waste’ those by erasing a mere blur
     Of a useless stranger?    Why?    The start of a new career,
     That would provide him Security in less than a year,
     That’s why.   It was such a nice offer so pleasantly put,
     Raimonde knew he had to refuse it

 

                                                  *

     But behind his refusal, he had entertained the thought…
     Squirming like an eel in his purity’s nemesis-net
     Of triumphant remorse for gold it would not let him get.

                                                           ~

     – Now, back to ex-bus Raimonde walking away from milk spilt,
     Milk in three glimpses turned to gall, then to nothing at all,
     Then to this small miracle (but which miracle feels small?):
     Just as Raimonde’s smile and stride of fuck-it-all surrender
     Were threatening to settle for a smugly untender
     Version of themselves and view of everything around them
     (Things still as skew and blurred as Raimonde newborn had found them),
     He looked over his shoulder one last time, don’t ask me why,
     And what he saw made his forgiveness-bound self almost cry
     With joy (almost:   what he really did was sigh with relief

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

 

            Forward fast ! six swing, then on . slow count ventilators;
        butterfly wings clip electric wires and set in motion
        generations of aviators whose teeth never stop night
        grinding . tied bed to shallow probe.  

        Pendings might require a wardrobe of colours : bowel rust
        where envy ant red eats; canopy teal as roots ‘n’ runners feud on
        fault beast turfing.

        In some neighborhoods, for base essentials it pays to shop
        ‘n’ pray; cast out rinds too stiff for pleats twist . turn the two
        kiss cell affecting cheek.
                                             You think not ? raise the shades; right
        down the street / Shut the fuck up! Get in the car / transport
        release speed; dreading every ‘n’ always sign our eyes tear
        in receipt > you source so you full so Off me lift < fork
        routers wave.
 
                     On landing cards stamp limits, what’s left to claim
        short end lines . nearing which you could try a few morte
        blinding flanks ? Hail Mary, rage ‘n’ grace, duty heavy
        heart stretch marking.
                                         The catch ? a real brain tosser; usually
        for shirts on back only, sent pelting tail up North sheet
        white cracks.   Sorry, love, can’t be any more specific
        – tonight, snap claws ? Chinese.   
     
                                                                         – W.W.                     

       

         

 

 

           LESSING + QAT  

        Only now and then, when she found some spare time
        To heed her lusty need to re-read herself
        To revise herself that stepping-backwards way.
      But, if Qat’s returns were Earth-bound, bound to time’s running
        Down and out, Lessing’s impulse now is a sprout
        Of a new feeling that he has all the time
        In the world – for leaving both behind, and all

        A few still-clothed ghosts in the street below might
        Glimpse is the fluttering blur of a fellow
        Taking his sweet time about his naked flight
      Towards returning his borrowed book of blood and breath
        To the archives of their addictive fictions

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

 

 

             

        It was no push-it-further-but-keep-it-the same love-game 
        But a conscious emulation of how animals tame
        Their wild anguish over the loss of mate or a pup
         – Some beasts, at least, and all beasts might say i’m making this up:
        If beasts knew and could speak words like ‘tame’, ‘wild’, ‘anguish’ and ‘loss’
        It might well make the whole bloody lot of them more than cross,
        They might boo or hiss, ‘Cut the crappy labels, OK?     We
        Don’t name anything, that’s one verb (and we’re all verbs) we see
        No need for in the unfolding of our glowing knowing’
        – Or rowds to that teffec

 

                                                 ~

                      Raimonde agreed with (his version of) Jesus
       That it’s our speech that defiles us – this not said to squeeze us
       Into even more represssive ssself cccensorshhhip than what
       Already plagues the law-abiding mob of silence – that
       Majority that elects silence’s loud guardians

                                                *

 

         So, rather than indulge in any moral diatribe
       Against the gal who obviously thought her shit super-
       ior to his own (for what can like or dislike do for
       Anyone interested in disinterested clarity?
      [But persons of Taste think that notion sheer hypocrisy]),
       Winterkiss chose to walk away with a grin on his face

 

                                              ~

       After all, to be scorned by gracelessness was no disgrace
       But a shadow-confirmation of his fertile function
       As a necessary nuisance or ‘negative’ unction
       To the wounds of prideful losership pretending to be
       Active virtues walking around as good citizenry
       – Whose membership needed outsiders by contrast to prove
       Its exclusive identity – like a singular glove
       That fits but one hand, other gloves a mere intruder-trove.

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

 

             
            
                                                                         / Reserve
        all rights to check admissions . how beauty age
        negotiate luck plucks then disavows . what #all fig
        dressing florists fear to window : who plants behind
        the haven rose upbraising.

        Since the last big land war love in the trenches stays
        dug in . the past jeune femme unwed lock tight until
        the boot march image spitting liberation.
                                                                  / Take duo : arm
        iphone upholding . the glow for crotch crop photo Send
          ~ you like ? come to me . unbraid my lair.
                                                                / Or uno . thigh
        cactus prick #me armouring ~ though try favela samba
        with that : hips shake Eve . Erzulie earrings, some band
        man sweats . bad doggie whistles, drum joins youth.

                                       Oh, here's our ride canoe . the tides
        we take . don’t ship straight our born with shape > I do
        can’t any more should I ¿ up rightful wait < no left
        bank right snake buttocking, Okay?  the feeling
        Sorry leaves you weighs.

                                                         / For climate reasons
        centuries blink; bulbs new open . stems ground grip
        never too eager, always a good real time.

                                                                  – W.W.
 

 

         

        

 

             
         QAT 

         When such rap-like anglo-lumps rose in her lamp,
         Qat, lacking the inclination to engage
         Or translate or otherwise exorcize them,
       Would choose instead to stay grounded, concentrée, au point,
         Like the proper educated no-nonsense
         Sévère her mère, though morte, still means her to be,
         A practical femme réaliste et moderne.

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

 

 

                                                                
                                                        
              He had enough cash saved to rent 'my' room in Mia's home,
           Dollars he had taken into prison with him and some
           More he had actually earned in there for doing those chores
           Of shit/blood/vomit-mopping only half-blind dogs could bear.
           ‘But whatever the job,’ Raimonde wrote, ‘you’re paid to stay poor
            And needing more money’ – like a clerk in a retail-store
            Who needs two other jobs to be able to pay his rent

 

                                                   *

                                                                                              With the dough he did 
           Have when he got out of there, he rented ‘my’ room and hid
           His face, like the Ugly Duckling, from the rest of the world
           That took no note, had no knowledge, of his life as it swirled
           (The world, not his life – which was now a stagnant slough) about
           Its worldly business of getting on with business without
           A moment’s pause for losers too slow to keep up with its
           Relentless race against The Clock as though there were a blitz
           Forewarned and on its ruthless way over a horizon
           Of dark noons threatening an eclipse to keep our eyes on
           Before it gave way to the most glaring midnight ever.

                                                   

                                                   ~
 

             Jane had dumped him for the same guy he’d tried to ‘save’ her from:
           She had written Raimonde a letter while he was incarce-
           rated:   Dear R., I can’t take it any more, it’s a farce
             That isn’t funny, I don’t know what else to say, it makes me cry
             Just to think of it, I don’t know, I guess I’m just too shy
             A girl underneath everybody thinking I’m sexy,
             Or is everybody right? (smile)    When I look at Rex, he
             makes me feel something I never felt with you, that is free,
             And everybody needs free Raimonde so please let me be
             Happy for once in my life with someone who can help me,
             And don’t…’ et cetera et cetera et ceterass
           Raimonde had thought, feeling redundant, like a donkey’s ass

                                                *   
                                                              

         So he lit up Jane's letter to smoke it like opium.

           Myopia-opium:    into his eyes went its black smoke,
        – And, inhaled, the smoke made Raimonde choke, cough and miss the joke
        Of his self-pitying knee-jerk reaction to Jane’s note:
        The joke of her freedom’s price being his sore eyes and throat.
        He managed to douse the letter’s flames in his toilet-bowl,
        But what little he’d read was set like a scar on his soul,
        A scar he would spend the next few months licking like a cat
        Whose paw had been crushed and who couldn’t get enough of that.
          In many people lurks a masochistic martyr just
        Dying to have its blazing moment that transcends disgust
        At itself for repeating and refining one old pain       

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

                                                   

            

       In a television interview in 1991 the West Indian author George Lamming
       examined the question of what it means to be a person, Indian or African,
       in the West Indies. It required, he said, a measure of “curiosity” about
       places outside the region, ancestral places. 
     
       At pivotal points in their career, writers of Lamming’s generation pursued
       their “curiosity”. Walter Rodney, best known for “How Europe
       Underdeveloped Africa”, steered his doctoral interest toward Africa after
       studying in England. He lived and worked in Tanzania before returning to
       the region in the late 1960s. After student and writing spells in England,
       V.S. Naipaul turned his attention to India (this led first to “India: A
       Wounded Civilization”, 1977)

       Kamau Brathwaite lived and worked in Ghana and was apparently
       “transformed” by what he saw and felt there.

       He returned to the West Indies with “news” of observances, and with
       definitions for repairing fragmented West Indian lives. That repair process,
       he noted, was already on the way through the fevered assemblies of
       Rastafari in Kingston, Jamaica, a community viewed with contempt in
       those days simply for singing and thinking aloud about Africa.

       Walter Rodney’s activity in Jamaica was cut short. Less confrontational,
       Kamau Brathwaite stayed on and flourished, at least for awhile.

       In that1991 interview George Lamming spoke of efforts by West Indian
       writers of his generation to make those ancestral places part of an island-
       empire, cost-effect discourse.

       Europe (Britain, France) was not ready, he said, for revised history
       lessons about the slave source of their immense fortunes (documented by
       Walter Rodney); or the Windrush migrant experience in London (captured
       in Samuel Selvon’s stories).

       More recently, it has been noted, England still seems reluctant to consider
       arguments for colonial labour reparations, advanced from regional Admin
       centres (UWI, Hilary Beckles).

       Back home in the 70s these graduate men were not just “news breakers”.
       They set about “raising consciousness”. Fragmented West Indian nations
       could be unified by attempts at ideological realignment (Rodney), or trans
       Atlantic kinship recognitions (Brathwaite).

       There were reminders, however, that like reservoir water levels, regional
       “consciousness” could rise and fall; periods of optimism and intense
       creativity, if not sustained, could flatten into stretches of mind shelling
       chatter, like in Guyana, masking stagnant cultures.

       Brathwaite’s work falls within a continuum of great Caribbean innovators –
       Rex Nettleford (dance), Bob Marley (music), Walter Rodney (education) –
       exceptional men whose interventions vitalized generations in their life time.
       From deep research areas graduates were returning, but few with such zeal
       to address directly the historical deformations in the region.

       The publication, for instance, of Brathwaite’s “The Arrivants” (1973)
       sparked disquiet and debate in the region. Jamaica seemed a “kin” perfect
       testing ground for its ‘look back then forward’ thinking.

       In UWI Humanities Depts. at the time there was a mood of cautious
       accommodation. And occasional mockery, like this from one not impressed
       member of the English Dept. about Brathwaite’s page line structures:
       “Anyone can write stuff like this. Anyone can go, Shit /shit / shit is not /
       shit is not enough.”

       Still, Brathwaite’s poetry rallied classes of believers, hanging on to every
       drum beat and reference; placing his ground raking lines in contest with
       the elegiac stanzas of acceptance from Derek Walcott’s divided veins, his
       formal command of European aesthetics. Here was poetry with the power
       to change the life of anyone stuck in tropic shade.

                                                 *

        These days, as tinder and gossip blow about on news sites, islanders no
        longer need wait for traveled authors to return with world reports.
        Messages and links pop in on devices a hand reach away (along with
        platforms for doctored profiles, tribe followers piling on.)

        Back in the wireless 70s, Brathwaite’s poetry introduced new word rhythms,
        the new “perspective” he considered essential for island nation building. It
        is easy to forget how intensely that need was felt back then.

        Readers installed his words rhythms like reinforcing steel rods – in strict
        Brathwaite terms, reinforcing “spirit” rods, recovered from submerged
        sources of self-belief – essential for island restoration, for changing how
        islanders managed their lives.

        Some will argue his “work” on the islands, undermentioned in recent
        decades, was done; that it’s time for future mining appraisals, new
        actors clearing and building on old village frontiers. Building – not just
        waiting for things to grow.

        As memories of that productive period fade, as surface issues draw clicks
        away from Brathwaite’s subterranean tremors, he leaves behind these
        saved images: his Rasta tam, his Elder shepherd beard; the reading voice
        swollen with compassion; the nation language format he created like a
        toolbox for ever sure imaginations to search forward with.

                                                                     – Wyck Williams

                                

                                                ~                    ~
                                                                                                     

               On our island the pothole near Lamp Post 59 plays dumb
           strike | the signs are there for everyone, Don’t stop to piss
           here! People passing.
                                    Jar money firming jam spread so, hazards
           surprise only the load roles of shackled heart axles.

                 Our neighbor frets ‘n’ slaps his tablas, wife night
           back less gown. Everybody fancies wheel control; buses
           stop for folk with low blood leisure, getting on . who’d
           off line bump alerts about time share polyps.
                                                                       Or take the market
           stall trip : fruit fatty vendors call you Darling tugging
           at your leave; they tender plant reaps, catch pen meat
           sweets | fish they know, what corks duck well.

           Canal takeoffs ? crow head peckish; still, one last bird
           bath in our Ganges > web wing hoarders snap . fly . high
           on blades shave icing; road hours that trip iguana sun
           sets, tambura wait lines.
          
                        Anyone can with fear run anywhere . a whole series
           of tests for pain change; raags first under basement Saddhus
           form / forks you’ll tune, game side pick / no flow sound
           system wrecker.
                                      One bill to pay from folding. And there
           you are ! streams go Hello.
                                                               – W.W.

             

           

 

 

 

              LESSING ~ MARA

          Yet, again, absence of mutuality
          In his people was one of Cartoon’s bȇtes noires.
          But Lessing recalls Mara saying that once
        She had spotted, in a park in Leeds, Cartoon propped up
          On a bench and looking numbly half-asleep
          And paying attention to nothing, no-one
          In that space of Summer’s native foreigners.

          Lessing, defending the Common Man’s Wordman,
          Asked Mara then –You sure-sure Cartoon wasn’t
          Listenin to dat place, tekking it all in?
      – Nah, she said, he tought it had nuttn to do wit he,
          Nothing to say to him, Mister Otherness.

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

 

 

 

           
       NUDE SKETCH – 47 

         It was the feel of the flexibility of her flesh
       (Sorry, sometimes i can’t avoid alliteration’s mesh,  
       But i’m no fish that, hooked on it, keeps looking for a fix),
       A feel to be felt through all its defenses (three? or six?
       He couldn’t conduct an indecent count) of various
       Textures of synthetic fabric we needn’t here discuss
       (Since we don’t want you, reader, to grind your teeth or cuss
       Over how long it’s taking to get our boy off the bus)
       – Anyway, it was the lady’s gelatinosity
       (Call it that, for want of a subtler word)

 

               SKETCH – 48

 

          Shocked into staggering, and almost tippling like a drunk,
        Winterkiss looked over his shoulder (ah, at last the monk
        Has come down from Overview Mountain) only to see her
        – In all her magpie pride, so clear despite his vision’s blur –
        To see her glancing back at him, her shoulders tight, her mouth
         A dark-red turned-down sneer (belying all the beauty south
        Of the rule of its scorn)

 

                             – 49

          This was both distressing and comforting for Winterkiss:
        Though The Lover by Tarot-type, he feared the artifice
        Which love and falling in and staying with the thing entailed.
        Once he had ‘loved’ a girl, Jane, so much, he ended up jailed
        For beating up a guy who had asked her for her address:
        Raimonde pummeled the boy’s face into a frightening mess.

 

                             – 50

        Why, even as he had been battering that boy’s eyes with
        His bruised knuckles the agents of his supposedly blind
        Jealous rage, he had, he remembered, felt sorry for him,
        – And himself, sorry his eyes were growing even more dim
        Than they already were, with the sweat of an anger too
        Crass to be entertained, yet acted out – by someone who
        Thought himself free of infantile jealousy spawned by lust –
        As his Jane screamed to her Tarzan to stop!, the guy was just
        A boy who had offered to buy her a drink, jesus chrust!
        – She whom Raimonde felt grateful to for her having enticed
        His right-royal arrogant ass off its rational throne,
        Bless her illogical jugs

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

 

 

 

 

                 
                        Cowitchy . in recline who could refuse one last    
             paseíllo > cape wrap a crowd grand bull < years spent ring
             running close | or charged with ‘lewd voting’ agree to abstain,
             part of a deal the vertebrae no longer acts the house full
             batty card handler.

                         Flags deadly in flight lose most harpy requests for
             a second chance . at nuance | granted, enzymes could leave
             fears still unadjusted . brows beading some fugit tempus  
             survivor might return, come after > shovel up camp oven
             bones cause trouble < all the rubble for attention That’s
             ridiculous! souls reduced.

                                        Wall plaqued . in  #meOne secure with
             holding, wrinkled fingers crack nostalgie in an evening soup
             bowl, wiping off any open coffin forehead kiss bits < from lips
             on face value the frog licks reveal.

             Legends down, main divers find a frame . veins declassifying;
             cables ‘n’ fate bring up ‘n’ back sovereigns for the glove
             blue : gold fish oil piroguery, a child pulled by the ear
             from classroom dreaming.

                           Mere glitches? nein | all genuine hives in God’s
             registry, steeups our chubby code folder, checking her Hi, it’s
             me! messages . not stuff shy to parlez her faith covered
             bed billow preferences. | Sic Mundus < part game, Si.
                                                                              
                                                                            – W.W.

           

                

         

 

          
            LESSING

            *LESSING, riding life's skiff of anxious atoms,
            Would remind himself, as traitor to all tribes,
            That he’s still just one of the boat’s galley-slaves.    

            Trouble is:  very few chained to it know how
            To row – and the bucket has long since capsized,
            And both those holding the oars and those the whips
          Are sinking while thinking their vessel the best of ships –
            Which is what every Final Apex sinker
            Swears, even as his Titanic’s cracking up
            Breaking down

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