FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN

 

           
        NUDE SKETCH – 43

           Sorry if such airy fish don't match your taste, for i love
        Imagining the changes the least significant thing
        Must go through in order to continue its becoming.
        Take the still androgynous mind of a god still clinging
        To its angelhood, though wriggling on the hook of ‘his’ fall
        Into flesh with ‘her’ first slap on the bum that makes ‘him’ bawl
        And gasp at ‘her’ insignificance, to make room for more
        Breath of complaint that will last a whole lifetime, rich or poor,
        What does the god’s soul know?

 

                 SKETCH – 44

 

           Raimonde was no longer such a disappointed being
         But a guy who could still bear taking the bus, though seeing
         Quite clearly through the blurs of his vision that he was not
         Ever quite present as a full-fledged bloomer in that hot-
         house of orchideous humans uncomplaining in their
         Routines of a blindness he, since childhood, could never share.
         Ever since he’d realised he had eyes, however flawed,
         The child Raimonde had known he could see through what overawed 
         Him in all its shining resonant clumsy quiddity 

 

                             – 45

 

         How did a mere wingless word-fledgling witness and survive
         Such a cruel cavalcade?    Now, he was only alive
         – On that motorised coffin of corpses breathing stale air –
         In the most limited sense of being able to blink
         And move his head from left to right and look around and think
         About what he could see and couldn’t see and didn’t want…
         – Not that none of it was wantable

 

                            – 46

 

           And yet Raimonde like a beggar kept peering for some hint,
         Some recognitive glint of real gold or some winter-flint
         That would spark like the wings of a magpie bathing in snow
         By flashing its scintillating feathers of yes-and-no.
           The memory of one such bird leapt into Raimonde’s mind
         Now as his gloved fist accidentally touched the behind
         Of a woman in white pants and a black leather-jacket
         Too loose at the neck for his cold-scared liking, but fuck it,
         The gal had chosen to open her protective collar
         Before climbing onto the dirty bus-steps, in all her
         Crisp clean fashionable glory (not to mention her sharp
         Shiny black boots designed for angels who don't play the harp)

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

 

            Sore so . the need, the feed to believers worth in some
         cases billions; most cores casting forward / the Ave . Vale
         hot stone line dance / not certain < cash ‘n’ burn, noodle
         the slurp ? board the diving grace.

         Tree rock veins re.up on altar knees, tongues out
         west for chocolate . store told virgin oil rubs shield
         faith flight from blade chase grounding; the groom
         pose doctoral dudes strike . stroking an Asian elephant
         painted trunk.

         How best to angle sleep work aerials . accounting
         angels cringe : yield days flare then over night shift
         flank | a window left open, uterus squat steamed; flash
         floods dishelving layers . shed to crown shingle solitude.

                         Pause one beat ! the papal square, phone lit
         robe red infallible ~ Ciao, Federico ~ urges all in booth
         whispers ! listen to bellbirds in the towers; press closer
         for word on flesh becoming . Vodun habeamus.

                            There’s only so much ~ Rolex to Rasta! ~ brand
         on hand can do about the slice fate of plate egg boils . for
         free when last peeled bottoms.
                                        Rip, sew . who takes off time ? worn
         nothing but . hard soft uncompromising.

         The foot good shoots, the net sighs limitations; flags off
         flurry sides; seconds coming ~ here! head wet tie breaker
         through! ~ that’s it, what balls we show | chance to wrap
         one more  now what you wonder  earth worm wiggle
         Searching ..air.

                                                                – W.W.

 

             

               

              

 

          LESSING 

            *OPENING his eyes one last time, Lessing sees
             The morning Sun insisting on seeing him,
             And at last he rises – out of sleep’s freedom
           To lay down his onus of owing the world more ‘sins’ –
             And into his final freedom of choosing
             Never to pick it up again, nor ever
             Again to fail to anchor midstream his craft.

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

 

 

 

 

           NUDE SKETCH – 39

        I and Mia (let’s call you by your love-name, my sweet sin)
        Were having it onan doff – me, the cheap son of a bitch

        (Sorry, Ma) who couldn’t afford a whore, and she, my win-
        some immigrant landlady taking private lessons in
        Anglish from her Portuguess-ish tenant (be it Brazil
        She say he be bornt in, or some place in dat Africa?,
        Who care when it come to him tongk like cock she take like pill
        Of promiss, annoder one in dis new hell Canáda
        Dat be once just pinkitsch stain in boringk Geagrophy)
        Who at leasdt, unlike husbandt, wash out mout wit Lisdterine
        Before sticking tongk down troat 

                  SKETCH – 40

        Now you know your ‘generator’, as a poor student, was
        The precursor of our lame-duck type, Raimonde Winterkiss,
        Don’t let that bias your opinion of the author as
        A writer (or a responsible tenant either:   his
        Rent was always paid up when due, and Mia never had
        Any regrets over renting to that i mean this lass lad)
        Or as a decent member of Soshighty and all that
        Codswallop which folks with enough cash to never fall flat
        On their face (except when they open their mouths) swallow whole
        ('Line, hook and stinker', as Mia used to say)

                              – 41

        But since classy makes poor compost and plain crap rich manure,
        The author and Raimonde, both, in a sense, seeding farmers,
        Would gladly admit to a decided indecency,
        There being nothing more rich to sprout from, and all for FREE.

                              – 42

          But what kind of freedom is that, you might well want to ask,
        And i might say:    The freedom of co-birthing a dream-masque
        In which the figures of potential meaning are no-one
        But you, reader, changing as you cross this or that stream
        Of Significance, Wonderment or, praise the lord Pan, FUN.
        – All with a little help from your co-creating friends:  me,
        Half-blind Winterkiss, not-unkind Mia Frears and a sea
        Of other ghostly fish and fishy ghosts about to float
        Up from the sea-bed and into our latency-lifeboat’s
        Con-text

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

 

 

             Leaving herd hangars virtues scramble, the family
         gasp ring can't reverse eggs after the shoot | high alerts
         instead bystanders hoping some time quick a job
         opens for endocrine home rewiring; breach closure.
                                Hind leggy innuendo sways like from this
         jelly good follow texting a faith big wife / they would later
         deny any knowledge / about inbetweeny head ducks.

                                                   Okay, #Snowfarer my dray
         horse laps drop markers ! but you know what I mean.
         Take off those skis.

                                               + 

                                    Back stage as means watch moves deep
         end, unnoticed mostly; though village rumors confirm pass
         overs of devotion, thighs tagged bitchy rubbing dry hurry
         powder away | winds even . as old sword beard Haroun
         drops by. 
                                          Beaky keen he’ll pick ‘n’ poke about
         anxieties, Who’ll mat those knees?  Not every seed starts
         pod packed; he’ll tube squeeze, like for Hajj circuit
         ambles.

                                               Don't estimate him . under most
         advances sweat the partum wet of mop handlers; indifferent
         tiles slip tease.

                                                +    

                               On the one, jump or cleave, desire requires
        no co-sign innings ‒ without which we’d feel identity cruising
        screwed | otherwise! tropes will loop any berth Hold! | put
        prize flowers out; bend resets, Mondays East West.
                                                                   
                                                                                   – W.W.

 

         

         

             

 

           
 
          MARA

          Of pain and rage a pure ingénue could have
          Hoped not to experience, nor even glimpse ‒
          As though seeing were seeing something outside
       Oneself (Mara soon caught the academic virus
          Of ex cathedra impersonality).
          *SOMEWHERE else, Mara could pay to do the trick
          Of delivering us from evil (some, more).

          By then there was nothing, she felt, she could not
          Do, even if only to prove that she could ‒
          Like people who travel all over the world
        Only to advertise where they have been and not yet.
          She, not exactly a millionaire, knows that
          Expansive habit will undo her at last,
          And for that moment, she keeps a poison-flask,

          Plus a sharp flick-knife, just in case and don’t ask:

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

 

 

 

 

           
       NUDE SKETCH – 35

       An author may seem to have more control than you over
       The hole spectacle, but he might say you’re more a lover
       Of all its gossip (limited though his will ever be)
       Than its generator (‘author’ only reluctantly)
       Who’s no more than a nut with a pen at her his disposal
       And a blank sketchbook he could afford from a dollar-store
       And the itch of a seemingly pretentious proposal
       That your eyes and his conspire to explore a maze of More.
       – But enough:    it will never be resolved, the enigma
       That marries the reading writer to the writing reader,
       The one the male pollen to the other’s female stigma
       In this follow-the-leader maze that has no set leader.

 

                 SKETCH – 36

          Bring back Raimonde on the bus, not thinking of his foe-friend,
        Mrs Frears, clawing cat with an angel’s shadow, mad bat
        Whose confussing wings staggered yet moored Raimonde’s moods like gripes
        To her firm dock of looking after boys, young or old, fat
        Or gaunt:    that mothering widow adopted extrame types
        And always thought of them as boys, her boys – who couldn’t wipes
        Own ass righdly and not keeps pisses insite doilet-bowl.

 

                             – 37

 

        She used to mother even that drunken Anglish asshole
        She had made the mistake (which was also good strategy)
        Of mirryang only to get the right to sta yin this
        Nice lonely cuntry where everybaddy leave you alone

        She never couldt unterstandt dat sorts of hypocritness
        With all chirpy-chirp please-and-tank-yous trowed at you like bones
        To starvingk dtogk.     – When she uttered so, how could Raimonde not
        Trust and love Mrs Frears, despite her interfering ways?
        No, she didn’t need her rent exactly on the first day
        Of every month, especially since she knew that her boy
        Always paid up long before its last day;   but yes, she did
        Need someboddy to look after and connect with

 

                              – 38

           Her tribal name was Grabowaska – or something like that,
        I’m not sure, though she told me more than once exactly what,
        As though i needed to have her ID-info down pat
        Before patting her down while helping her to learn her new
        Tongue that kept twisting around her old one with not a few
        Knotty results which the tongues in our mouths were too busy
        Wraping around each other to iron out, both dizzy
        With the more spittily urgent mater of heating up
        Sex’s convection-oven – while her husband, like a pup
        Who had slurped up his owner’s left-over beer, lay assleep
        And snoring downstairs

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

 

                                                                 
                                                                 
                                                                      "And in point of fact – there it was – pregnant
                                                                         again after all these years.”
                                                                              – Wilson Harris, “The Waiting Room”

          
       Sworn to stay rid of colonizers, then news spread about
       a fungus lounge in the pancreas. Send down the mudloggers! clean
       deep sea avenues, boom drain experts in route canals.                        
                     It’s a card scratch to morrow about : mites gross in
       the coils nibbling our huddles . in the cane fields, over pet
       fur sheet strandings.

                                  The baldy man who walks angst hands
        behind back knows a thing or two URL hurlyburly three
        some chewing gum only half tease.
                      Fowlers on the coast wild ‒ like sand quick rich
        marchands, thumbs on Bedouin age wounds ‒ loop ‘n’ pen
        merde holds . infinglers understand what this means for colon
        passagens / hot in outhouses emission rules.

                        Meanwhile, asked what happened check tight first
        mating, an ex Carib queen posed . hips sealed : too much duck
        rubbery. Too much duckrubbery! that’s how iSash'on platforms
        glow . crude light, no quarter moons.

                                  Here's the latch : extract spats aside, fat
        pledges no longer analog leave little groom for flag raise lady
        crab hems . for fleas that pee red on the carpet, the potted
        plant seems Oh Dear! BBC metres off . air pocket views.

                                  These vapours, you breast heave, like host
        guest courtesy bows, could fade famously the old one cent
        stamp way; like my old aunt’s coin change purse . grip
        for fish rain days | Ok . who dives well not chest vested?
                                          
                                                                       – W.W.

       

           

 

             LESSING

         Checking on him from the saddle of his thighs,
         Her eyes those of a careful fox ensuring
         Its eating of a fellow was in service
       To this Other’s need and desire for change from one set
         Of buzzing atoms to another: that pure,
         For all her grunts, groans and yelps of quasi-words
         And her last smile: You me firs Brack. No difflence!

         (Her English wider than his Chinese or their
         Portuguese.)  Other gamblers too must have known
         Guanyin’s disinterested generosity
       As their Eastern trophy, but not known his afternoon
         With her in her busy but well-tended room
         Which she turned into the humbling Titanic
         Of his hubris of consumerist buying

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

  

         

          NUDE SKETCH – 31

          What he was witnessing was a d rama being rehearsed
          At primitive and pupal stages of maturity;
          Was an urgency whose ‘window of opartunity’
          Was closing down, as was perhaps all of huemanity
          – Again.   But this death-birth pulsation (a soul knows many,
          Has sunk with, yet survived, many a sinking empire’s shit)
          Had a pungent odor of nosetalgia rising from it,
          A yestalgia for angelhood – despite all the money
          And crass but clever polluting racket that policed it,
          Despite all the Future and futures that were promissed it

                    SKETCH – 32

            Yet it persisted, the herd’s eager-to-be-eaten bent,
          Underbelly of their eating-lust, that fatall tallent
          They shaired with every other member of the Cosmic Maw
          With its teeth chained to tyrant Hunger’s omnipotent law.
          Under its yoke Raimonde himself, say once a week, bent weak,
          His stomach as small as a bird’s and his mouth like a beak
          With which every now and then he’d peck at some nuts or seeds,
          But seldom feeling deep hunger, seldom feeling the need
          To bite into anything, least of all into the flesh
          Of some innocent beast who had been kept behind a mesh
          Form onths and forced to get fat on sum chemical lies (dnosh
          Out of a nosebag)
 

 

                                – 33  

 

          A lack of empathic imargination, Raimonde felt,
          Was the germ of every hypocritical horror dealt
          As business-as-usual by dealers to the players
          Sleapwalking through their game-hands and handhakes, with their layers
          And layers of pre-judicial lava sliding under
          Their thick sleep’s thin skin and about to burst its next blunder
          Of holocaust (a term not to be limited to Jews

                                – 34

           This skechter can guess what you’re likely to think:    – They’re only
           Using this ‘Winterkiss’ to piss on and piss off the rest
           Of us moretales just trying to get through the damned lonely
           Business of being breathing bodies bearing souls, at best.
           – Well, yes and no:   yes, provocation is ever a part
           Of bothering to midwife and give birth to any f/art,
           Even the crudest and yes, the deliberately crude,
           Like this (call it ‘crudist’, just to be accurately rude);
           But no:   nothing's pre-medictated:

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

         *A note on the text:  Rather than clutter an already chaotic ‘sketchbook’ with many ‘[sic]s’
              after Fatima’s misspellings – most significantly of a psychologist – (whether scribbled in
              haste or out of faulty memory or out of a perversely determined dyslexia shunning
              ‘Litricher’ with near idioglossial zeal), I’ve chosen to let her oddities of scrawl (including
              her thankfully shortlived boldfaced (multi-inked) ‘deconstructs’ ending with the
             ‘significan’t’  hint of their own ‘ch as m’) stand without editorial excision on my part.
              – L.C-A

 

                                        

 

         

                                                                        to Brian & Mollie                 

            The coffin lift grips shiny, first drafts tucked in
            like a bodybuilder's pyramid sets; shovel stomach
            turning gardens | wealth^check worms caught naked
            wiggle a full face shave disclosure : which side gets
            to play well?   Wait wait, I was juking! not juggling.

            Coin issues lipping in before the meter expires allow
            colonoscopy cops to enter > jigger, so opinions like sticky
            rice poop softly > trade warriors should experience cold
            feet once at least.

            Oil off shore bankers drying out the night haul < lost gold
            fish keep jumping our falls; village fly girls taking home
            cooked orders ~ chat nyam?  No! lest they claim ~ two silvery
            forks poke at marriage omelets screen off chefs wouldn’t
            remake.
                                                                                                Oh
            the plan ‒ with no phone no sky camera – one fresh dog
            teaming shot at Antarctic whiteness; the rubble crouch
            run under weapon fire for a pack of jokes; the shop lottery
            agent asking, How you been?

                                 None of whose business is all this ? hunger
            deep, done light before house^passed Confucius motions
            of happiness.

              Come shove the harbour faut quitter : il on its back
            in a forest of polished hard wood \ the navel hollow
            livid, It broke, I didn’t do anything \ receiving close
            off libations, Chinese rubber gaskets; the rest of it
            Ce n’est rien! sent ahead . far as we can tell.

                                                                               – W.W.

                        

           

               

          

           LESSING

           *BUT, now, checked into the tallest casino-
            Hotel his Visa-card can bluff to, Lessing,
            Guanyin and all wave-crests and -falls behind him,
         Starts betting, the sirens of risk and of getting more
            Than he has to lose (there is no escaping
            His room’s price) still singing their green blues to lure
            His soul’s grey ship from its true home-harbour.

            *YES, death and all that, he loses, wins, loses
            Most of his pile, then phones (collect) his ex, Mo
            (She manages an inn in Banff), who threatens
         To fix his frilly you-know-what if he ever try
            Again to get her to len him any more
            Of her, he get it?, her effin (Moreen is
            Decent: she dares not fully cuss) hard-earn cash.

            But let her poke around in her purse and see…
            Dis is de laast time, OK?

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

 

 

          NUDE SKETCH – 27

           That poor (‘lidtle-richish’, as she tagged herself) landlady
        Could have no imagination for the minds of the likes
        (Unique, but also types) of Raimonde, and i’m afraid he
        – for all his allegiance to outsiders from kikes to dykes
        To street-beggars (whom even the best kikes and dykes, who should
        Feel something for their fellow outsiders, blandly ignore
        And sometimes righteously refuse a cent – ‘for their own good’) –
        Had no patience (his time was always running out some door
        – Of urgent anxiety ever about to be closed)
        For this latest of widows who would have him for a son,
        Although (because?) he didn’t want to be one.   He supposed
        She felt sorry for him.

                                            ..

       For balancing their centres of heads and hearts, cocks and cunts
       And every other polarity of experience

                  SKETCH – 28

 

         – Speaking of which, how did Winterkiss find the time to fuse
       His two careers of resident duncehood as regards dense
       Earthbound commonsensical matters, and of hesitant
       Confidence in the face of finer things-not-things that can’t
       Be ignored, since they’ve no respect for what you think you want,
       But nudge and tickle and turn you beyond all self-defense?
       Things-not-things might overwhelm, but things-things demanded:

 

 

                                      – 29

 

          Ah, distraction!, Raimonde now with quasi-nostallgia thought,
        If only he could afford to indulge that blinking thing
        That clung to and leeched off each focus of those few who sought
        To bring a moment of clear Silence to their suffering.
        But of course everyone suffers ‒ even those with enough
        Money to appear to be beyond such immature stuff
        And may object to ‘suffering’ as too grand an idea
        To apply to normal slaves who thank God when it’s Friday
        (Sed q.e.d.).   But Raimonde, feeling out the blurry forms
        Of all the gods about him, all the wrd&nmber worms
        Whose freedom to choose some angels are believed to covet,
        Knew it was suffering’s pain all were trying to escape

 

                                – 30

 

            But, half-blind Raimonde now thought, so many people must love
         To suffer the tyrant’s racking wheel, and who could blame them?
         Its teeth were so smiling in their bite through the apple of
         Aunticipation of things promised (and all would claim them)
         That the distractees, spinning through suck delickious torteure
         Which would change the constitution of their eyes and their nerves
         And their very psychic fibre with all its twists and swerves,
         Were seduced beyond discriminating between ordure
         And gold, both equally whipped and frothèd-up for easy
         Conventient swallowing – consumption not for queasy
         Stomachs like Raimonde’s.

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

 

 

 

 

                                                                                      
                                   …taking root, the chosen place in which to raise
                                       the final tent, where you can walk out into the night
                                         and have your face washed by time, and join up with
                                          the world, with the Great Madness, with the Grand Stupidity.”
                                                         -  Julio Cortázar, “Hopscotch” (1966)

                                                  for Davo, Johnny, Robbie /GT

                                                   Night scolds warming . stomach to back on
          line for life close hanging / Satira's bone wedge discharges, Can't
          go on like this / through prayer fabric slits Save me! code
          slips.
                                                                                 Swipe anime
          swish dock / the comb loose wonder, tattoo cover / even
          her mother wouldn’t believe she just click left . no duck
          weed sucked shell.             
                                                                     Hard to fold sheet
          cleaners of company stain come after you like issue arrive
          seagull on train platform . you might do well to practice
          not withstanding the tree bird powerline pivot.

                                                                              At some front
          desk point the act resets her form address : short Show
          More cuts ? the bend overtures of wealth white glass
          milking | tail light !the fuck you snatching at?  deer skip
          away.

                                                                   Park way back siding head
          lean marks you . off what purpose depends who’s paying
          attention; or sends a scootering house delivery ~ about this
          Japanese haunt design by one M. Aurelius Biswas.
                                    Nah, the bells don’t ring . plus Satira's ankles
          might jewel up star spangling | they roll you only you
          now.
                                                                                Hold on, door
          opening ? es muy diferente / off the knob the syllables air
          lift . hearts stop here to hungers sift / time gem precious
          haggle.
                                                                      – W.W.

            

         

           

       

         

            MARA

            *Had it not been for her innate (she thinks) flair
            For awareness of her soul as a gold bowl
            Drained of all its memories of former lives
         (So that it might not be terrified by the prospect
            Of one more petrified-physical lifetime)
            And of her mind as a metal-plate hammered
            And etched with words and other labels of doubt –

              Had it not been for such early self-versions,
            Would she have had the detachment she needed
            To survive the pain of her parents passing
         On to her the cross of their own childhood’s cruelties?,
           Hoping she might help them bear the choked panic
           Which its crucifictions had spawned within them,
           Helplessness with no naming voice for itself.

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