FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN

       
   
        NUDE SKETCH – 23

        He felt critics of religious superstition who sleep
        In shifting shades of shaky five-senses-locked Science-rocks
        (But even rocks hold memory of once having been stars
        And dream of the day when they shall take part in stars again)
        Are no less shibbolethick followers than the old strain

                                   . .

       But then Raimonde too had once swallowed a dose of thinking
       That all blinkered dungkeys must want to learn to think, to see
       As muck as he thought he saw they needed to.

 

                 SKETCH – 24

       He also realised that that conclusion was a good
       Self-appleid vaccination against the unempathic
       Separations and lonelinesses passing themselves off
       As Change and Progress and Moderrnity, all pathectic
       Excuses, as far as Raimonde could see (and he could laugh
       At his own limited vision), for the Real Thing, that sense
       Of the divine (creathive) bell of the self wit hits ring
       Of alchemic releasing of the fine out of the dense.

                        

                             – 25

         I'd agree there was no greater transcendalist snob
       Than our boy Raimonde:   he was simply cu tout for the job,
       A work for those like him who didn’t know what else to do,
       Who could barely firmly re-tie the lacing of a shoe,
       One – at – a- time
                                  – like his two left feet now bungling downstairs
       From the second-floor room he rented peach from Mrs Frears,
       A not yet wizened widow who liked the fact of a man
       Under her roof (even if he so vegetarian
       He never try her Polish sausage fry with sauerkraut)
       She was nervous, but not too timid when she had to shout
       To Raimonde upstairs that he was latingk again with rendt
       And that, if he didn’t ship up, she would have his ass-sendt
       To jail for takingk atvandage of her goodtly kindness.

                             – 26

         See, Frears had no sympathy for her tenant’s half-blindness:
       So his eye-glasses be as thick as triple-pane windtow
       And he can tink slow… but he know what mean lose and win, dough,
       He not be dat slow, and neider she be (Mrs Frears would
       Often, in true immigrant style, make herself understood
       By crook or by hook interchanging the positions of
       Her cart-objects and her horse-verbs with a vigorous shove
       From her determined tongue of intent to get across her
       Meaning, Anglish or no Anglish

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

 

 

 

             
                                                                                          Lamb
         kin strange love, eyes closed while you're under . taking
         assumes yield bonds will loop ‘n’ wrap what little you
         have everything you worked for here nobody cares.
                                                                                            Break
         format new : at the peak roll off / torso piercing cactus
         sheets mat catch below; plus something in the air bag
         whiffy dog custom . mud knees to declare.

         Ocean gone ? risen you might wonder whose flail sink
         path you could have paved; whose Help ! please blocked
         by the inrush of water spotting a loose float crevice.
                                                                                             Gulp,
         you’ll learn how sea risk rollers beach . strip . wash off
         corpus confirmed salt.
                                                                                       Where
         necks crane this for readiness : faith walls peeling, scrape!
         save! till intime links start up . prime task found floor
         reboarding.
                             With split screen touch you’ll pinch the view
         of whales, word etch cap size recount . how currents toss
         pack risk again boat meat.

                              There will be be bridge flood stallings . forest
         mountains pastures humpable like camel; even skimpy
         microbes won’t submit a wiggle you could camp gut
         pin – all told co-sigh . sand wet wretch, Benvenuto!
                                                                                            Out 
         done, resite the sun tan server . stow away the seashells
         reception.
                                                             – W.W.

 

           

         

             

         

              

          LESSING

         *TO AOMEN via Taiwan and Hong Kong, those
         Detachments from/of China whose vigorous
         Fatalism matched Lessing’s, for he found theirs
       Less inscrutable than it is believed to be and
         More readable than it (or his) cared to be.
         His offhand ‘reading’ of ‘Chinese’ness was both
         Colonistic (his refusal to accept

         Any tribe's totems of ethos as final)
         And mutualist (no uniqueness discrete).
         Lux ex Oriente, Wisdom, The East:   flags
       Even ‘Orientals’ wave, kowtow to or salute,
         The tribal mind ever an ass welcoming
         The branding whips goading it to bray and dance
         With chained hooves – which yet often kick at their fate.

           (from “Charon’s Anchors” by Brian Chan, 2018)

 

 

        NUDE SKETCH – 19
        

        But there were moments when '‘God’ was forgotent and ‘Hell’ was
      Only a case of  having to ‘solve’ one bootlace’s knot
       – As right now, after Raimonde has decidered to bypass
       His morning shower and plunge into putting on his shoes
       And getting on with dotting his pees and crossing his cues.

         He hadn’t buffed his boots in months, and wondered when he would,
       Why he should, and if his innate laziness ever could
       Be bothered about suck stuff only to prove himself good,
         A good son of the tribe that puts a shine on everything

 

               SKETCH – 20

          But Only transcend, Winterkiss would uppend to someone
        Else’s Only connect (whether in a melding of two
        Souls, or by map-lines drawn between millions of stars) – love’s glue,
        Or the glob that passes for the real thing, being far too
        Limited a linking rung on his ambitious ladder
        For scaling Time’s prison-walls while remaining within them
          – Such triumph being what would make Love’s rose even gladder
        Of its grave-roots than if it stayed the mere end of a stem
        Of fate’s acceptense’s complacent plant.  Nothing sadder,
        Raimonde felt, than to sink to such ‘wisdom’ ad hominem

 

                           – 21

 
         Then why did he stay in a so-be-it let-it-be state
         Rather than try to do something about his so called fate?
         Perraps he felt that fate seminal and final at once.
         True, some doctor had told him about some operation
         To his eyes that might… but that only reminded our dunce
         Of weather forecasts he used to hear in his birth-nation
         (Raimonde had more than one country to which he not-belonged
         Having been born yer stranger-in-a-strange land and remained
         A staunch non-member of all tribes to which he sang his song

 

                           – 22

 

            Speaking of witch:     Raimonde had a bent for being haunted
         By a Purity not forced but ‘organic’.   Sure, today,
         Religious links may be reduced to dead-cert DNA
         And all sacred discernmeant to religiocity.

         But the fashionable de rigueur rejection of all
         Religion and religious sensibillity – as sheer
         Brainsoak for superstitiou  sinheritors of the Fall –
         Was for Raimonde only more evidence of the one Fear
         – Of the Power imbued in every individual –
         To be found in the laziest, most literalist sheep
         Bloated with the gas of any fundamnentalist flock.

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

 

 

         
           
        Yes! no, mi close . mi can't forget, Miss Femi; habits
        flowered since the feel breeze songsters sailed : kitchen
        table cup lip sip . sun rise scripture wringing dry
        salt bed sheet. 

        Ready – since the moth days of love letter, lamp shade,
        yield on marriage lawn – made time ketch you left
        you thick rain see through windows \ the teapot hot
        spout, crystals refine; your tinkle stirs, congratulating.

        Morning . unhook the stem hung tomato; summon
        yuh Rasta nettle weedster \ Evening . sign in Di’fer,
        your only child, account.
                                                               Who need lift
        shop, banana you could squeeze jam own juice make.
        And tell book players who drop by coffee ground well
        cell calibrate.

                             Kno' seh how island fate line draw : hair
        fear skin preset, pikka wrong strong peppering; yard
        graffiti dance a wall . half sad a mother shedding. 
                                                                  Fi back climb
        change yam you decline, fi Zion step finesse.

                           True, something always there . grace
        jar badlabeling : mountain top ‘reachers, carnivores
        for Pastor time ! think they know you . how yu burn ‘ol
        Mas Joe poets ✓might, peace finding.
                                                                     – W.W.

  

         

        

         

            

        MARA

        The bridge between this marriage (yet) of mirrors –
        The kind of mutuality that insists
        On itself more often than our learnt sepa-
      rations let themselves be aware of or imagine –
          Is born of a detachment become a zeal
        Of posing that lets each woman do nothing
        But wait, without waiting, to pounce and to fix.

        But at last the mirrors eyeing each other
        Have nothing to adjust but their reflections
        Of each other’s waiting-determined blankness.
      And so they confront each other by fronting away,
        The space between them like a pregnant belly –
        Whose waters’ break Mara suddenly forces:
        Nous croyons que le monde est plus grand que nous.

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

 

 

             
          NUDE SKETCH – 15

          And what weepy Winterkiss realeyesed that morning was
          His simplyciti in all its anchorite silence and
          Utterrants as they are joined in marriage within his buzz
          (Think of Winterkiss as a human bee trapped in the sand
          Slipping down through the tight neck of an hourglass’s walls)
          Of being response-able as a half-blind wit-ness while
          Never forgetting to keep his ears open for the calls
          To that impersonal purrity no dog can deafile.
             So Winterkiss got out of bed and bowed down to the Sun,
          The resident and so visible god of purity
          Whose power lies in rendering light’s truth to everyone

 

                   SKETCH – 16

 

           Earth's generosity, unlike her fathim-Sun’s, can shift
           From uttered surface-sprouting kindness to undergrownd, sheer
           Quake-making hellish reclayming of her gifts – in the blink
           Of a human eye, and the solar eye may have to seep
           Its light down through the thickest of Earth-clouds as dark as ink
           (Clouds the stubborn fruit of contemptestuous minds that keep
           Their polluting waste piled up in the sky’s promissing plains,
           The business of evaporation and condenstation
           And precipitation the mere cogs of blind minds’ dark rains
           – A notion you may think stinks of mad imagination
           But, as my flies reveal, sane dreams are dreams called mad, made mad
           By all the measures of insanitty that pass for sane)

 

                                – 17

            By bowing to the Sun, did Raimonde Winterkiss believe
            He could ensure sum specious special privilege down here
            Or up their?    He once said he saw himself as a slight sieve
            That gathered light so as to sift and spread it through the air
            Of the Auden-named ‘prison of his days’ (or day – just one:
            ‘Days’ clung to inmates who believed they’d always be one more
            Chance to un-cook and re-balance their books of Breath before
             Auditor Death’s surprise-visit to foreclose on their bones)

 

                                – 18  

            Pessimist sentimental (Nay and Aye), our Winterkiss.

               We may think so, but he saw himself as a realist
            Who, going trough Hell, had to keep going, sweeping a path
            Through it shot coals, shedding all its shadows before missed,
            Clearing its shelves and books of false numbers, ‘doing the math’

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

 

 

           Straight over the precipice, arms flapping on the way
        down – and here he is holding a press conference . which
        is what is clogging up our limb proceeds| even tree tower
        window leaners wave rags, cleaning as if already their air
        rights have vapored.

        The premise every one will eventfully move forward
        coasters the hour glass : whose bored child stick prods
        whose body inside ? sand grains jammed nanotight so,
        stomach turd curating . secrets that might out . run
        ruin everything.

        Thighs bidding for apple bites tempt hubris down; add
        the boot bendy luck of progress . banks rolling over
        rubble as dust inhaling lenders uncover well well
        Well ! ovary dark preserves . could be updatable; call.

                                                                                  That :
        ‘A day is like an hour; a week is like a day,’ inmate
        jellymen pray . praise the stars mobile with plight
        devices; though calendar / inward slash count / marks
        the sky . spark blue in extremis left raging.

                                                                            D’accord :
        So you ‘can’t continue like before’ . carpet ride ‘born
        this way’ home : the final movement, the only sin
        unscented set to bowel . swell millennium flower
        beds, sniffles You’re good \ too good! \ to leave.

                                                                         – W.W.

     

         
                                [ In mem . João Gilberto . 1931 – 2019 ]
 

        

            LESSING

         *WHY did lower-level devils like him think
          In such cheap tropes like dead trees lining a rut?
          And he wondered how she managed to survive!
        It was only when she said, out of the blue, You can
          Flirt with me a little, you know that he could
          Begin to imagine a map of the maze
          Of hell she was inviting him to enter –
            

            Which he perversely did, though it cost him Qat
          And lost him a lot of protein fucking up
          And down between cities and highway motels –
       Before the exhausted lovebirds invented a fight
         So she could find herself a White-next-time knight
         Whose horizons bore more than mere hints of sails
         Abulge with spice-perfumes from exotic shores

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

 

 

 

          

          NUDE SKETCH – 11

                                               through telltale ‘Raimonde Winterkiss’
          Who awoke one frosty morning to a fleeing of bliss
          Rising out of his frowns like vapor from ice.    Happiness,
          Or the hint of, before it bore any fruit, was a threat
          To Winterkiss, a parannoyed sourpuss who wouldn’t let,
          On the best of days, anything close to a slime upset
          His Keatonesque mask which he favored like a fragile pet
          He was saving from some meddlesome nut-neutering vet.
          But today, looking in his mirreither, his eyes grew wet
          From his sense that life, that crappy joke, could prove happy yet.

 

 

                     SKETCH ‒ 12

          (And when those dried up, and since he couldn’t afford to pay
          For a real roll, there was always Mrs Frears, his landla-
          dy who once in a while would let her Raimonde ‘make her day’.)
          And so what if every now and then he woke ups creaming?
          The first thing he’d not ice was still moon- or sun-light beaming
          Through his room’s window, and he’d think -i was only dreaming,
          Who cares if some ghost was choking me?-     And, his eyes streaming
          With post-nightmare releaf and eagerness for the steaming
          Pile of manure called The Next Day, he wood get out of bed,
          Scratching his head and his crotch, and thank God he wasn’t dead

                            – 13

          Where's the story they promissed us?      Do they not realies
          That ‘Winterkiss’ up to now hasn’t done a single thing
          Worthy of ou rattention except to open his eyes
          And feel, despite his ingroined pissimessm, like singing?
          Alll right, so dunce in a while we all like a fuel lies
          About the Easy or Simper Life to take us winging
          On a reinbow over our whoreyesons of compromise,
          Boredom and despair and such, but christ, should our liars cling
          To their reignbows too long, we reeders wood dam their eyes
          For not reminding u show darned hard life is, how dooming-
          ly inescapable its routines

 

                            ‒ 14

          Readers want to be persuaded of tough heroes and things
          In their dencity.   Don’t try to convince us otherswise.
          The ‘facistnotion of what’s diffycult’ is the brass ring
          In the nose of our ‘suspender of disbelife’ that cries
          Out to be pulled into grazing fields of mouth-watering
          Cuds of consoiling gossip about life’s complexities
          – Which, in fictioff at least, are exemplifried as the swing
          Between positive/neggative poles given humon guise.
            Trubble is:     Winterkiss was far too plimsole a being
          To live the kind of life which can be sensationalised
          Enough to sitassfy formrulers of story-telling
          On which every guzzler of addictive gossip relies.

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

 

               

 

 

 

           
       NUDE SKETCH – 07 

           Oui, c’est moi, con who has failed to forego love’s brouhaha
       And still riskily friskilly forgets his resolve not
       To postpone its transcendance, the moment he spots a face
       And/or figure that remind/s him of his long-dead mama,
       His Mutter?     Meiner! ‒ given to and snatched from me by him,
       Meine Vater, und nein, there’s nothing oedipussy there,
       It’s a fact, not the fact of a myth, that the old man was
       There before me, tasting mia mamma’s capezzoli
       Before i could get my short-in-the-tooth chops around them
       (I still sense the lady’s pleisure at my intuitive
       Expertease which she herself allowed me to be born with

             SKETCH – 08

      Sì, mine’s but a case of infantilità banale,
      That commonplace retarded traumatic fascinotion
      Which the senses hold for thelmseves grabbing you long before
      You can get your first ass-slap to take you make your first gulp
      Of air and make your first bawl of protest against the fuss
      Of breath’s dense body which your own soul called for and helped form,
      Experimental opportunist, the soul, scientist
      Become artist of self-molding in one flash of marrage
      Between tail-wagging sperm and yoke-spreading egg ‒ always in
      For more trouble, the soul

 

             SKETCH – 09

              Well, i’ve decided i must write badly well (as you see):
       That seems to be the freest way to fail at being free
       Of Litricher’s avid leaning towards posterity
       – Of which i’ve been, tool long, too fatihful a devotee

 

                         – 10***
               

           But pay scant attention to my purple intensity
       (Not quite Yeats-passionate), one pathetic propencity
       Of a poetaster in love with the immensity

       Of pressuring meaning out of vises of verse and rhyme
       And being shocked by bliss in the midst of the flat Grand Time
       Being had by labell-spouters ‒ the standhard murderus
       Civil Servants of Common Sense & Correct Form that fuss
       To feed, like choked dragons, off/on their own smoke, while i cuss
       And grind my grey dentures – instead of shouting Hideous!

       ***    A last word on the form Arterra’s sketches took:   she thought
                 that, as a poetaster, she should at least try to fail
                 to overthrow the thudding thumb of the English iamb,
                 that bully with its colonising whip which not even
                 wildman Whitman tried to escape.     Nor do his descendants,
                 with their dry twitching twigs snapped off their bush of ambition
                 to be poets, know any need to court that poetry,
                 that impersonal siren animating the serpent
                 curling up and down the spine of breath anteceding all
                                                  – Lissana Cesare-Ábusem, PhD

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