FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN

       

         
            Let me say that my surprise and puzzlement 
            at finding myself here are no less than yours^
            i too feel lost – no less than i’ve always been
            for i became what i felt although i thought
            i was above and beyond the tyranny
            of feelings which i told myself are only
            thinking’s condensations like coals that believe
            their carbon-selves to be better than the gems
            of crystal and diamond they’re bound to become –
               no less than diamonds determined to be stars – 
            no less than our very Earth dreaming her fate 
            of returning to her true state in the Sun^
            but i tell you again i don’t know where i
            am going or will be flung into after
            this interlude  interstice  intermatter

              (from “Limboa”, a sentimental anthem,
                         by Brian Chan, 2023)

 

                                                                                                                                            

                                                                          
            Never died before, no time for Art ‘n’ bachelor
            what would it take to lift the eye Approved! from iPhone
            camp^post ? thumbs up down mining.

                      \ There used to be consensus about the rose
            garden; how to uninstall his Lordship sprinklers;
            shield tulip bulbs from stem^snip take, gang^
            nyam vines off ripping.

                                                    +

            About saving buttons birthday cards her grandchild
            says nothing, puzzled; thinks he’s indestructible
            like the laser sword warrior in his playbox.             

                       \ Outlines of virtue under watching lids
            like on plantation . tail alert for jumper hens twitch;
            like the bois^man faith bargain > maid polishing
            on trunk call; floor wage for sin.

                                                   +

            Real holder of estate could be the yard sweep
            angling mute @verandah talk | rum glass
            need no ice; gap goat won’t stop rest trade again,
            router in the bush.

                        \ Stitch chart^blue sheets could wind
            sail over seas home stretching | spark blood
            knocks Yuh vessel charge yet? jook till the limbo
            give^card expire. Arrgh!

                                                             - W.W.

 

               

         

 

            YUH RAP SO (4.6)

            So where had that heart been hiding exactly
            When he’d first tackled Freda cynically?
            As if she were only a placid pony,
            Though he could scent she was a wild cyat really,
            But one who would embrace him as her ally
            Come to liberate her from the enemy
            Of her soul’s jaguar paused taut in her tribe’s tree
            Whose limbs allowed every opportunity
            For the jaguar’s next leap and blocked its freedom
            With one whisper – Go only where you come from:
            The price of breaking through tribe-ramparts was pain:

            But pain was love’s incestuous intimate
          - Which brother Judd + sister Freda both sensed
            As their intervining of each other’s spines
            Of fire, at once innocent + guilty, both
            Lifted them up beyond the limits of breath
            & flung them out deep into the sharpest night

              (from “Raponani” by Brian Chan, 2023)

                    

                  
             Down from his cross his iPhone cradles need
             like vice to grip ‘n’ stare at | chains of round
             the neck gold nonnegotiable; fewer ankle swollen
             complaints.

             Work in progress (a) for partner straying chest     
             knife stabs + street obscenity (b) Bible stories believed
             make better bettor blockers.

                                                        +

             Once the dogs start barking all bets clear – space
             agents landing. They’ll notice pavement packed
             backs west crab^legging | palms up east facing 
             like @midlife prayers.                                                        

             Bearded men, fat fortuning women lifting!
             not taking off the Ab^robe so petitioners can file
             stuff in | side entry > don’t want have to look^receive.            

                                                        +

             Our island sunsets slip messages @ horizon slits.
             Lights on new brand hotels burn fiercer than flambeaux
             @greenheart domain.                                                   

             Soon as haul strings flat line world trawlers
             turn elsewhere; seine cache snapped ‘n’ tagged
             like lobster, shell plate servers take away.
             Hey Leela, save the papaya; click properties.  

 

             

 

                YUH RAP SO (4.5)

                The one person whom he let read his verse was
                Freda – because he liked her angry essays
                & nurseryrhymeish notsorry pouting
                (As she herself labelled her poems) about
                Her lifestyle locked to my culture like a ghost /
                that can’t fade like a cloud / since it’s of the dust /
                that spreads the more wheels / and boots trample it down:
                The facility for which she became known
                Among her classmates for using fancy words
                To impress Teacher Judd at first unnerved Ladd
                For its urgent guilelessness matching his own:

                So: I would rather have nightmares / than have none /  
                but prefer daydreaming / to having nightmares /
                prefer sleepless nights / to sleepwalking all day 

                    (from “Raponani” by Brian Chan, 2023)

 

   
              
             To belong to a clutch of confirmed virgins 
            (But some of them too may have known The worst sin?)
             All the eager brides of a polygamous
             Lord, each a none to herself kneeling to his
             Crotch-hard Cross + trying to justify its
             Indelible groove scarring their hearts’ deserts.

             Yet some of those hearts would shame Sister Dilys
             Into viewing her well-honed ironies as
             A facile if not cowardly surrender
             To the contemptation to feel superior
            (In highschool another Red girl once cursed her
            – Who you tink you be? Actin superiyuh!)
             To those nuns who glaringly had no talent
             For voicing or facing inconvenient
             Ideas challenging their trusting assumptions:
             But that very blankness, Dilys soon saw, shone
             With a guileless animal simplicity

           (from “Raponani” . a verse novel by Brian Chan, 2023)

 

 

           
                                                                                                               
                                         “We get used to the life we lead, and that
                                              habit becomes a destiny that feels foreign
                                             to us.”
                                               - Julio Cortázar, Hopscotch (1966)   

                 
              They radio^play folk songs about the ways; still
              not easy to outsort the fake from world new plate;
              breeders @flyborne talk pits.
                                                                Good story cover?  
              we there minding we own patwa when this ocean
              boom! start gushing yay! above the forest myths
              we hoof ‘n’ scale.

                                                    ^

              Modern island mates ! bracelet^slaps like cane
              on his chair bottom, need unknowable; her nightie
              hitch up switchin’ top down trickle; fold^holdin’
              so.

             Speech free, in garland hung performance                     
             size argues in the pool | outside room program
             climbers chitter, watch . relieve the trees.

                                                    ^

             Past ending, how gears mesh? villages with names
             like Triumph, La Belle Alliance, all the thanks
             we get, must give | mudflat hands soap stock
             dealers bald strop^shaving. 

            How tangled roots back bone our day? Jour
            overt, head tail sore from overnight coin
            tossing; belly pot resigned | on Transit ask
            what fevers grip the purse that saves; Godspeed
            dock.  

                                                             – W.W.                                 

         

 

             

     

 

            YUH RAP SO (4.3)

            Still, it incensed her that a few were guilty
            Of sprouting the most mindless prejudices,
            Crass toadstools spored through the concoction of Race
            By the same perverse tribalists who policed
            The cult of Local Colour – including leashed
            Black guard-dogs slobbering beside the hidden
            White-uniformed hips of pale Portuguese-ish
            Nuns in black boots posed between two brown sandalled
            African men (as black as Portags couldn’t
            Be white) stilling the beasts barking blue murder
            At The New Nation’s invasive snapshooter:

            Watching the dogs, Dilys had thought – At least they
            Aren’t posing! for that noisepaper’s Culture Page

                  (from “Raponani”, by Brian Chan, 2023)

 

 

                                                                                              
                                                          "I have never seen the beast," Cristo
                                                           confessed miserably.
                                                       “You ever see you mother with a man?” Magda
                                                         spoke viciously.”
                                                              – Wilson Harris, The Whole Armour (1962)

                 
            Not in villages with roadside groomers, manatee     
            moods | class masters @lectern lights have no idea;
            charade & Co How yuh toss ‘n’ turnin’! ship tight
            dildothas slidin’. 

            Not island chest pride^puffed with pigeon peas  
           + turdles splat! in state show window | hunger
            game? drain the river, grab ‘n’ bake fish jumping
            so.

            Not the soldier on old battle fields . sees a farm  
            girl from the truck rushing his company
            to the front | in Death valley ‘im blood teeth Caw!
           ‘im double back; plucky, grim sign reaper.

                                                  +

            For funeral events for whispers friends for arms 
            in silent clutch . church bell, briefly their sorrow
            ours.

                                                  +

            Our tower glass cleaners making sure from room          
            to foyer to car top open over miles of old sea
            wall . not one dam shoe mud tracking | carpet
            retro fit for princes.

                                                                  \ August entry
            ocean splash not verified; September platform
            narrow so. Watch, nah! ripples mark.  
                                                                        Pan season
            here, hems to hoist^up stars far flare | bon nuit
            pitit mwen! blouse unbutton nipples steuups,
            down link bed sag always so.           

                                                                    – W.W.

                        
                   

             

                                     

       

               YUH RAP SO (4.2)

               The projection + reception of signals
               Of spoken words broken into digital
               Information-shards of an invisible
               & incurable virus of sheer babble
               Linking a detached pair of ego-bubbles
               Rainbowing their pasts through an uncalled-for call:
            – Oh hi there, C, Dilys had answered her cell
               As though there was no distance or time at all
               Between them as bright young things + dull old fools
               & as though she + he had been bedfellows
               Of any kind down in the Mission:

               She’d never liked C, that black son of the gun,
               As she once spitefully labelled his person

               (from “Raponani”, by Brian Chan, 2023)

 

 

 

                 
             (From Notes towards an Autobiography 
             Handwritten by Dilys at the suggestion
             Of Judd after her depression-confession):

             From then on the child Dilys tried her utmost
             To charm the pants off (one old lech let her taste
             His tongue) otherwise no-time-for-nonsense folk
             Who just had to stop to hear the sweet ting squawk
             Her nth parroting of The Ugly Duckling
             Or cluck her tongue-tied aping of The Click Song
             (In my nateev veelage in Johannesburg):
             One prim old bird demurred her praise thus: My word!
             Hearing her, Dilys was shocked that the word word
             By itself could behave like a kind of curse-
             Word: it was written, in the lines of the face
             Of that granny, that nothing small could impress
             Her + at that moment Dilys felt her own
             Fat smallness

          (from “Raponani” . a verse novel by Brian Chan, 2023)

                   

 

                                                                          
                                     " A man was catching crab one day and suddenly
                                        he see his right hand walking away. He look
                                         again and see four five crab carrying it away.”
                                                           - V.S. Naipaul, Miguel Street (1959)

                
           Start with the GPS that can pinpoint the pimple
           on the nose of Sairas hiding in the weeds of foreign
           exchange | mobile?  peek sneak, confirm . Not Prepaid
           to care. 
                                                                    \ Whose tracers
           dye inside tree lines ? where memes the fastest brooding
           steam | up near our stellings Gao Ming forklifts stack
           snake inyuh cutgrass drums.   
                                                                        Village walk 
           ways shudder under truck wheel hubris; passers
           like on plantation grid hog ! side^scrape my middle
           ride you try! mud^lock my Lastname.

                                                    +

           Matched like old wood house frame baby face 
           daughters @love^sixteen disappear . for soft
           serve again not seen.

                                                   +

          Beach runners + our raftsmen done with river
          tours warn ! flat on your stomach brace for dragon
          fish racing up ‘n’ over castles, under sand skin
          teeth.                 
                                      \ Limbs husk^free of coconut
          sippers they’ve found sea lanes Whose walls accept
          our back stroke reach? swim champions now.

         Meantime this aging millionaire offers trade – half
         his fortune for ten youth^fresh years | lines of give^
         takers; some transfer details to be worked out.

                                                             – W.W.

 

                 

           

 

 

                YUH RAP SO (4.0)

                                                                   Now real parrots
               & macaws were at their wordless squawking lot,
               Their racket of pretending to give a damn
               About the earthbound passage of the dumb worm
               Of a man beginning to snake his way through
               The base of their upper-realm hullabaloo
               Neverendingly celebrating their gift
               Of being able to wing away – aloft
               Not quite up to heaven’s height, but to their bright
               Feathered brief relief from their own dust-bound fate

                (from “Raponani” by Brian Chan, 2023)

                                             

                
             
           Take a wild guess, as croupiers in the cloud place              
           cards for bettors down on earth . bluff alert, the cicada
           last ditch call | prayers noted! sheep hands chest
           tight eventually fold.  

                                            \ Here's a challenge : travel
           the bowl, sample native fruit you find vegetation
           learn | tie down octopus arms, blood count suck
           cups off^skin.

                                                   ^

           iPhone hype keys snapping for attention, face +
           buttock grind tinnitus^like @cranium base. What
           mass you say play against for?

                                               \ Here’s a mission : forest 
          floors swept clear of chain saw dusters; iron
          rakers who scrap accounts @ paradise bird stops;
          carbon pool drain.

                                                  ^

          Grass raise bush to cover every precious crevice
          straddled; crapaud eyes peel as grounds reboot
          long after air + sky light raiders finish. 

                                           \ Here’s an app : the swamp
          or garden croak that rattled even mount^maul
          mammoths ? who says child^curious rhythmias can't
          over war^grown centuries leap; deep set to beep.

                                                             – W.W.

 

           

         

 

 

           YUH RAP SO (3.9)

           Theirs was already a zone of walking stars
           That required no baptism by guilty tears
           Mixed with the blood from a sacrificial Cross,
           Yet it was an Eden about to be lost
           Down the mindless maw of the beast of wheels and
           Boots + guns + trailers + other prefab
           Assumptions about its right to take over
          (Over ever the perverter of power)
           Whatever ripeness makes it ready to be
           Plucked + washed + peeled + swallowed, all its seeds
           At the core of its flesh of custom thrown out:

           But can’t-be-helped colonisation was not, 
           Thomasson knew, a notion that was needed
           From a leftover paleface, white sheep-keeper
           Whose red flock slept sounder than he of black thoughts           

                 (from “Raponani” by Brian Chan, 2023)

                                                   

 

                 

                                           Loneliness sublimated
            to sentimental heroics of gesture
            as much to afform (sic) his Noble Nature
            as to disrupt, in trust, the ruts of others’ :

            Those were more shards by which Sister D. bothered
            To take Brother J. seriously enough
            To forgive his disrespect for all the Cloth
            In general and the starch of her habit
           (Vatican II a dream not yet come through quite)
            Still grimed by his slight shove that had made her drop
            Back into the chair from which she had got up
            To think on her toes while rebutting Ladd’s last
           (But of course only his latest) bombastic
            Attack on the very church that gave him work –
            Down from the Pope through the priest + up in her!
         – Yes, you, you! Phonies like you! were Ladd’s exact
            Words exacting like cracked-mirror reflections
            Demanding more of their reverse that fed them.

         (from “Raponani” . a verse novel by Brian Chan, 2023)