FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN

 

                 
            Exclusiveness lies in the seed of all tribes 
            She’d read in her Ant-hop-apology class,
            Understanding Others As Ourselves, but was
            Such ob/subjectivity just realist
            Fiction?  to know thyself hard enough business
            Even for the least lazy self who would choose

            To unlid that Pandora’s carton: + Dilys
            Had grown up in the shadow of drugstore shelves
            Off which small boxes + bottles often fell
            Because her busy parents were too sloppy
            To bother with stacking their stock properly:
            As a child she’d seen that what her parents called
            Producks – things that sometimes broke + sometimes spilled –
            Came in small boxes that came in big boxes
            Some black-stamped POISON, others MADE IN TEXAS
            & most marked with mysterious fine-fine words

          (from "Raponani", a verse novel by Brian Chan, 2023)

 

 

 

                
            Unmarried, Vijinie’s Aunt swore she learnt about love^
            life wind altering from their Country songs . radio
            waves Leela's pond rippling, tide flat Estate days.
                                                                \ How to turn sixteen
            seventeen rose root knotted ? hold^give in sticky cane
            stalk leaflessness.

                                                    +

            On old plantation paths car’vans pass like buffalo
            swerving fast; tricky, verge stepping single.
                                                                    \ Outside the belt
            felt body facing consequence . book word often
            not recognised | collateral too, like weedsallover
            the heritage place.

                                                    +

            Under burq^scarf cover . modus found to stand       
            by stitchings loose. What are we if not fiction^thread
            needlers?
                                                            \ Hibiscus in the desert,
            for centuries the garden man fared trading dry
            spell secrets . watering can relief | over in minutes.

                                                    +

            Models of endurance hard to find ? if not Who are
            we period labor bearers.

                                                                   \ Wombs believe, 
            shadows slip advice . whose head to swell, foam
            balls fluff | witches land . slide into the arms of planet anger
            dust. Dub so, loop so.
                                                                            – W.W.

           

 

               

 

               YUH RAP SO (3.1)

               Later, Judd would ask Dilys if she’d believed
               She could get away with that sort of fancy
               Even twee metaphysical turn of phrase
               In producting an academic treatise:

               He was into Communication as Form: 
               Just the facts, ma’am:  hadn’t super-modern Wim
               Wenders said America has colonized
               Our consciousness (a fact we’d best get used to)?
               So what you see is what you get was what Ladd
               Was colonized by: it made things easy and
               Rhymed with his fascination over Choisisme’s
               Sharp cutaway from dull Catholicism
               – Although Alain could have taken Judd to task
               For not getting Seeing in Marienbad

                  (from “Raponani” by Brian Chan, 2023)

 

 

 

               
          Heavens guide the land over desert reptile minds;
          rib hopeful bullocks like in Behar time^cart pulling
          still | our truck crude pipe lines crossing village
          trench foot . notes for printing on‘an’on, no canopy
          no song.

                       \ Artificial I shutting calabash dip stalls    
          can 3Design think bed + bath | cushion the screen
          chair @ pixels not sky blue.
                                                                                Sink
          in weigh wash good.

                                                *

          On native soil mas’raiders spade^hit metal rare. 
          Only a matter of time, our plump girls blink, side
          eye^pass taking; paradise shelf service.

             \ Layers + veils for interfuse ‘n’ face; cave^
          like shelters from cheek sag hollows; wine^
          like cellars urgency cork^holding.

                                                                                Up 
          load ‘n’ hug chord^beats away heart frighten so.

                                               *

          Coin toss ? whose drone will host a strike right     
          down the word worship dome | crow necks
          convene to poke ‘round rubble peace; pick^
          pepper eye nose throat.

                              \ Too cold to change . the light
          bulbs dot^lining lymph tunnels | cabins cable^
          lifting souls to fever peak . last mile . docking
          forms filled out . hol’on hol’on! Beep.
                                                                      Accepted.  
          What next, find out | said done here.

                                                                 – W.W.

 

 

         

 

 

             YUH RAP SO (3.0)

             That was what dull old short men did, no problem –
             Except for that existentialist Bad-Faith
             Moralism that might plague them unto death
             – But nothing a little old-age exhaustion
             & growing shortage of breath (which Thomasson’s
             Doctor in Scarborough had warned him about
             Before allowing him to travel down South
             To which one of them ex-colonies again?
             No matter, man: couldn’t be a fate worse than
             Belfast's or Ontario’s yet-Colony)
             Couldn’t bear for their last few years (or thirty):

             Death of course, no-news death, was what everything
             After all boiled down to, the hot hide-peeling
             Pepperpot always on the simmer

                 (from “Raponani” by Brian Chan, 2023)

 

 

   
            

           Dilys in her reading ran into a lot
           Of such cases of American lingo
           & drew a blank: for her they bore no echo
           To their metaphoric/idiomatic
           Assumptiveness (– blind like all things demotic,
           As her snide Option-Prof. Mara Brickolage
           Had once pronounced in her class on Sacrilege
           As Civic Duty – which had not gone down well
           With the Vice-Rector & the Vice-Chancellor
           But was a hit with vice-Catholic students):
           They didn’t rhyme with her languagexperience:

           But she wasn’t even at home with her own 
           Country’s slang, so much less with American:
           As a child, she’d kept her head buried in books
           British, tales of princesses with golden locks
           Having to pass some test of their purity
           To prove they could do their duty by Beauty

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

 

 

                                            

                              
                                “The fear of every strange outpost of the mind,
                                   every strange planet within the ambivalent
                                    orbit of self-discovery…”
                                               – Wilson Harris, Heartland (1964)

                          \ Once those passports leave the clutch
               stamps that date all in advise no back doubling;
               bone reset . sprint blocks away from wind
               brand combustion.

               Cities strain swimmers through cold catch holds;                   
               forest arts dark or inkling rarely fade. Clock in
               so Indigene ! no time for hammock camp talk,
               myth^treated enough.

                                                       ^

                                       \ Just one vagabond glance 
               at bouncing tail destables men on stilts; road
               performers One Way traits disguise | @stern
               short stuffers point ‘n’ flail.

               Land mas’ . never meant for skin soft play; nice
               place to plume fall free, you think ? join; try
               to stay – cassavie plant cut end of days – quiet
               about the Minister’s persistence : your keys
               meeting tomorrow.

                                                       ^ 

                                     \ Mothers to nothing we hug much    
               like divine child . on speed^paved ways knees
               tumble scrape as if skyfallen | about which
               who first laughed intervention ? what intervention.

               Manage the meteor shower, redress^like for stain
               or account hard to remove | wedded parts burn
               stages fall away . All Stars Space Station
              Jeez ‘n’ Ages ! flying pan update due.

                                                                      – W.W.

 

 

               

 

               YUH RAP SO (2.8)

               The interviewing Emigration-agent
               Amanda (C, sharp, was already learning
               That in Canada surnames are the last thing
               You attach to a person, like a Label)
               A Born-again-ish gal from the Bible Belt
               (Which at the time C had only read about)
               Might have then wondered – Is this guy a Poet
               Or something?  or just an Asthmatic or what?
               Before she got it! :  the boy wanted to Get
               The Hell Outa Hey! (one of her favourite
               Calypsos of a bunch she had collected):

               What she had needed to get the Hell out of
               Was Alberta’s Slave Lake – which she dearly loved,
               Don’t get her wrong, she was planning to retire
               Back there, free to choose her own Purgatory

                 (from “Raponani” by Brian Chan, 2023)

 

                                                     

                                                          “…men dreaming and living
                                  and hungering in a room without a light
                                   who could not die since death was far too poor.”
                                   - Martin Carter, Looking At Your Hands (1951)

              
               \ Would show us how to catch ‘n’ clean lung fish;
           explained reports from foreign . how churches
           making room for condos now. Can’t compare, nah
           cyaan complain.
                                         We didn’t sweat his ninety
           year old head band . night dark arms long
           never caught moon hanging . found his way.

                                                  ^

               \ This place . ask why island breeze feel
          like Admin breath policing the air | how jumbies
          walk, fig leaf form . wanting to be tree whole
          dance.
                                  With pheasant eyes + hassar gills
          we’d bicycle . search all ‘bout. The discovery sea
          changed ground tracks < back to Estate overlord
          house bottom . bending blind.

                                                  ^

                       \ How best to millions follow ? on hinge
          post titles flying bad . cows for green | help
          mothers worn . sheet neck to toe mosquito sucks
          control.                   
                               Yo, Carp . frame saw a climate proof
          Ark | or signal an uber spacecraft . like mammoth
          over the island, hover lights flashing . out wide
          everybody staring
                                                       – W.W.

            

        

           

 

            YUH RAP SO (2.7)

            One way or another, Dilys would decide,
            God was the only way to transcend a world
            That was doomed to sink under a swamp of words
            More complacent than the ebb tide’s furbelows
            Dawdling till their moment to surge + swallow
            Every meaningless dead fish + brick + bone
            Stuck in the placid silt-beach of smooth disdain.
            In her heart she knew there was no only-One
            Anything, but One God was the Exception
            That knocked on her mind’s door, entered and remained

                (from “Raponani” by Brian Chan, 2023)

 

 

                                                         ………………………..
             
           To the circus-sawdust of Higher Learning?
           Its promotion of Ambition as something
           To be subscribed to – as to a classy club
           Of competitive gladiators rubbing
           Shoulders shrunk with the shame of quote-unquote thought
           Not too hard to shrug off though their backs + throats
           Were getting play-by-the-rules stabbings + cuts –
              Was not a product scrupulous Dilys thought
           She could lower her values to buy into,
           Although she knew that, as a confirmed Sinner,
           She too was hypocritically caught up
           In a Big Boys’ club – one of the most corrupt:
           ……………

 

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

 

              

               Anchors caught open^mouth at the plate could
               attract a skill set o' ji^zhi chop sticks | or palms
               under vests, henna still drying – which a long
               ago Sahib chest would dismiss as ‘perfectly frightful’.

                               \ Can we move now?  yard holding
              sar’wrap sweepers hide . midriff prithi^lucky so
              far eluding packs of village cocks ‘n’ pits.

                                              *

                               \ Conceive : tubes tied, away 'n' gone;
              shore found What then ? huddle separate, find
              a vein . follow billboard balance beaming eyes.

              Here no sirens, missile strikes sigh one ! two           
              say Nuit Nuit, sleep tight | morning knees to prayer
              knocking There, now.

                                              *

                             / Plot boilers of flight risk can’t hush
              our parliament of night crickets | hill climbs
              from the faith in stray controllers need all the air
              we can’t leave.

              For now what wing metaphors persist ? ‘ruction            
              over spirit heating | haze as days thin faster
              into years . blood we host testing.

                                                                    – W.W.

 

                 

               

       

 

             YUH RAP SO (2.5)

             Now he lay back, one arm under his head in
             His couvade-hammock under the shed outside
             His hut – which he still sometimes called his quarters
             In perverse nostalgia for the killing years
             He had wasted in His Majesty’s army
             As a lame apology for a padré
             Or godsbody gofering around death-beds
             To hear regrets + curses from those he blessed,
             Realising how ungenerous he was

               (from “Raponani” by Brian Chan, 2023)

                                        

 

                   

                                                           
                                                 "There is in some weak people, who feel
                                                 their weakness and resent it, a certain
                                                mechanism….” 
                                               – V.S. Naipaul, A House for Mr Biswas (1961)

                 Agents have a take^breath understanding of flight
             charts . away at border stack point catchers
             need only squeeze the neck, release back raptures 
             on the horizon.

             Good bees gravitate to where they’d make good
             good honey | smart fish angle for channel cross
             like @England hooks . swerve ‘n’ chafe a darling
             thigh name Ludmila.
                                                 [ Oui! float poles snag
             sudden ocean fail, bag passage rights ]

                                                   *

                            \ Book nations prefer if islanders
             play @ genre stations + prize fled^home sweat
             shirt; otherwise for you from limbo is straight
             to repechage.
                                          At heritage sites few queue
             for Empire colon probe; native address hoist up so
             dough kneaders all could see | make you wonder 

                                                   *                              

             Our wild coast?  Extractors after sugar_rice
             left pallets of harbour pain, roots too
             thread loose to surface.                           

             Old problem, new cane device send notice : So 
             neighbor, you get mih text? last night snake
             man was inside yuh hen house ! egg whip
             crack sucker. 
                                                  [ Ah Zuzu, mon salon.
             Alt spark to kindle log light years ]

                                                                  - W.W.

 

            

        
                     

 

              YUH RAP SO (2.4)

              Dr C. was necessarily failing,
              With his mask-strained words, to pinpoint, to nail down
              The precise moment when the outer oddness
              Of his connections first echoed, rhymed with his
              Inner innate strangeness ever whispering
              Its bald namelessness like an unfeathered wing
              Orphaned off some bird that never missed its shred
              Till it tried again to lift off:  So Conrad,
              When questioned by his Canajun Embassy
              Agent – Why do you want to quit your country?
              Answered – To wing like Bob Marley’s dove
               …………………
                                  …………………………………………

                (from “Raponani” by Brian Chan, 2023)

                

 

 

                
            Ladd dismissed such guilt-bound service as sheer shit
            In his attempt to shock the nun out of hers,
            Adding that she was wasting her tears + years
            In letting her still youthful ripe flesh be stung
            By wasps of unnecessary suffering.
            When, to support that argument, he even
            Invoked Time’s wingèd chariot from Heaven,
            Dilys had to bow her head to hide her smile.
            The more the boy talked, the more he stayed a child.
            She felt that his objective analysis
            Of her Dark Night was his way of saving face
            After she had brushed off like a feeble fly
            His brazen-face buzzing about her body.

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