One morning he discovered a second challenge to his beleagured spirit, the need
to execute the merge.
He would come down the access ramp to the expressway only to find a stream of
traffic tearing down the right lane, showing no desire to slow and let cars slip
in. This meant he had to wait and wait; stare into his sideview mirror, watch for
a break, while drivers behind him honked their horns and hinted he lacked road
courage.
Compelled once to wait his turn behind a timid driver craning his neck to look
back as if pleading for a chance to merge, he discovered his own irritability. He'd
swear at cars in front of him…Damn Taurus sitting there….just sitting there…
shiiiitt… Ford Escort with your stupid AAA sticker and Proud Parent sticker… for
chrissake, move, move! He'd mutter and swear like this; then he'd feel chastened
when his turn came to merge and the same thing happened, the same fearful
hesitation; the car behind him poking its nose in an effort to show him how it was
done in New York city.
He had to find a way; he had to find a way to execute the merge. One morning
he did just that.
He sat at the top of the ramp and watched the traffic, measuring the intervals
between cars in the right lane. Drivers behind him wondering if he'd stalled honked
but he ignored them. He watched. He measured. He waited to swoop down.
When he sensed the moment was right he stepped on the gas pedal and charged
down the ramp. A quick glance in his sideview mirror told him just how much
acceleration he needed to avoid a fatal collision; and he kept going until he'd executed
the merge.
Sometimes he heard a screech of tyres as horrified drivers seeing this madman
hurtling down the ramp slammed on the brakes.
"You have a good day, too!" Radix shouted, not looking back, slipping over quickly to
the left lane and only then glancing in the rearview mirror in case the driver he'd cut off
decided to give chase which was quite likely, you never know, given the crazy things
people do in this city.
(from Ah, Mikhail, O Fidel! by N.D.Williams, 2001)
NY SLIDE II: RADIX & AMARELLE
"Michael…"
"What is it?"
"Somebody trying to force open the front door."
Radix turned over, opened his eyes, listened. They both lay on their backs and
listened. Amarelle's fingers were buried in his chest ready to push him out to
investigate, or pull him closer like a shield.
"I hear a noise, like somebody banging on the door."
"It's probably fellows on the stoop."
"You know, one o' these nights somebody goin' break in and murder us
right here in the bed."
"All this television you watching, now you starting to hear things!"
"I am telling you, I heard somebody banging on the front door."
"Banging on the front door? Or knocking on the front door?"
"Don't be stupid."
"Look, there's nothing to worry about. We probably safer here than most people.
Anyone trying to get in would have to walk over the fellows on the stoop…the same
fellows you always complaining about. Right now they like watch dog on the stoop."
"Yes, but you don't know who and what they watching."
Radix turned on his side, preparing to give up listening. They heard a muffled heavy
sound coming from the front of the building, as of something thrown against the front
door.
"You hear it again…? and you just lying there?" Amarelle poked him in the ribs.
"Is probably fellows horsing around."
Amarelle sucked her teeth.
When eventually he returned to the bedroom Amarelle was fast asleep; or appeared
to be, until his body weight on the bed stirred her. She turned on her side.
"I thought the people kidnap you or something."
"Very funny." She was developing the sarcastic tongue. He concentrated on getting
under the covers.
"So…"
"So what?"
"So who was out there?" she asked.
"I told you, just fellows horsing around."
"You know, one o' these nights these same fellows goin' ride their horses right inside
this bedroom."
"You said that before."
Radix turned his back to her. His mind was a rumbling furnace. He didn't think he'd get back to sleep rightaway. He had to get some sleep before the alarm went off at six.
They were quiet for awhile.
"Well, whenever they decide to break in, this kitchen knife waiting for them."
Kitchen knife! "What kitchen knife?"
Amarelle reached down under the bed and came up, to Radix's astonishment, with a
six-inch blade; the kind of knife that came in a cutlery set; the kind of set stored away
somewhere in the kitchen, not in the bedroom! She held the gleaming blade in the air
until she was satisfied he'd had a good look at it.
(from Ah, Mikhail, O Fidel! by N.D.Williams, 2001)
ARRIVAL DAYS, DEPARTURE TIMES
Rigged to happen every year now, with onion skin speeches and
bright remembering fabrics; jerky-hip dancing girls and servers
fanning coal pots of blame and avowal; though bet your bulging
jewelry box there's a man in the crowd counting head like votes,
and women looking man like mate. Party time, yes.
The horror is gone; but someone on mission & Ministry,
who frowns on Carnival & chipping bass lines, softens
for these microphone solemnities: the field of faces,
the whipped-up batter of maltreatment.
The stage is set so walking off the ships dubs every cane bound cutter
hero; every scribbler, poet; those labour strikes, famed victories.
Who can refuse these reparations to the spirit? ignore
the "time for reflection" drizzle?
Well, after the plantation, "flight" (& cunning) slipped in
our DNA, the notion of "anywhere but here". Consider
what happens now on crafts outbound to any "there".
Knees bent in cabins cramped like old mizzen-mast ships;
air like seasick puddles at your ankles; seat belts, the chains;
someone in the walk space making sure you're strapped in.
Time to disembark, the drill's the same: step off
the transport, follow signs, straight verifying lines; turn right
to fat free runaways, the heat of welcome in wintered eyes;
row houses, burrows leased to guard the old ingathering ways;
turn left
alone to wonder: your first powerbike down expressways! far
off to Chance! Discover! the toll? paths grassy green, trails
stone strewn to Growing Old.
Trust me, go left, left, young man; and pay attention.
There's more to any "there" than changing seasons.
This city puts on street shows for Arrivals: marching bands,
the Mayor sashed & waving, crowds with flags and iPhones;
back to work, yo!
-W.W.
THREAD
Last year's song's easier to recall
than today's which has slipped in and out
of the cloth of the air, a needle I forgot
to thread, a thread I forgot to knot.
Nothing to retrace but a line of shrinking holes,
shadowed punctures in a field of white.
(from "Thief With Leaf" by Brian Chan)
BARFLY
Here I pause
to remember how not
to sleepwalk
through trenches of custom,
how to wake
the one essential voice
held like wine
in cupped hands whose fingers
lust to spread
themselves apart to shed
their burden.
(from "Gift Of Screws" by Brian Chan)
NY SLIDE I: SAMMY D.
From Reggaemuffin to Reggaenomics.
His mother left him back on the island when she came up to the States. He'd left
school a wild youth; flirting with Rastafarianism, indulging a passion for soccer; until one day she sent for him. "I came up here a young man, twenty five, twenty six years old; had two outstanding skills going for me," he explained, raising two fingers for emphasis. "Mathematics
and cooking. No college degree. No previous experience. I was a genius at maths, wizard with the numbers, even though me never get far in the school system."
His maths skills apparently impressed his first employer who was in fact his mother's employer. She cleaned his house on Long Island. They were nice people; the man found an office help job for Sammy D. at his Manhattan brokerage firm.
There he astounded them with his ability to perform mathematical calculations in his head. "Simple addition and subtraction, them couldn't believe I could do it, just like that, without calculator."
That plus the suspicion he was truly an out of wedlock child of the American entertainer, plus exotic stories he spun at the water cooler about marijuana as herbal food, and a special dish called ackee and saltfish that could poison you if not carefully prepared – all of this endeared him to the office staff; made him something of a character, but basically a nice guy.
At the stroke of five in the afternoon he fled the brokerage and dashed for the subway or a bus en route to Kennedy airport where he did a stint, his second job, until midnight. No, not outside the airport as a baggage helper. He changed jackets and worked inside the building wheeling passengers off the planes in wheel chairs; helping foreigners fresh off the Concorde or Mexicana or Lufthansa and feeling lost in the airport's byzantine corridors.
In between flights he poured diligently over tiny books of conversational Spanish, German, French. It gave him an edge on the other employees. Foreigners coming off the plane were surprised and relieved when he guided them this way, pointed them that way, all the while chatting in their native tongue.
After three years of quick dashing and changing, relentlessly working and saving, he saved enough to urge his mother into retirement.
She went back to Jamaica; she bought a house. She never stopped talking about her son in America, and how strange life is; how one time she was over there and he was back here and now she was here and Sammy D. was over there, working hard in all that New York cold.
(from Ah, Mikhail, O Fidel! by N.D.Williams, 2001)
POEMS FOR SONS RETURNING (& THEIR SONGS)
What he confessed, studying wet circles on the beer table, was:
he could have married Margaret of England:
her mouth a glossed red line, the way her knees pressed
his on the bus, promising downy empires.
His indigene ferocity tamped down like the Queens horse
on clopping parades, he liked her; he liked
her student frugality of lust, always holding back some
for the library & 1st Class Hons.
Usually they went back outside (proper again) to patted cushions,
her legs like blue-breast feathers tucked in; to conversation, she listened
with Ludwig seriousness, brushing hair from her eyes;
opinions gliding down her Alpine nose; flutters of glee.
The more he thought about it: she could have played
the bhowjie for his people: sandals, the mosquito net;
the politics of retribution; saris gold-laced with tassels of self
reassembling; or the old khaki parsimony.
What might have been he dared not dare so he came home.
A girl was waiting; a position was waiting; service
to the nation, to pretty Vrajisha of Corentyne.
They bypassed romance like eels sliding to ceremony,
heritage lamps lit; and silvery-haired moomas
brooming the yard for the harvest of grandchildren.
The patacake she'd oil, spread & turn pretty much
anytime he liked. Comrade, what else was there?
what more?
Years of tribe agitation; seasons of theatre in the mouth;
late afternoons when the seawall knows the ocean of bent
back riders (puffed amateurs, ghost overseers) winds up ashore.
Over and over how we dig up &
bury comfort shrouds of the past. The old bulbs.
Two hours past midnight. Two cars race by, windows tinted,
hounds for some snatched pleasure kill
or drug letting in villages back dammed.
And every time the power fail, frighten tighten she belly,
"You lock the door?"
See the ladybird۞ nesting under him?
The feeling you get waking up wedged in this niche!
What's that? There's fear & life rot all over the world?
– W.W.
NO RETURN:
what we might have been is
the ghost of a chance: now
we are virgin ghosts
desire would pervert. Fate
is no master but
desire itself, a blank
to scrawl a burden on
or one to keep
erased.
(from "Thief With Leaf" by Brian Chan)
LOVESONG
Whenever it's raining at midnight
I'll be taking a walk and towards you.
It's your coat I'll be wearing when I must go back home.
Everywhere young men are paid to slam
bullets into one another's bodies
but this can't stop two souls from containing each other.
People are still dying in hunger
but somehow I keep enjoying these grapes
and bergamot tea with you at 2 in the morning.
From now on 2 a.m. is the time
I'll be knocking on the door of your dreams
to make you burn the butter for the next day's omelette.
Before the clouds dry up, let us go
walking in a different town of our own.
Wherever we stop to eat, we'll insist on plum wine.
Dream this town whenever we must meet
as mutual angels full of voice and tears.
Wherever we walk, the moon will keep her eye on us.
I kiss the back of your neck before
it fades with you down your road without me.
The shifting cloud mirroring your steps is your best friend.
(from "Fabula Rasa" by Brian Chan)
POEMS FOR PLANET SAVERS (& THEIR SCREENS)
Too old for marches teargas street barricades, I'm up
for this, I'll sign, oh yeah, Save the Planet!
Save my memories from emissions; clean my arteries of blood
trapping silt; marriage of sleeping asbestos; punditry of pointing
finger gas. Filter the rain I still catch on my tongue. Solar
panels to empower wood burning areas of darkness,
Si senor! And those plastic shopping bags (I double, singles split!)
make them so that, when used, like cane trash they crumple curl &
wisp away.
Save the trees I used to climb;
new trees don't appeal to boys with joystick fingers;
who needs paper products these days?
only old geezers in bathrooms.
Save all you want, my planet's in storage
anyway. Each moment lived I've saved on memory discs,
waiting retrieval. Yes, memory discs. You mean,
you haven't got one? You can take them with you
when you go.
While saviours mass, bright green the marketplace
or halt the ice floe melt, you're watching
playbacks deep in the earth, high in the heavens,
frame by frame. With Skip.
Rewind. And bandwidth to outlast the worms.
dot Dead, of course, oh yeah!
- W.W.
IN THE GARDEN
The lives of plants are only
as secret as we are blind
to their masks, as dumb as we are deaf
to the crackling silence of their tongues.
To these this stray ladybird
has no trouble responding
with her casual but thorough caress
that leaves unadored no pore of this
geranium's flesh of fire
to make it, more brazen, blaze.
(from "Gift of Screws" by Brian Chan)
INVOCATION
Woman of air and rain, flood these deserts
with rivers of breath and pools of cool light;
woman of fire, blow and lick a flame
up the ladder of the spine to the green
centre of love, the blue flute of the Word,
the purple sun at the eye's horizon,
the open crown of the all-seeing queen,
to smooth the path of this blind nightingale
through the sand dragging its wings
whose feathers shake with your voice.
(from "Fabula Rasa" by Brian Chan)
POEMS FOR GUYANA BACKTRACKERS (& THEIR DREAMS)
[Don’t think of boarding rituals you missed: not leaving
through the front Gate; not tasting order and civility
at Customer Check-In; the sneak peek at First Class
that’s Not For You; your first walk sideways down the aisle;
farewell families squeezing handkerchiefs; and that last mile
to the airport, the taxi speeding for takeoff on old Atkinson runways.
Scuffling to get through, at sea on subways scuttling home,
you’ll soon forget the bush paths taken, mosquito
stings, distrust and gamble. Your winged dark nights
will scout new crabways to old watchful mornings: hey, budday,
y’know where Richmond Hill is?
Not so, those Jean-Jacques & Jasons pushing off
Haiti’s shores, whose last look back snaps the boatbuilder’s sign
of the Cross. Nor brave Mamadous booked on Libya’s coastlines
for Papal portos, who startle stooped Neapolitan pensioners like crows
in the olive groves: out of nowhere, again these Moors!
showing up, bare face, bare bone! with nothing
to declare but bodies of water.
Bodies in waters crossed back when still stink
and stack the myth they show no proclivity for Olympic
swimming; though free them ashore, any shore; marvel
at marathons of endeavour, wailers of enduring light
chipping to the ends of the earth
The wonder and fear in their eyes once, up on deck!
No, count your stars & stripes, backtrackers. Check your hearts
zipped pockets for dry papers. Run. Don’t know
how lucky you are]
– W.W.
THE TRIP I WILL MAKE
is the one I am.
The skies will mirror
the clouds of my eyes,
my sinuses will
decide the weather,
mountains will rise up
when I fall, and fade
if I fail, in love.
I build my own boat,
stitch and hammer its
sails and anchor, flood
these rivers of blood
with fish that I eat.
They too are stewards and
masters of all my
deaths and of their own
fate: death’s but a shape
of exchange, the price
of forever, one
more gate and bridge: we
know the trip we will
make we’ve made before
and the trip we do
is already done.
(from “Fabula Rasa” by Brian Chan)
TO ENTER
another town, to wear
another tongue, to hear a strange flute
and to know all their rhythm before
their speech, their song, the familiar and
the new, and not to mind that sometimes
it’s all a stony racket, a clash
of rocks the sea will make smooth, of knife-
blades which will sharpen one another
into profiles human of the moon.
(from “Gift Of Screws” by Brian Chan)
AMERICA
A bright shore wakes the drowned dreamer
to his own questions: these are
what he seeks through deserts
of ribbed care or pitched by waves
of desire. To stake some cooling
pool or to be washed ashore
is not to tap the deep
well or discover a new
world but to frame an old still-life.
So the quicksand dream remains
the true rock of water,
the real continent of light.
(from “Fabula Rasa” by Brian Chan)
POEMS FOR GUYANA’S FIRST LADY (& HER MAN)
[Where to turn, in your heart of sudden darkness, when you’re locked out
the bedroom, and mosquitoes in waiting swarm over that kneeded body
shivering in Sati’s nighty? To sniffing cross-eyed bloggers in heat
for scandal? Or columns in newspapers sworn to protect
the entitlement of the nation’s First husband?
The shame of that. His wretched country. The shame.
Suniye! There’s another way out: just two clicks through the forest;
past the bastard’s cave, the victims backtracking. We choose
our mates, not our unruled desires. So be a tigress, lady. Turn
again to poets who understand one night you’d scratch
or knock on Hillary’s door; ask to come in]
-W.W.
FOR JANE SIBERRY
But tenderness is hard
to inhabit. Skins and masks
to be shed. Every act is
a pretence of yesterday’s.
The pain of love, what more, what?
These stirrings of rain cloud.
(from “Fabula Rasa” by Brian Chan)
TO A WIFE
Your obsession with your duty makes
you customs officer
to my love: I have nothing
to declare of it to you even
though the most secret pouch
of my heart is full of this
golden drug that you once discovered
and seized for no reason
but that it made you feel full
of power. But love overbears itself,
can’t stand the weight of its
own fruits of repetition
and sleep. Yet I hope mine can still move
you before you become
one more warden of the jail
where love locks itself, itself to think
free, a captive serving
life, an artist of escape.
(from “Fabula Rasa” by Brian Chan)
ANGELS
fall off their clouds
of care to become fools
who walk tightropes and fall
off cliffs only to learn
how to turn into safe
burghers who step sideways,
around and back or not
at all, till they fall off
their rugs of calm to turn
shocked back into angels.
(from “Gift of Screws” by Brian Chan)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN : NEWS 