FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN

 

            
           If only she wasn't only his Sister
           & was older enough to be his mother,
           She might stagger his hubris by slapping his
           Face – as she often slapped her own – to shock its
           Sleepwalking awake + away from fooling
           Itself it could keep breathing without heeding:

         +That blindly young she had never been allowed             
           To be, ancient guilt built into her birth, pride
           Of personhood pruned of its buds long before
           They could begin to dream that they should flower:
           You might complain that we’re trying to explain
           Our Woeman Catholic South American
           Young religious pigeon:    no, but we do say
           That the pigeon was extraordinary
           In her winged gift for entertaining versions
           Of herself with their inconvenient curses
           Of doubt, wasps ever about to swoop + sting:

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

 

 

 

              
          Our islanders pick ‘n’ shovel through mind ‘n’ field,
          from Admin clicks tekking licks like liquor; stray
          cow @ Graze don’t trust bend elbow | dollar yuh
          want, shallow yuh get.

          Curators of plantation pain . who could out^vent? 
          Smarter to hide heart savings . totems dug out of mud
          they’ll follow fingers whippy wind testing.

                 \ Stars in the distance guide our forest     
          breathers clear . bodies tack on bus or boat stack
          the weight of history shifting; like palmate leaf
          rollers > draw, float together . tilt, sink together.

                                             *

                      \  Reachers time their tables, at heaven’s 
          port for epaulette line plumbing | in basement
          bed down moon inbox . yet to set for cloud
          solicitation.

          Below the hills @ Arrivante dogs bark; recreation
          shots, sling right | last commode to mind The fuck
          you looking at? our business only.
                                                                            / A car 
          horn that plays La Cucaracha?  I don’t think so.
          A flight of whisky ? what branches stronger moor
          our wings.                                           
                                                                     / Sea legs
          secure, up next tower glass laddering | fluff
          the memory pillow . rumble, get some sleep.

                                                                  – W.W.

 

         

             

 

                SUN WIND

                  ………………
                                        ………………………………….

                We go back, the wind and I, and she’ll still
                use my ears as doorways into my head
                where she clears away any cobwebs and
                leaves behind her echoes to haunt me: she likes me:

                once in the grass she was about to cross
                paths with me when she changed her mind and rushed
                towards me and kissed me like no woman
                ever has, like a big friendly dog or a child. 

                There’s also ‘solar wind’ – which reminds me
                what I’ve been waiting for has arrived
                on my shoulder perched like a bird there blown
                by the wind whom, through these thoughts of her, I become.

                 (from “The Gift Of Screws” by Brian Chan, 2008)

          

 

–

     
                       "how should tasting touching hearing seeing 
                         breathing any-lifted from the no
                          of all nothing-human merely being
                           doubt unimaginable You?”
                           - e.e. Cummings, i thank You God for most
                                                     this amazing (1950)

 

          Ringtone Body in the Rubble signal not found; night
          hamsters don’t wait around for green jump lights | who
          would cap their fossil funneling ? go^find our Kaieteur
          source.

          Practice, practice serve or lies . soon you’re good 
          so double^cheek peckers clutch ! natural born actress
          you . draggable scent Arrrh!

          To step in mortal sludge, trek back to living room  
          floors – there see’t ? how evolution took off coal
          hot tail versions cooling.
                                                         / Species elsewhere
          could be flummoxed by our skull . eyeball size Small
          only, Sorry; the hoodie caves, veil membership.

                                                     +

                      / Chests blind side trusting shrug as hairy 
          text thumbs the brain snow screen . shovelers 
          slush blathering…
                                                  …in the name of heaven
          our tarp city hosts time redlining air | wails like
          that won’t flicker beams of Satellite baboonery.

                                             Planet relocate? You can’t
         be serious, earth worm steuups ! so end conceiving.
         Styles tried on, returned . dome face unmoved . Dios
         mio! could be our last rehearsing year.

                                                                    – W.W.

 

         

         

 

              ONE MORE

              Love's chance, denied, its reading postponed
              so that we might keep hugging our pain,
              keeps returning in as many dream-
              scapes as we need to finally be-
              come its power, claim its glory ours.

              From whisper to pinch to slap to kick, 
              from kick to knife to bombs to earthquake,
              it keeps speaking in tongues of our masques:
              Wake up wake up, your sun is dying
              to be recognised as your own hearts

              ……………………….
                                               ………………………….. 

          (from “The Gift Of Screws” by Brian Chan, 2008)

     

 

            
            +IT wasn't just because she had looked around
            Clear-eyed at every blood-bound thing + could find
            Nothing that moved her any more back to faith
            In the Force behind men’s masks – except the breath
            Now + then of a not malefic presence
            Transgressing the burial of its pretense
            Of being full-blooded though not quite human,
            Hard to know whether as man or as woman,
            Ghosts the mere climate-clouds of that hard-nosed zone
            Of Earth haunted by nothing else – unless pain,
            Voiceless, was its principal tenanting wraith:

            No, it was a pressure harder to live with
            That made Sister Dilys confide to Robb Ladd,
            Her teenage colleague whose tight-trousered gonads
            Could well prove more than mere mocking of her veil,
            – Robb, boy, I’m losing my faith, pray for my soul –
            Regretting her words even before she could
            Stop spluttering them like drops from a thin cloud:
            

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

 

 

           
        Pray for the boweling to stop before you pitch tent
        on the mountain; recap its moves | you could end
        with damp temples, worried the climate bitch might
        Gresso Retro switch so . plantation watchers saddle
        up again.

           \ Touts with degrees of belonging play captain,
        steer our Walcott page views out to sea | vieux
        pirates board.
                        You’re all set, Hon. Minister | could some
        one gloss^check the chirrups off ‘n’ on his lips?

                  \ To vanish like in feral snatch ! village errand
        print warm so searchers launch . like under rocks
        on Mars microbe^probing.
                                                       New year . halves
        stay gone . frogs sending code | peepl hav no iday.

                                                *

            \  Uncovered dare you head past the sing^song
        At the trough, at the trough elder beards bless
        ‘n’ shoot comfort feed.

                 \ Tide extractors lure our crab handlers  
        into back leg twists, shell heap tabling For you
        the sea snaps history >  brick join, platelets lay.  

        Rubble nights we fear could stretch on long, longer        
        than herd heart^rings round the world.
                                                                                  Coffin costs
        breaking like emergency glass . while like wedding
        gears to mesh, poised to pay cursors blink.

                                                                     - W.W.

                     

         

         

 

            HEART

                              …So I enter one more
            winter the same way a boy used to turn
            a street-corner at night and find himself
            walking towards dogs with flames in their eyes
            and all he had between being savaged
            and reaching home were his last wick of fire
            held lightly between two knuckles, his eyes
            of sharp fear, his feet bluffing a path through
            the dogs’ pause of grudging recognition
            of a brother who had dared to survive
            one more day of being stoned by children,
            and his dark voice that could out growl them all.

           (from “The Gift Of Screws” by Brian Chan, 2008)

          

                                                                                                                           

                                                       “My hand is full of lines
                                                        like your breast with veins, lady – ”
                                                – Martin Carter, Do Not Stare At Me  (1951)            

 

             Stylists of trust . with bread or brush, song or touch  
             claim it’s our best interest to refuse the manicure
             on trigger fingers | Boarding chime : Mr. Bludbliss? Yay.
             Duk Luk? Nay.

             Every sumptuous carpet^welcome on TV sets 
             the blood racing; those fabrics dasheen clean, who
             chalked them ? like my uncle’s funeral jacket do 
             they crease easy.

              \ Since we won’t be together forever Don’t touch
             me! we should consider what our close shavings
             tea leaf^like tell.
                                             My seamstress Aunt tethers
             end^run lines > spent souls who knot ‘n’ close heart
             shell script turning screw.

                                                      ^

              \ No matter how far you range globe beams
             scan^find traces | aliens with planet weaves never caught
             coupling in our mangrove lay low.
                                                             Hoist towers we copy 
             after speechless years cane leveling | load to shed
             bone idle, bottoms feed tax strokes. 

             Contractors of belief swear floor^knees with licks
             of prayer top finger beads any day . wan’to try?
             Roman nails for wrist (son crossed) could sell again,
             sooner than the end to ice shelf melt . wan’to see?

                                                                         – W.W.

                                                      

           

             

               PEDRO PERDIDO

               …………….
                                                                    … all is not perdido
               despite the keybored killer’s already stale insistence,
               not when there’s such a lovely shape of rhythm now moving
               towards you with a bounce in her step and wings to her hips
               not with the late sun-bow sprung off the edge of the mirror
               beside your table and falling across the page of words
               by which you are again trying to escape a whole world
               of Table Mirror Don’t Blame Meyou Thank You May I Have
               Please Thank You Very Much That Was One Made Popular By.

               ………………………………………

                  (from “The Gift Of Screws” by Brian Chan, 2008)

 

 

 

          
       But slowly Radica’s final no-argument word ‘sucks’
       – with all its dismissive mindlessness rooted in mere Taste,
       that fashion of Correctness wallpapering her café – 
       somehow crossed the moat of my detachment, only to sink
       like a sack of sand through the quicksand of my consciousness

       When her sack at last reached the bottom of my mind’s morass,
       all the tightly locked grains of silt whose sleep it had disturbed
       grabbed their chance to escape sleep’s final configuration
       and surged like lava upwards through the burst veins of my calm
       (so-called and so on) and i jumped to my feet, i stood up,
       looking down at Mona looking down on me from below:
       our appointment/disappointment bulged to a boil of pus
       to burst in a whore-house between a whore-man – who has searched
       a hundred houses, none of which housed his ideal twin whore –
       and a madame who couldn’t care what the ideal might be

                                                   *  

       So could there be ‘a deal’, finally?    Why had i stood up?
       I don’t know why, but i believe i saw ‘once and for all’,
       that i had failed with my moat and quicksand and castle-keep,
       failed Life itself, not ‘life’ locked between ironic quote-marks
       to shield me from breath’s gormless disappointing miracles.

       Beside her godwoman’s ironic fire, Mona seemed mere,
       and that’s what (to offer a mirage of ‘resolution’,
       in truth only a fading of the lights behind the scri’m)
       made me say to her in my learnt bland Canadian way
       – Have a nice life –   and turn and walk out of and away from
       Mona’s café, bonsai link in Ratsmoolahs’ hothouse chain

                               BLACKOUT

(from “fatima solagua arterra’s nudes”, a verse novel by Brian Chan, 2015)

  

     
      
        Straat brokers claim they can repair crash moments,
        stray cells on foreign mission; wipe Dutch stain
        clean off land ties. For hip^stiff anthems they wouldn’t
        stand; they don’t serve plates of soup.
                                                            Destinies could fade
        or after centuries show up . along canals, shelf clouds
        unattended; B Plan jungle^backed.

                                                *

        On the road one evening the dashboard track starts
        up . bumps goose flutter on the skin | the car lifts
        off the launch^pad grid, rump drempels.
                                                                   Weightless so
        this non-side choosing disc, its world^body parts
        faceted to fit . other people, heart rate.

                                                * 

        Sranan tong pacts reached with the past ? made
        Of What to last, you ask | + risk missing the turn off
        down unmappable cane paths, cattle nibbling.
                                                             No need to channel
        Rotterdam | Paramaribo unbranded . the egret^like
        shore solitude, step^pause flights . da da dahdah
        tokens Love^Only accepted, Ok?
                                                               – W.W.

         

       

 

 

 

            THE RIGHT TO COPY
            THE KNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN 

            If you hear a song you know but cannot tell   
            who, by the voice or style, the singing spirit
            serving by stretching the song is, you have yet
            to hear the one song you will hear at your death
            with ears of a bird-man born to migrate
            to tribes whose tongues feed, beyond speech, his own roots
            every time he listens to ‘foreign’ music
            sees a movie beyond colonist gestures,
            bathes in cinema of uncolonised light:
            no tourist ‘local colour’ in his soul’s zones
            of recognitions.

             …………………………….
                                                           …..……………………..

                (from “Readiness” by Brian Chan, 2013)

     

     
          
          *  Out of profane gas who knows how the straw head 
          catches; the world’s dry spells extend; the sun pokes
          peak signs through the weeds | straps cool down love
          stored in heat containers . cherry pick^use so.

                                                            / You lucky, you have   
          a man ! that Service Station manager man, gold ring
          fingers | turn 17 . from make believe Hey, mind
          my likes! Sankar bare lash me frighten.

                                                     / Shelf^happy keep 
          life shouldn’t be a thing | worst that could happen
          you far off the main road, house beetle^like testing
          blades of grass . cave whispers out of wind.

                                             ^

          *  Signed in keyless church ignition our forest
          priest navigating native nipples prays . souls turn
          blind eye like . up the creek . faith yielding
          while he eats.

          + This plantation yard match stumbles on a sweet
          stick | gasps But where to plug this ? this modern
          hacking tool that graters scorn of darker kin + how
          to peel pineapple skin.
                                                Who there ? price^smart
          curating looks . net blind tossing navel hook reap so 
          what coming coming ¿ who dying to know.

                                                                           – W.W.

 

 

         

 

             INFINITIVES

              …to know no difference between
                  North and South Americas or
              hemispheres, no ocean or mind
              between the Eastern earthworm’s owl
              and the Western magpie’s phoenix,
              and to praise both the turtle’s speed
              and the peacock’s blurred scrawl of sleep

                  In one thread of white hair stranded
              in a jungle of words also
              strayed off a head slowly losing
              all of its accustomed allies,
              to find a narrow path back home
              in the Sun’s dark centre where doubt
              staggers all fates, serving them so

             (from “Readiness” by Brian Chan, 2013)

 

   
    
      I was already regretting i used to laugh at love 
      When both Mia and, later, my wife would beg me not to,
      For here i was now looking at love’s vengeful painted lips
      Laughing at me in my new-sprung loneliness as i failed
      To make their mouth stop huh-huh-ing and smile with some shadow
      Of innocence.

      Now Radica shrugged off my attempts to understand her
      Unlikely relationship with Stew:  how did they ever?
    – No reason, Doctor Chattergoon, she purred, we fell, just fell.

                                                                       *

      Fall and fade like lovers and the words they live by and in.
      But what a pity to give up those words, like apartments,
      And let the realities they house fade from awareness,
      For words aren’t abstractions, but actions, breathing entities
      Linked with one another in a wide dance of utterance,
      And every word sounded, even if through forced or false pulse,
      Translates and transports every other dancer in the chain.
      Now with Mona on her latest plateau of suicide
      By Common Sense, i was afraid to speak some same-old words
      To tag and qualify persons and moments as discrete
      Things, yet I needed ‘things’ between us to be precisely
      Named, but with fresh words that would engender a whole new chain
      Of dancing changes by which we might celebrate our breath.

      Just as i was about to choose to fool myself again
      that companionship towards transcendence’s grail was yet
      possible, the lone queen Mona in irritation sighed
    – Bloody hell! Turn that shitty CD off!   That singer sucks! –
      and i knew at once, at last, that ‘Radica’ was, as much
      as ‘Mona’, one more delusory construct.

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