Tag: Brian Chan

                                                                              for Linda & Carroll & Zulaika

                      
                      Man, the first light snap feeling, the slip run
                     away, flogged rags on your back, a band going
                     your way. Bare bronze bad in flight, your hip
                     beads low riding vuvuzelas you hear, myths
                     shak shak bones raise; crow shadows you fear.
                     Yuh done dead already? might as well kilkitay.

                         
                     These flag days, illusion the reigning monarch, players
                     make sea salty moves on tracks duty free; chance a pirogue
                     from a fine bone poet's prize catch. Bodies booboolooping
                     ruffle the old cane rows; sky blaze braising ebony glow
                     genome flow deformed on the merchant ship scales.

 
                     Staked out for strip data voyeurs and passeurs
                     frame rivers on mobiles, decline the coarse rump   
                     up way  ̶  watching the sugar; would kneel at carmine lips
                     thrust me! jumpers in white robes; would screen
                     touch you here, in heat waylay there; on fire
                     pour altar wine, very suitable family fear.

                           
                     Under sun feel drum fantasias, steel sutures 
                     for repair. World weary? one last lap, Mardi,
                     Dingolay. Chip tunnels on bass line, love sweat
                     salt away. Knock iron  ̶  night slits tight  ̶  Ash
                     bells warn  ̶  wire wing feathers fall break the day.
                                                                                       – W.W.

   
                            DREAM-REAL WOMAN

                      I surprise myself by dreaming up
                   a bold and open woman with no flags
                to wave but with a thousand questions to sprout.

                         ̶  and I thank her for her refusal
                to be bothered by how her boldness looks
             to the fear-shifting eyes in household mouseholes

                   ̶  and bless her beauty she is the first
                 to celebrate, without apology
              polishing its temple's walls into outer

                   mirrors of the flame that burns within
                ̶  and share with her the sadness of her strength
             that strides the Earth as one shepherd of the blind

                  and must take pause to wash its own eyes
                with their salty rivers that erode rust
              ̶  or with Heaven's rain that stings them into stars.

                         (from "Within The Wind" © by Brian Chan)

                                                                                                  for Imhade U.

                                                                                    I

                                    
                              When did they come ashore? like hook-hand pirates? Look,
                              there! end of the road Brazilians encamped, at the other
                              the Chinese; for oil or gold or fairy tale treasure, boat loads
                              of exotic diggers feeling up day breaks for confrontation:
                              her island sweet pepper bush against new buccaneers.
                              Coast inlets breached? who let them stay?
                 

                                                                      Those bamsies elected for siren
                              escort Hollow Follow! with posey pot players’ big
                              belly work on stage wanted limbo exchange for her currency
                              of years. Flambeau heart, upwind in flutter – ground here?
                              she’d wing, move time flickering elsewhere.

                                                                                         II

                               She spoke of new city life, migrant reservations,
                               family embers who’d shout cook old bird foods
                               when Italian pizza was just around the corner, and
                               that speared meat, what’s it called? and
                               dips in swirled jamoony sauce.

                                                                                   Well, when I came,
                               fleeing the sirens of bamsies on stage, you could stroll
                               fabled streets, stop shop book titles in windows.
                               You hope to face the day seized with iSpace? memory
                               links hand held?  plus island cultivations? not even
                               the genuine article, east of real India, Africa west.
                               A real Gucci would joust you off sidewalks; unzipped
                               Japanese girls know possibility plays, they climb glass
                               mountains with eyes wide closed and parasols.

                                                                                        III

                               Pledge set eyes awed, a survivor tending futures!  
                               next thing you know, from orchid pink lips, “Enough,
                               Tuesday chippin’s under wearing. Let me twine
                               myself with thee.”

                                                                After shared talk laugh sighs,
                               what purpose? Caught, they’d send her home, I’d lose
                               my tenure. “I’ve stripped to my soul for you – off
                               with alarm.”

                               Ok, here’s a gate, garden, felt paths to pact. First, huddled
                               hugs like snow down feathering the grass. Something more
                               comfortable?  this thick white blanket on our landing
                               green, the stars aligned, a tiled roof Eden rented
                               for one night.

                                                                                IV

                                                                      Hard shipped to toil on island
                               shores of cropped compliance, cut last for crossing fresh,
                               who knew what port we’d find, fearing the gods
                               Date Due. Sure, fast fattened cell mate hips, sky vault
                               brick glass guarded; nights we’re too tired to take
                               breath deep. Here you get old by the hour and paid;
                               an icy wind feeds longing to the eye.
                                          

                                                                                      Curved kite
                               dancer of unknowing, dare I grade you up away?
                               down bite marks in the margins? Yes, we're tested;
                               not much from script; with each limb bare you
                               stretch raise torque up rush.
                                                                                         -W.W.

                                   AFTER WORDS,

                                                         you embraced me
                                  as though you were rescuing
                                  a child out of the quicksand
                                  of a floundering desire,
                                  but who the child, whose the urge?
                                  And did the tongue of fire fusing
                                  your breast and mine utter not
                                  only recognition but
                                  also dismissal, a kind
                                  of farewell manured by good
                                  common sense fed by the fear
                                  of drowning in the maelstrom
                                  of our own insistent flames?

                                (from “Gift Of Screws” by Brian Chan)