Tag: Brian Chan

ALREADY YESTERDAY TODAY

          

       Though you couldn't tell if from iron balconies
       flaggers Ciao! dockers who lift air station space
       for swimmers with talkin’ funny bubble burstin’
       veins ‒ Remember?  the old plan for dark kin 
       skill strivers ‘n’ martyrs |. now late night watch
       what happens.

       More oil surfaces pour tonnage into bulk tankers
       that lumber through deep water portals ~ on off 
       cap tight shore bankers bite drill ~ dress turn
       leave . window sill sun seeds fermenting.

                         ✓ So a bottle washes up onshore
       finds a fisherman who swears ! knows nothing
       about no note. Wedge in tight for now the earth
       moon mate text . loneliness expects to return.

                        ✓ Memories like wires heat up each
       cell not guilties net breach plead . resumés trap
       dust too windmilly for print ‘n’ bargain day | whose
       light draws near?

                        ✓ On call numbers globe spin ball
       toss tear tickets fall . hands that clip throw cart
       wheels, piano felt tuners; cream promise firm
       mix barrel churn, wait tastes dispersing >

                              ¿ better we get
       faster ready . algorithms go tomorrow.

                                                         – W.W.

                          

        

   

     

 

      

        QAT

        But Qat bears no haze of Hero or Martyr
        Doing the rest of the herd a fat favour.
        No, her inspiration-slogan is LET US
     MOVE AHEAD: there it is, in red, at the very front
       Of her desk to greet clients suffering (Qat,
       An ex-orderly, can spot pain a mile off)
       From migrationitis, a disease as old

       As the need to quit the womb and kept active
       By a conspiracy of two betrayals:
       Nostalgia for an innocence that used not
     To need to name itself or warrant its right to be;
       And the fat Future that cannot come to pass
       As Today, unless it keeps flagging its parts
       Of Promise with new labels of changing codes.

      (from “Charon’s Anchors” by Brian Chan, 2018)

 

 

BREATH . NOTES LAST

      
   
      Dare whisper don't chest heave a rose through
      teeth high file a prayer as you lean in . kiss
      the forehead not the lip | hold the heat let need
      plead clear the air; and Listen : for you one
      breath score Sent ~ the balance wind gauge
      find.
                                         Weird this to share
      with any one who would believe ? key notes
      struck in open casket you released . the light
      swish felt ¿ source close . so, Where’s the evidence?

                         Wreaths of complaint : the body lay
      buffed tight so ! tributes seal scar issues . flowers
      matter little till this day.
                                     Wreaths in reverse : I see
      now! admit much I got wrong. I would right hand
      cantabile play things over . Everest flag brag take 
      back as papers breast itch fingers sorting left
      lump confirmation wait. 

           Breath’s worth something . anything ?  who
      grants a poke, sucks trickle love ¿ who’d rapids
      elevated run . yet for the plunge save nothing.
                  As front wheels up the heavens fork below
      spread wide peacock hung notes gong perdendosi
      shivers fold | come what, wings looking good,
      next there all even.
                                                 – W.W.

    
     

                                       

           
        LESSING

        The yellow-orange dawn-light blazing ,spreading
        Through the janelas leading out past trompe l’oeil
        Sacadas wall-bound outside the open drapes,
      Now calls him to do his last transporting: of himself,
        This sky-high room become his balloon of breath
        Whose walls he would puncture from within
        To fly above the map of all his failures

        And losses so vital to his knowing what
        True success and winning might begin to mean
        In some other zone of breath-beyond-breathing
      Where a clarity beyond all rigmarole-traps reigns.

       (from “Charon’s Anchors” by Brian Chan, 2018)

  

STRIP THE NIGHT . SEARCH

 

        No one sells her how, shows what and then
      another child into the world howls . tossing nipple
      bottle spoon : how over the bowl her sunflower
      bearing hips one day lose faith . one life!
      rushes hard to take.

      First names from warriors past believers tag
      long after pain . issues wedged and held on
      track risks to guard rails, the years of piling
      prayer.
                                     Lips stretched, some hoof
      still rears you come! the hells to catch for heavens
      away! Yes lords, fear chills disposed, swab night 
      crack flashings bless . song making sense.
                                                 
                                                           Until bone
      dry, our Crabwood creek say, who in return sends
      rain barrels back?  mooring cords cut, stream lines
      that measure salt drip left . the balance
                                                        dogbagged . done
      with earth wall knots, shell trails; donors there
      trying still.
                                                    – W.W.

 

      

      

       

 

 

       QAT

      In listening to anyone, not only
    To Madame, Qat feels almost duty-bound to mistrust
      What her teacher-mother in Cameroon used
      To call verbiage (herself verbose, she mocked
      La descente indécente of other women).

      It's not because Madame’s a sewer-spout but
      L’espèce de paroles qu’elle emploie makes Qat feel
      Queasy as though there is a force pressing up
    Inside her chest and pushing against her breasts pressed down
      By the sacrée brassière she wears étriquée
      To keep her nénés looking smaller, firmer ‒
      While Madame’s sacré caquet makes them feel tight.

       (from “Charon’s Anchors” by Brian Chan, 2018)

 

  

HARD TIES BENEATH Who Cares?

              
      Course scanned consider the honor grail : stakes deserve
      to bleed that brace your ride in the elevator; that's
      how alligators halter pride . red light bride take off. 
                                                                                 Soft one 
      day lava lumbers forest clearance nonconcerning rage
      found . Palm torso huggers top over. 

      Digits paused no longer count . holdings so long!
      loop Uterails back to Start : privacy parts reset
      payment plan beak speculum enclosed.

      Enough egg samples . why crack the conundrum in the first
      place : What human means? renting wolf and lamb share
      hunger and sometimes the gut fed well goes merde! same
      cold ‒ foil Brand wrap Serve self Sell ‒ dog bowl.

      So how you holding up?

                                  Try not to lose blood pushing the end
      crap shore free : donors pitbill you run . whipped
      dream done nipple peckers circle.
                                                   *A wind win play? brick
      a layer . tiger the forest . sooner know.  

                                                       Oviduct fibres bitch you 
      find the fork! hack a path through somehow. Atoms all
      split like tomorrow creep . make so you lie your bed.

                                                                     – W.W.

 

        

     

 

  

         LESSING AND CHARON 

         *CLOSING his eyes again, Lessing is engulfed
         By memory of all the women he has
         Ever known, all their faces splashing over
       His own, as though to wash away all its lies of love
         Which he, through them, has etched there, all its shadows
         Of nostalgia for hunts women cannot bear,
         Knowing little, nor caring to hear, of them.

         The sheer wordless ‘wisdom’ of women’s blind strength
         Is what Charon now feels he has been bearing
         In his shoulders of challenging aches and shrugs
       Of perverse disavowals and faithful betrayals.
        

        (from “Charon’s Anchors” by Brian Chan, 2018)

                  

 

AY VITALY,

                    

              Our trap tale traffick . no cry fodder : Ilyushin
              '76 . innocence to peace midfleshair blown; Afghan
              '85 . down comrades draining fluids in death valleys.
         What roads high tracked side café stop, our glass hour table
              company found . homemade slice shares unwrap : poll
              flag waverings miss fires in me . in you No return
              matters.

              Blink! two sip and time is up. Bit orb initials, touch 
              turn, reigniting work.

              Trucks like ours fork lift all good . the earth folds
              sorrow globe stokes warmer ~ past sea air ports here
          blend fast ~ morning unfuckingbelievable coffee ~ break
              heart land make there we leave it. 
                                                                         – W.W.

 

           

           

               

           

              

           

               A DECEMBER SNAIL

               A windless December dawn so still
                  the Earth herself seems to pause:
               you must scrutinise the horizon’s
               collaboration between two orbs
                  to realize that what seems
               a stasis is in truth as active
               as this snail sliding out of his shell
                  to settle for the next shake
                  or shade of leaf, or to turn
               his horns towards the core of the Sun,
               star always with its own horns pointing
                  beyond the self-absorption
                  of the trails of snails which give
               the Sun grooved news of Earth but keep snails
                  from becoming birds and stars.

       (from “Nor Like An Addict Would” © by Brian Chan)           

           

 

ALL DAY HEADLIGHT BELLY TRICKS

                                                                                 

                                                                      
                                                                       "…all by all and deep by deep
                                                         and more by more they dream their sleep”
                                         – E.E. Cummings, “anyone lived in a pretty how town”


            Not faulting the road country dark or millennium kept
            dune that make specks coming at you luminescent
           as stool samples your tube news read.

           You see me? won’t friend a Buddha olive oiled . skin
           fear carriers who hand shake soft with pyramid jambs
           net worth set.

           Our islands fall head over seas for podium reachers,
               the few who given a needle plier would plait honor
                 folds on any pledge worn bellyfatty.

                 Our spices favour custom misers oysterizing your
               prostrate jollyjelly. You’d think people would age
           past such index fingery by now.
                                                      En.vie.garde! hips flick
           licks . circum|flex|vine . who animal knock down who
           fence?

           A switch knife blade in comes handy . case you stumble
           on coconut palms shimmery like gift cards in the desert,
           where the winds sometimes rub Saheltic, and every dust
           fling is allowed. 

                                      For shallow breathers, mint leave
           advisory : try counting past 100 as pure gas you face 
           mask . that way cruise in Stay with me! gurney wheel
           orbit ~~^^~~  unless you have a better option?

                                                           Heavens wait . dream
           cling wake. Welcome back, sand feed grain.

                                                                         – W.W.

 
                  

              

 

                 STUBBORN


                My tiredness is vast and honeyed,
                my yawn as juicy as a stuffed pig’s
                held wide by the apple of my lust
                to keep awake and hearing my heart.
                You’d think that after fifty odd years
            of failing to harness the sprawl at my core,
                I’d be more devoted to slipping
                into sleep and savouring its dreams,
                but my senses insist there is no
                sweeter dream than the one they conspire
                to mock up and maintain like the stage-
            managers of a play whose author, actor and
                audience I yet happen to remain,
                all these mes busy wiping our eyes
                of their tears of yawning déjà-vu.
                But I still look forward to the next
                breath’s moment as much as to the last
           when the stage-lights fade but the lights of the whole
                house blaze.

            (from “Nor Like An Addict Would” © by Brian Chan)

 

               

CARL’S PLACE

                                                                       
                                                              to Carl Anderson        

     
          At the back then tack left . the lady white though
          game fair pointed ~ on the other side occurring just
          across a 9/11 memorial display whose freeze dry
          billowy might have beckoned her first.

          Off workday anytime is good; visitors must card pass
          blood braising city styles : wait schedules escalator
          floats . down concatenation tunnels linking every port
          authority vet heavy.
                             No grace full circles river mists your 
          brush blade parted once . on point the bowman’s pole
          through signs > shot slinging peopled colors out the forest. 

                            There I get : your ribbed glaze tangents
          breaking out stamp borders . glass case public stationed
          here | can’t be too careful these days. So trips one
          way to radiant close.
                            See something say something frames what
          sunlight finds . under street feet . paint lines shed vein
          grid alerts ~ just saying. 
                                                              – W.W.

 

           

         

 

 

             THE NEXT LITTLE AWAKENED ONE
                WRITES HOME


          We touch on the roundest things as though
                they were flat. We know
          we float on the surface of a globe
          but walk along the lines of a map
              and let sentences
          deflate our arcing telepathy
          into the tightropes on which we inch
              between here and there
          and call that dicey balancing-act
          the art of falling on our feet
              while still in mid-air
          where the anguish of this wingless bird,
          locked to a ladder of light on his
              way back to you, starts,
          towards but one stop ‒ when every rung
      will have been reveined by also his blood.

      (from “Nor Like An Addict Would” © by Brian Chan)

         

MON DIEU, or RETURN OF THE QU’EST-QUE C’EST

  

           
          Body pack rush of side walkers head down 
          file in wave smart . as cars electric roll no
          hands! sigh, and passenger fete brains toggle
          between before and after nightly organ feed;
          metro centers cap size matters. Even blue bird
          divas on wires decline to sing, and over head
          war planes dip wing; for it has come again,
          the black slab ‒ the obelisk? what Kubrick
          talked about in 2001 AD? door silence sealed.
          Still no one knows what|who? intends, dare touch
          face time . bone toss behind. Palm devices paid
          up aim snap icontrails ~ Wow ~ hole spotting game
          towers . for faith keep cloud; tissue in case …  Mon Dieu!

          _______________________________________________________   

          Occupation? moi? done : propulsion blades beyond
          slice not precise . enough staring | you can line my
          plots of sea desperation; floor worn knees; ephemeris
          tables verifying : once every Oui!3K years . the odds
          the chance to scream in concert ‒ man child femme ‒ 
          evacuate . in motion slow our coming ends.

                                                               – W.W. 
              

                

         

 

             

         NO ETERNITIES 

        
                                      only pauses
         of focus: the broken pot, buried
         for centuries under tons of clay
         shifting slowly between stone and dust,
         dreams of one more moment of being
         touched, by probing spade or careful gloves,
         the moment of its next shift in time
         when it starts to be something other
         than what the labelling hand will claim.

              So I think of us, cracked and clogged by years
              of the weight of our mud and junk and dust,
              waiting for some flood of love to cleanse us
              but also for our moment of escape
              from the very fingers of rain that would
              unclog us from the burden of ourselves,
              the comforting pain we won’t surrender,
              instead choosing to slip out of love’s hold
              to fall and smash into another shape
              of beautiful interesting hell on earth.

              from “The Gift Of Screws” by Brian Chan

  

LEAVE TAKE HOW ISLANDS GIVE

                            

            Worth its past in gold, outliers weigh : sand with song
                                         strewn black . chest storm crest
            night fungibles . lime rum | men jerk fish net 
                                                  sun . plus your pirate
            pick of flowers, moons half helming hearts at sea.

            Work folk names gauge love for country God
                                                       and weed . Walk
            good they’ll point on . roads that winding funnel
                                                  cock pit
            stop | conch rest : trees hum 'n' ponder wind strip
                                                       limb start over.

            Virgins greening might blue eye you . wish a wand
            wave would you whirling hems away! lift them . and you.

              Spare notice ‒ back on bounty, in maps faith
              tested ‒ that first pale trader’s lurching print
              to shore : consigned links for you . the miles on you.

                                                                 – W.W.

 

                   

         

 

 

             BLUE GREEN

             To realise the green of green and
         to realise that you love that green more
             than you love the vain idea of your
         lawn or of our universal garden:
             what a fearsome dying beauty, start
         of no nostalgia for some tribal green
            but for the greenless Light never seen
         by green-addicted green-projecting eyes.
            Now your blue awe sprouts tears of the sap
         of adieu veining all greens up to blue:
            feeling and so knowing them are clues
         as to why you could never plant or wave
            flags of green | black | yellow | red | white | blue
         on Earth, on any of her million moons:
            their colours would only pale and fade
         beside the lidless Light which flags conceal
            with their stitched-in labels, tags of fear
                      of both the green of green
                      and green’s hueless haunter,
         fear-names by brick-words with only one mind:
            of hoarding what must be left behind;
        a fear the divorced spouse of your blue awe.
            To compare that fear’s scriptures, pictures
        and airs with the Light they have turned dense-dark
            is to liken morality’s spite
        to Law, or strands of streams to the webbed sea,
            to flatter and flood the ear and eye
        with winds and shades of fat or flat notions
           of green no tree, no Ireland would know.
        But twilight green is an autumn farewell
           by a god fading yet clamouring
        for recognition as fuel for his
           return to the Light beyond all these
        merely green gasps of his witness struck blue
           and drowned by a label-less silence
        no flailing arms of green words can undo.

             (from “Readiness” by Brian Chan)

 

CHAT YUH CHAT, BWOY

           

            Them can't do statues right, bredren wheel. Shades
            thrown from Gandhi + Garvey haunting the sky light 
            on validators : dead heat with Christ . on earth our world 
        charismata, Selassie patient in portrait notwithstanding.
                       Chat yuh chat. 

        Spliffing through, don't stare . for the beach thighs raise
            sand crab creep hair. String purse lip tender, How
            yuh do? You should know better riding horse
            power like summer clearance on our island.
                       Chat yuh chat.  

        And check Segismundo : him await short list of hurricane
            names . him they never pick though him wound
            up and prep for paths of memorable flood nation.
            Wrap yuh tendons, bwoy . distract yourself
            with lottery number, breast feeders say.

        Mean time hear now . home lost love sung : watch how
            freight rise to the top, heart selector . toll forever.

                                                                – W.W.                   

            

                                 

            

                     

                    

               WORK

               As I prune these verses inside, outside
               a boy is turning the soil to make it
               easier for seed and sun to translate
               the one’s silent secret into the other’s
               bright bursting utterance of seamless tongues.

               As I clean up these verses, my daughter
               is vacuuming the rugs of our dead skins,
               sweeping the kitchen floor of our spilt goods
               and you are shining mirrors of your own
               bright eyes with sweet vinegar of your sweat.

               All this doing I once resisted now
               I embrace as love’s natural mask without
               which love would collapse under its own weight
               of a vibrant space waiting to be filled
               and stretched by a million masks of the sun.

               Listening for my own voice, I hear also
               the music of other tongues worlds away
               leaping up through the stalks of my green song.
               Plumbing my darkest heart, I shape the glass
               of plain mind in which you may taste your own.

                (from “Fabula Rasa” by Brian Chan)