Tag: Brian Chan

CUTS SHORT

                        
                
               Eye witness heard Satira bounce twice on the spring
               board  ̶  gripping her phone . releasing fabric tear. A foreign
               correspondent recalls : The elephant in the city you ride 
               nobody sees, lip bit whispers. And that was it : cloud permit, 
               lung swell . stay sail up . wind rush.
                                                    Old Kaie's foam spread mooring rocks :
               bundle wet wrapped in savings  >  from up there delivery.

               So sunned we called her Tarby; so bright she flew to London
               on scholarship and ultimatum . married . appointment in New
               Zealand. Two grown girls came back to visit Mom's first
               village, smiles of circle full on caramel faces.

               Heard Bolo passed . the village rubbish truck man? relayed
               Pavarotti tracks in his bath room after work : chord
               belt strong . tossed streamer-like arpeggios. Arm lift
               soaring searchers, breath masters, of the old universe. 

               Quiet touch smart swiper : so the chip subcools the muscle in
               mouse moves.

               Bug winged drone probe here for sky shield warping  ̶  source
               close call, line inland bare holding. 
                                                                          – W.W.

 


                    

                    

 
 

                                
                           SPIRAL LEVEL

                           There is a certain moment of hell,
                               at whichever level
                                    the soul finds itself, 

                           blind no more and so no longer lost
                               when, standing at the last
                                     gate of its latest 

                           stage of accustomed darkness and pain
                               and about to climb in
                                   to a clearer zone,

                           it turns to cling to what it has known,
                               and falls or steps back down
                                    afraid to be seen

                           betraying those it must leave behind,
                               afraid of being bound
                                   by freedom's new bond 

                          to the choice between that groove and this
                              ecstasy, that stasis
                                  and this chance to rise.

 

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

 

 

CLEARER SINS

                                                                           

 

                                                            "Had seen it before but now saw it again
                                                             as if he had not seen it before and as though
                                                             a new religious feeling (and response on his part)
                                                             arose from it."  
                                                                  ̶   Wilson Harris, "Companions of the Day 
                                                                                                      and Night"                    
                                                                                                                                                                    
                  I.

                   
                  Of all this how much happened because he wanted us
                  so much to dazzle? through heat down stingy brim crown
                  governing days : Sunday drizzle making stroll thoughts scurry : it
                  might ruin his patent leather dues, washed pressed again church
                  shirt. Coin saver, bruising us : Be more.

                  On his bicycle air field straight ahead, the public road in strips,
                  our father could not know finch blue tendons had taken leave
                  of his fences; the village stilts . bitter rooting back and mud
                  dam! forth.
                  
                  He'd pedal high into sky canyons, far out to humorless sea wind
                  expansion. This was the path in trance he cleared for us, his way
                  out . full chest folding hug without  ̶̶  But why you always so?   

                  As night spread straw, shrugged insect bites . room lamp 
                  hush urge, his lust stern rites : Ma's receiver shift would yield
                  hold heave the maroon banana . green peel and flagrancy.


                  II  
                        
                  Braid tight high fibres recognize their kind  ̶  what vines
                  face climbing find  ̶  the tree the river mountain rock.

                  III

                                At gravity's prompt home wages paid, one Welcome
                  nod was all : received : head still hard shoulders back to crop
                  sown brooding days.

                                He loved to hear  ̶  sight in retreat; does humming calm
                  as done hand shakes?  ̶  how we'd turned out in capitals : London,
                  New York : so far from where the leaf blade willed . cane to punt 
                  bind grind molasses pointing . crystal vessels away.

                                Lot marks of wrist  ̶  who would believe some cursive            
                  tissue dwelt inside this script? Own man who tended dreams
                  in tamarind, the stone prepares . sensing  ̶  fates unclasped,
                  last twilight ceding  ̶  eyes dried might watch the glow pass on.

                                                                                          - W.W. 
    

 

                   

 
                                                      -   In mem C.A.  –

                                                               

                    THE POINT'S CIRCLE'S POINT


                       To be thankful for the pointing points
                   of breath itself is life itself given
                       flesh of pointed mind and rounded heart
                     ̶  though but one man's, the whole universe's;
                        only one point in time, its centre
                    in floating detached love for the circle
                        it has seeded and allowed to sprout
                     dreams of its own, with witnessing dreamers
                         ̶  as a naked Winter tree still bears
                    the eager memory of the return
                 of her dreamt and dreaming fruits of Love's merci. 

                   Look, the tree is empty but also full
                       of the buds of bird wind cloud sky and
                   a man's eyes becoming its fruit, the egg
                      of the Sun unyolked by clouds, only
                  to have its light filtered regardless pure
                      across a morning so still you know
                   it is still dreaming and still being dreamt
                        ̶  as a bird quivering at the peak
                  of an evergreen, affirms  ̶  in its flesh
                      of gratitude for wings  ̶  that dream-flight
                by both glad circling and eager centering.

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

 

 

BAMBOO POST IN YUH ROUNDHOUSE

  

                          
                  After the feast so much depends on no one noticing till you reach
                  Canada. You could be "sent on leave" if you get caught. But listen,
                  ask for Chouki; he's mih friend; tell him I send you.

                  Prime time consummation : the bridegroom in beads plays the theme
                  for love there after : complaining he tired sitting and smiling all
                  afternoon : So hurry up, nah : seedlings seething.

                  We don't skin crêpe like Americans. Our Indians didn't hunt buffalo.
                  I know is you, this driver smiled, as Clint Eastwood walked away
                  from his maxi taxi (the horn does honk La Cucaracha). 

                  Out of sadness out of words hand wrings touch your arm. Our victims
                  prefer the sponge. Heart don't swim in numbers, don't speak Statistics.
                  The Book of Revelation sheathes my sword and everybody's business.

                  This child we call Nation, considering the licks he get from parents
                  poor, growing up sullen and own way : a crocodile on the bank, field
                  gold in John Crow circles, he breathes in sea particles. Tewé Vaval, 
                  his call.
 

                  You dry log years in office, shifty for highness . Grade I. Then one
                  day : braps! : bad feelings. That pasture holding strain . set 'o crab
                  hard in yuh grass, roots man . more than you know. 


                  This English explorer would move a finger up the thighs of his
                  Amerindian help mate. There are subtle differences . fate lines,
                  he felt certain. In his published findings not a snitch.


                  Pertaining to plantain shares, consumer confidence remains high. Plus
                  as you may recall : some women practiced meditation picking bad
                  rice from enamel bowls back in the day; hind most mind full
                              on haunch, it cured essential tremors.

                                                                                           – W.W.
                          

 

                                     

   

  

 

                          
                  THERE'S A THREE-LEGGED DOG


                  keeping pace with his brisk unsentimental mistress
                  who leads him across
                  pulsing veins of impatience we call city-traffic
                  and makes him climb stairs.
                  All this he does with a graceful lack of fuss: nothing
                  to do but balance
                  from the centre of his lack of symmetry, the line
                  quivering between
                  his eye and the ground his second fourth and first fifth leg.

                       (from "The Gift Of Screws" by Brian Chan)  

 

    

 

 

GROUND SWELL OF LONELY

  

               
           Fat hunger finds a church where Wednesday readers huddle
           over the Bible trying to measure how our loneliness moves  ̶   
           the pastor kept secrets, a mother's sleep loss; an uncle who feeds 
           scraps of guiltiness to roof pigeons. 
                                                               Sworn knees worn . bosom
           bliss closed . Say grace the last fixed wing.

           And here's one more, a game bored soul core alabaster, who
           knocks on the door; no hymn no hood. And true to faith
           the study circle toss suspicion link him in  ̶  till he pulls out
           the Charleston intervention nobody prays for . severing kin.

                                                                                                 Man
           kind hands count as grass scythe swings long weeds depose; thigh
           organ swells that squeeze the peace released at peak. Okay, but
           what does that mean?  the delivery man lingers. 
                                                                                     Caught you . back
           from the camel park where each hump matters . minds jog dark.

                                                    Hearts halved bewildered sealed  ̶  here's
           healing news : custom services resume as Sundays follow uncorked
           nights to cold bed rocks . unsaved noons.

                                                            With phone cam?  Yes, you can  ̶  
           take pictures of Redeemer come high mass : shots overhead of corn
           field rich, disciple table; the message belt criss-cross on leader
           chest . stones waiting for the devil.

              Once 20th Century Studios worked cavalry magic rescuing
                blue on silver screens; tears choked you gum chew blood
                 due burbling up.

                                                                               – W.W. 

                     
                  

     

                                      [ In mem. Charleston, S.C.    * June 2015  *    Souls taken ]

 

 

                            APARTMENTS    

  
                           Between one loneliness of focus called me
                           and two others over there each called tree
                           dart two birds unknowing such terms
                           by drafting ribbons of connection between
                           isolations of tree and tree and these eyes
                           and these fingers emulating wings at play,

                           for what else can a winglessness hope to do
                           but try despite its cage of terms to be
                           a bird of language that might start
                           to reveal the web of invisible links
                           lacing everything together underneath
                           this crust of apartments built word by glazed word.

                            (from "The Gift Of Screws"  by Brian Chan)

 

 

 

FLASH GROOVE SECRETS

  

                                                                 

                                                                                                                                     "Such….
                                                              as my endurance picks out like a searchlight."
                                                                        – John Ashbery, "Ghost Riders Of The Moon"
                                                                                        


                 About this manoeuvre: the story rolls like joints on ragged summer
                bones, many parliament noons before 1863  ̶  give or take fifty
                cotton emperors . face mopping, pink and pleased.

                                                                             Choreographers in pant
               sag disaffection, amused at what passed as celebration in ball
               rooms, hewed syncopation to divine flight routes. They'd string
               pick deities off home bass hooks while hand claps worked to drive
               or screen the hip slip stream : y' Ok? _ this way.

               Such boss moves remained basically the same for years. Caught
               transferring folks were whipped and tossed in ombré iron
               definitions . which somehow contrived to spare one child who watched
                      ran saved the ghost spell algorithm. 

                                      It surfaced again in 1977, horn cut key
                      board manners, only to vanish chorus hoodoo
                  like in space ring spirals under old school
              doors ( 911 call : the Phantom costumed skin tight on the strip.) 

                              Not to be confused with the cloud
               phase "in a blue funk" which threatens to keep it dockered
               for another century under motel white sheet tongue swabs . swell
               head dawn adders contouring . federal boot and jeans, the patria 
                     line dance forming.

                         Now what sound _ swept red wings glide cross oceans _ bad
               mother shippers. Turn the moon up, see the gazelle wilderness
                 map making . sky beam sweeper proving now you don't.
                    Riffs like seasons ride the times . Caution     
                      Spirits . wheel tracks back _ and who's to say.

                                                                                       – W.W.

 

 

                                

 

 

                             AWE

 
                                         
                                Not its matter so much
                                as its apparition,
                              its out-of-place-ness, its innocent
                            awkwardness: a plump lumbering elephant
                                   of a cloud strayed
                                into our otherwise
                              vacant veldt-sky of pure
                            rigorous dispassion: a sky meant
                          for contrast at best: it is only against
                                 its age-grey screen
                              that we can glimpse any
                            raw red, new green, old gold.

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

 

 

 

 

HORN FOR THE BULL

                         

                   Fielding the call our island man concluded the pen felt stroke
                   mild when so much paper wipe comes printing at you as sage
                   bush news; and old stick fighters steupsing rise recall the last
                   raised tamarind rod . old quill stain thumbs down days.

                   Arenas here all hail the matador  ̶  his tasseled heights, take under
                   rites, sweet torso moves to skirt swirl reds  ̶  blood seeders . whoa!
                   core eaters.

                   Game point's the same: the bull released to mouth piece dribble, mob
                   throat cheer  ̶  while somehow sword trust must get this bufu mother
                   hoofer to kneel roll over pass for common sense.

                   Our man chose the main road megaphone  ̶  in no way shape a babble
                   browser  ̶  sending heat at sun glass shield so drivers slant side
                   mirror blur or custom scarf for shade and virtue grey. 

                                                                               Shoot him!  ̶  you just assume
                   his dead line wouldn't from gully to post be missed; style making
                   passa passa miles true way enrolling.

                   Now with left click uplink, how do you validate? how jump
                   the wall? start search delight beyond the fissure scent . knowing 
                                                                                                            some desk
                   top king might gong vogue muscles round your user head: grapple
                   the body mass to ground: your page unfoldered . up the spread for all
                   stuffed in . passion found put out.

                                                               The end sheds bark for beaks that peck
                   at keys. It's left to signs in box set down to feed attention, thread
                   whisperings you needle. Usually for most injury to profile share is
                   configured non-life-threatening  > web worms the gut deserves.

                                                                                               – W.W. 

 

                        

                                                   
                                                     ̴   In mem.  Courtney Crum-Ewing   ̴   
                                                                        Demerara  .  March  2015           

                      

                    

                    CALL 


                     Through the voice of the very thing you love,
                       a ghost whispers: You shall unaddict:
                          this dream is yours, but not to keep
                          repeating, unless you do not
                            mind finding yourself lost
                            in a deep groove of hell
                     that is no less than paradise burst
                    rotten out of your dream's ripe accustomed sleep.

                     Now still dreaming that you're about to fall
                       asleep, you can hear a horn, behind
                         all dreaming, in a distant call
                         for release, from your latest stage
                           of dreams become a cage, 
                           to the zone beyond all
                       need for dreams this dense, though itself one
                    more crystal sigh of the Word given crisp breath. 

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

                            

 

 

                     

TIGHT SHORTS, or ROME SUN BLOCKS WITH OTHERS NOW

  

                       
             There were Dutch canals and corner shops, dray cart trot hot stand
             pipe news; and heads so royal tied, knights picked through sweat
             band claims. Sly mongoose under studied bush snake cruise.

             You crossed the river by ferry, wondered about the traction on faces
             looking up from the stelling. You bought a ticket for the train and
             for forest pursuits  ̶  down cast off souls risk rafting after lives.

             Police men carved clean handsome paths leaving the yard in parade
             uniforms. Civil servants worked like lodgers with no next of kin. That
             someone wanted you dead happened only on a ridge  ̶  Comanche!
             
             On Sunday "classical" and church bells called song and ward 
             robe to order. Taboo and tassa drums signaled anchor rites passing
             bare feet away  ̶  long story . loss found new . like root cell divide.

             Cicada nights before television and "sex" found guest room I was handy
             man for Bertha fat radio tubes, fixing fast Iris eye pass. "Death
             Announcements" brought us together as daily bread pulled us apart.

             Crime like poor demeanor led to punishment; innocents out sourced
             Shakespeare's sonnets for liniment. That sounds so common, strivers 
             would note, crouching for office, Yardley for class. The not said was felt.

             Marijuana was discovered by a gang weeder who chopped his big
             toe by mistake and marvelled at blood spots on leaf. Rice cane weed
             tree green surround  ̶  hard to tell where gnarl knots had sloth in.

             With estate duties in memory cues hands moored unwinding sari 
             vessels and sun set; lowered in flower bowls faith stems for carpel pray
             lay. Few stock holds prized the life unroostered. Alieno solo, I swear.

                                                                                                 – W.W.

 

 

                           

  

                      

    

                        

                    LONSTEIN'S CONVENTION                

                       
                   A washer of the dead is what I am:
                   I refuse to embalm or embellish.
                   I give you back these bags as they are  ̶  bald
                   or hairy, purple or pink. Unimpressed,
                   I peel away their fashionable frills
                   of lace or blood or creed. But after
                   I've done washing away their dead serious
                   superstitions and myths oozing like pus,
                   the tongue remains their most active organ.
                   And for every corpse I lay out naked,
                   there's some mother waiting to have it dressed
                   and spruced up for a cocktail memorial.
                   Hopeless. But as I say, I wash, that's all.

                     (from "Thief With Leaf" by Brian Chan)   
 

 

 

MR. FIELDS WOULD BUFF THE GROOVES

                           

                          
             Lesson in song preludes  ̶  though youth file phoning couldn't
             care less these days: the plug swipe send device delivers 
             content straight into your stream; heads nod, foot taps so old.

             He'd pull the vinyl from its sleeve with love rag polish
             the voice key mastering. His finder's code: to keep
             the treasure  ̶   for as long as  ̶  glean pristine.

             Band width on turntable, the lever cue; the needle's first nut
             crackling touch; and this insight: Now while Sinatra's busy
             entertaining, here's how Ray Charles serves from his line
             toss dark. 

             One skip, one wobble  ̶  wave signal ruined, the record shelved.

             No scruffier corner of the globe: the sun and arch of Georgetown
             after noons  ̶  the fun scrub prep root universe we made and played,
             his studio breaks the notes consumed. 
                                                         The life in those days; our wakefulness.    
             What track list impulse frequency link in like that?    

                                         Some sounds some times
                              like rivers teem meander ship fit coast
                 land bound. As bow wings beat sea lanes release great white
             winds dare you beam  ̶  untied unchartered  ̶  Tide quavers trace
                             how long far gone; hand lift cheer which way.

                                                                                                           – W.W.
                                                                                              
                   

                     

                                                                            

                                                                                           
                       

                     FORCE RIPE

                     A tree does not surrender its fruit
                                     until it is ripe
                     nor an egg a chick until its wing is
                                     sharp as a beak
                     nor a bird her nestlings until she is sure
                                     they can fly
                     nor a jeweler issue diamonds unless
                                     they are clear.
                     But an impatient poet aborts his
                                     labour's nuggets
                     by tossing them off while they are still
                                     crude, dull and earthbound
                     like seeds too blind to filter light, too green
                                     to green become.

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

                               

                         

AIR PLANES OF 1914

  

                        
               Those French boys, second job poets, knew how to fly. Ask
               the last pilot he'd argue they were simply trying to over rise
               great war ruinations, though their wheels barely left the ground. 

                                                    Like the hour hand in cane fields raised
               to wipe high brow, shape shift on horse cork hat skin peelers; right
               at which point  ̶  no camera record  ̶  neck chords stretch new syllables
               for ghost bird flaring bone intuitivity. A sail plane drawing light.


               Had we known then they existed, imagine this night jam: Cuatro
               breath picks scanning long stuck hope in sheet less throat as wood
               winds wait at the Bachland gates and creole prints decline Cézanne
               liked shimmery palms, our efflorescence bruised. 

               Not much now [we who came through] we could do?


                                                                  Hard enough to leave the village 
               dead trees down settle for town ship shack land fill scratch the search
               when body parts.             
                                                                                  Yet ocean news broad 
               cast now Libya boarding . brokers back to belly stoking. With faith
               stall sea cross beam to bear  ̶  la fin préférable à distance  ̶  wade
               out wager all in.  


                                                               Who knows? Des Imagistes returning
               might buzz your wave defences; might air drop flight hide patterns 
               for too oil slick delta wings.

                                                                          For starters, look closely  ̶
               the aureole round that captain's head, wreath laurel or crow circle?
               that .dot funnel on the horizon, rescue ship coming or going?

                                                                                                        Arm over
               arms in wonder, stroke the breath beats. Deep sunk, reach up  >  touch
               the black obelisk. Rocks so you Rock so,

                                                                                          – W.W. 

                   

                  

 


                              

    

                            
                        THE OTHER VOICE
                               

                        Let its flame slip through the cracks
                           of your usualness:
                        sometimes there is no other way
                           to keep on becoming,
                        as the sun at your core will
                           either translate itself
                        as rays of word, or choke you.

                        At other times, voice is nothing
                           but a maze of broken
                        babble, writer's or reader's,
                           and you are reminded
                        how dense spirit's mask can be,
                           how sealed its heavy sleep
                        against flares of light would

                 
                        challenge, when all you want is your
                           latest dark distraction,
                        your next tale of boys and girls
                           stubbing their souls against
                        their furniture of desire 
                           and fear  ̶   perfect reading
                        of your own soul's postponed text

                        of urgent pain as the blade
                            to cut through custom's crust,
                        just to cast you in one more
                            mêlée-drama of change,
                        some drab nightmare that will force
                            you awake to allow
                        the flame to utter its need.

 

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

             

  

 

BLUE HUNDRED NOTES FOR JULIO

                                                                                             

                   
              Evening moist bites on dry bed lips testing the initials
              of youth dew kiss still cling sharper than the first search party
              mapping curve mound signs; or spring tide swell moon up
              on the sea wall  ̶  permit at last to storm.

              On air brushed island bicycles, cow amble and cart
              in our path, we lost ourselves in Walcott-like land tie dyes;
              prince and princess, never more crowned, cool valleys
              like Marley's, never more owned. Valve insert keys golden,
              our kingdom full come. 

              The morning you disclosed your ovaries contained no eggs
              designed to child; straight backed away  ̶  your ten o'clock intern
              ship call [On the Rayuela Périphérique: * Even if Heaven is
              close by, all life in front of one.*]   
                                                                  Did you know then who you'd
              become? your hands scrubbed in would people house wife smiles?

              I'll go happy parts of us clasped to my chest rare coins on eye
              blinds open (nose holding casket scents).


              I'll clutch these strips, not yet expired, like magnets on
              the chance there's the same swipe system for the paradise side:
              a rainbow One source blues stop @ "Bird & Miles"  ̶  a pint round
              about midnight for Julio  ̶  as hip hop tattoos sneak a peek.

              Ripe plum pluck and good luck! risks of innocence distinguishing;
              Fellini's FIN.
                                                                  < Yo, corbeau! head red 
              that garden lizard's fire fly snaps, the tree climb pause to pose,
              Eh-eh, what became of,  
                                                                             
                                                                               – W.W.

 

                      

                 

                     

                                        ̴  Ça va Julio Cortázar (1914 – 1984)  ̴

                           
 
                             

                    COCTEAU


                    I:                 

                    My taste for moment-to-moment death yeasts
                    the liquor of life that waters the taste.

                    This tongue is ghosted by my brandy's ice-
                    dry vapour drifting in and out of being.   


                   II:

                   Now I am a stone in a running river,
                   split by the sun into a thousand moons;

                   now the river drained to a widow's bed,
                   a tongue of sand clogged with a million stars. 


                   III: 

                   My house is all windows of seamless glass
                   with soldiers drifting by them, like stray clouds.

                   On its walls, I'm a shadow with ten eyes
                   whose target is any, whose aim is all.

                
                   IV:

                   From branch to branch of this flowering tree
                   I hop, a bird who has traded his wings

                   for a hundred songs from as many beaks:
                   fickle to each branch, faithful to one tree.

                  (from "Scratches On The Air" by Brian Chan)