"…earth and water – the solid present and the fluid
past - left him still gasping…unsure whether the act of
breathing was not an instinctual form of breathlessness
as well." - Wilson Harris, "Heartland"
Still hard at work the grass here, our grass scythes
put away since Independence. And the measure of a man
after stilts & logie tenure? the coop or ville unfinished.
What happening there, Bogart?
Where once bookstores thrived supermarts shelf
price shivers, shop window oxygen. You feel much
older standing on the steps of our public library.
As for tongues no longer ocean linked our sentences
scramble through dense poverties; profiles & pet dogs
leg lifting on the page; waxers on the ear. Immune to truth
wigged carrion heads poll pick feed.
Elsewhere change resets with red blue bells. Here generations
could chill entombed, inhaling crypt air, until someone shifts
the boulders, slips in plates of sky. Knock wood we don't clear
brush for fresh hacked limbs horreur! and mass beds.
How we live now? in the forensics of travelers' imaginary; or
as trade meisters lunch like parrot toe waiters; fussed over
for our forest trees > new Real Estate! auctioned these days
in climates of billions! ̶ barely clothed; just standing there.
Power cuts route hot days back to plantation nights shut tight
rumplings and run away schemes. What diminuends you mean?
O, that crack creeping noise?
Well, after Marx
our shaved Denims (not cut for green fatigues) pledge to pay
back the long imperium of others with termites at their turn:
service town ships bridges streams < blood rusting grinding sleep.
(Mind you, that noise could also be broomstick ethics worming
up the anus; phantom waves overtopping.)
If only we could unlink one rattling habit.
Yes, I know the moon does go deranging
in dark places. For now turn on your side, mate;
calibrate your breathing; curl in until.
-W.W.
THE MAN WHO SELDOM SLEEPS
BUT IS
always preparing his bed will
leap between moons ignored in our
time but fathered and fed by suns
to ours bridged by the glue of light,
the link of love. In his spare time
he laughs more than he is seen to
and smiles less, as he wonders when
his next moon, and how his last bed.
(from "Fabula Rasa" by Brian Chan)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 