Tag: Caribbean Poetry

VIEWS FROM ATOP MOUNTING

 

 

              I

                  In matters of island property, like carving the mountain
                 view, there are palpitating issues, you could say  ̶  downed
                 tree lives and dress rehearsing wives not withstanding.
                
                Your chance for happiness? so far the data's inconclusive.

                 After the Everest summit shiver  ̶  alone at the top, peasant
                 ant hills below  ̶  you get used to uncommon breath,
                 cloud loitering, sunrise room service. You could count
                 the air arrival miles you racked up and there's ample time
                 to declutter the sledge hauled bags of hunger years.

                 New technology approaching the villas gets turned back
                 by villagers with machetes who can spot grass snaking
                 pump lines stretched away. Their gods must be appeased. They
                 want jobs  ̶  like Security Sensor? for blocking intruders
                 on our Heritage grounds?  Keeper of the seals.

                 On print outs your body throws up shell casings and numbers
                 to baffle any beach reader of sea leaves. Goodness knows,
                 the organs try but can't up lift much more "as per". Lung
                 pipes get sucked blood crimping your face glow and unless 
                 there's a tennis court so little is required of the heart. 
                 Guts you have.

 

                   II

                       
                 For credit checks, Sunday morning's best. Womb worn
                 women in church shinery get to step the verge. There's ripe
                 fruit and reason to smile.
                                                                Pray for no rain storm  ̶  all
                 that top water racket tearing down like indicators of unruly
                 market shares.

                 Best advice: build a Jericho wall. Some sweat marked taxi
                 men get it in their heads to organise the tourist drive by: 
                 Who lives there, mobiles snap? 
                                                                   In time you learn to trust
                 only the deference of grass to lawn presidents, the terrier
                 teeth of smiling coconut peelers.

                 Out on the terrace, at sunset, you could chill with a stone
                 ground law maker; pour Scotch movie gangster style 
                 as flowered village girls come up to the iron
                 gate  ̶̶  Dog alert!  ̶  belle eyes ringing, Need a handy 
                 lady, guava sweet beak? 
                                                               Dragon fly blades slash
                 any hope of sighting sky cranes on coast lines over seas.
                 One day the gaze will show you the door. Ledgers bow.
                      Yes, I should go now.               Cliché cliché.
                       
                                                                                                       – W.W.

              

 

 

 

                         A STRAY

                                            wisp of cloud
                                                                     drifted
                    up from behind a mountain, crumbled
                    and dissolved. Was I the only witness
                    of its determined self-erasing course?
                    The mountain sighs: Of course not;
                    nor was it an omen of only your
                    death: ask that crow in flight
                    and he will tell you: We are all
                    drifting in and out of being:
                    ask that mountain ever reaching
                    for the nudity by which it keeps redefining its focus
                    of nakedness, while we, bird and cloud
                    and man, by contrast of our faster fading,
                    lend it an illusion of fixity, feed
                    its dream of timeless solidness whose value
                    as eternal witness of our cloudiness we invent.

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

 

 

 

POEMS FOR VIJINIE BAD GIRL VIRTUAL BEING

 
                                                                                      

                                                                                 "Fu tru a libi faya      /   "Truly, life must be
                                                                          f ' wi masra Gado"  /    tough for the Lord."
                                                                                           ̶  Johanna Schouten-Elsenhout, "Virtue"

                           Vowed they would fix it, the flat tired nation, with memory
                         wound stitched, fiefdom pulp beats. Now fine tempers
                         bruise under their skin pecking orders, timers for youth 
                         oven access; the belt loose No, please! shielding.
                                                                                                No lift tools,
                         stems wait wilt. What foot stool custom helped them up
                         there, coin chests saddled upon you?
                                                                                                                                                         
                         Dot titles sharpening names, blade fall, the old imperial drum
                         role; things that matter less or more  ̶  brace to jump the track
                         rust of grail service. 
                                                      The wage estate's in shambles. Strip 
                         gangs burn cane reeds tender on strike dates. I run
                         with you I clear ash swirling air strips for you.

                         Their frog throats swell, low copy high swallow.
                                                                                                 Here's a path
                         for unexploded shells: spear tip the crab fist pounding
                         up through mud; seize the scuttled shore before the tide plays
                         out and longing dried in the sand holds, in the belly pincers.

                         Through thread veins, breath not ceding, run our conspiracy
                         file  ̶  did the barrels shipped back make it past the organ
                         swellers? inside you tossed on beds of river weeping? 
                                                                                                  Paddle, glide
                         like Amerindian; take for your parting prow this hand,
                         our midnight chart through forest quiet.

                         I sing paint dream you  ̶  You there, stay the course!  ̶  
                         I follow ways you stream, you swat the Admin's crevice fingers.
                         I wait with ointments, with oxygen tent, Enter keys.
                         On heart shelves, our expectations lined up,
                                                                                                    I reach
                         and dust spines of raptures chiming; not a grain slips by, 
                         Oh those glassed hours.
                                                                                -W.W.

                      

 

 

 

                         ATTRACTING A BRIGHT ANGEL

                 
                                                                     with the hint
                        of a horn to a quiet song, I know
                        you at once, your body all wings of light
                        lifted by its own music's waves of sure
                        breathing, yet hovering
                        between magnets of recognition and routine,
                        desire and duty, ah-yes! and oh-well,
                        your smile a mask of baffled power,
                        of your admission of now-or-never,
                        a chance you first deny through the exit
                        to never, before turning back to charge
                        our one heart's battery, your eyes' light over-
                        flowing its chalice towards my hunger
                        to be graced by the wingtips of your breath.                   

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

 

 

 

 

 

ISLANDS LEFT LOVED FUTURES FEARED

 

                                                              
                                                                                            
                                                                                  "…age vexes age..."  
                                                                   ̶  Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"                                    

                  

                       They want you on stage, old school vine, brick role 
                     till dust; comrade with angina in the village square, dying 
                     for a champion's green mansion; to smile again, crowd
                     pleased, as the motorcade (Havana pipe fitters) horns past. 
                                                           They'd like you to serve, lithe wine girl,
                     scented for taste  ̶  egret at standby; entry positions cheeks assume
                     on carpets; for murder hiring hands, quality assurance.
                    
                     Sunscreen Times, you want bacchanal? 

                                                                                  Contractor claws gouge hill
                     face, Solar Control stations coming. That sewage welling up in back
                     yard pits? tip of oil lakes underground  ̶̶  bet!  ̶  bubbles to take
                     breath away. While seine pullers sort pleading catch, bass licks
                     and dhantals jerk knees. With no slide rules, fellas consider guns
                     smoking  ̶  Excuse me, where the fire hosing dragons?

                     Up escalators tripped ashore the other day courtesy of fat
                     pay rollers in Chinese deck chairs making valued customers
                     of every bowlegged tree climber whose splayed toes scratch 
                     fear at the foot of the stair; our first shopping mall floors
                     gleaming door man screaming, You can't come in here
                     like that.                          

                     The sun's melting pace quickens Day-O! Transport touts squeeze
                     in more wet prunes or, stripped to the waist, pole stroke pink
                     face rafters with pony tails; tulips for hard dough. In bamboo
                     halls the forest children sing till hearts burst strumming all 
                     that's metered in us. And now, ready to order, the dead
                     who weave our north south hammocks signal.

                     Faith and I used to park by the airport, hug; wait, watch  
                     the evening flight take off. The up roar of the beast head
                     lift of skirt sky boosters boarding the body; the spending
                     spree on runway thighs  ̶  Haya! Vaya! Sapodilla  ̶
                     our crack, our thunder.
                                                      And so much sun! how alien, much less
                     shut cold, could home fires possibly feel out there? Green
                     light, two one  ̶  away, you!  
                                                               > limbs great wide, wind tango.

                                                                                            - W.W.

 

                

                         

 

 

         

                                 PATH

 
                              The higher you rise, the more
                             sheer the air, the more calls
                                the sand swearing its
                           sliding is surer than your
                             need to become the sky
                                 of your first calling
                           beyond settling for Earth's core's
                              pull or for her grasses'
                                  siren songs of Springs
                           whose purpose is to propose
                               their passing promises
                                  the final real thing.

                               But how sure of this other
                               first call are you?   What is
                                 it? This becoming;
                            this summing-up surrender
                              of name and clock and clothes,
                                though they keep clinging
                            to your bones even after
                              bones exchange their loud tilt
                                  for the balanced nude
                            spine of silence.   It is here
                               time's thorns rise to the rose
                                  of breath's timeless song.

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

 

 

POEMS FOR RITE TO SPRING LAY LAY SIDE WAY

 

 

                                                                              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)

 

 

   

POEMS FOR FULL BLOWN TREES DOWN FIRST RESPONDERS

  

                                                                                         "….between the storm and the calm
                                                                                          between the nightmare and the sleeper
                                                                                       between the cradle and the reaper."             
                                                                                 – John Agard, "Bridge Builder"                          

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

                       The oldest tree on our block came down as the last storm  ̶
                     "a nor'easter, turf crosser!"  ̶   swept through on buffalo wings.
                      It fell to rest on Mr. Sanchez' roof. Easy to assume its root
                      system was all surface, no heart. Mrs. Bourdy stepped outside
                      swinging: tenured trees feel locked in by city sidewalks; and vanities
                      like Mr. Sanchez' front lawn. The payback? hooded shoots infiltrating
                      his sewer lines, she tittered. Thy neighbor, your love.
                  
                      Mrs. Bourdy watched the storm from her attic window. The tree
                      withstood 30 years of wind battery, leaf hang, her marriage
                      to Mr. Bourdy (deceased). One mounting last push, over the top,
                      the pleasures of grounding up ripped. No sap weep, willow
                      style. How long can long standing allegories be sustainable?

                      Mrs. Bourdy hadn't noticed bird nests in the tree. Squirrels, yes,
                      playing tag and performing homeless traffic scurry. And some
                      times a tacked Lost Dog note. So goes the neighborhood.
                      Anyone could harvest tree bark make wine corks, she'd read
                      somewhere, though no one shows up in her dead of night
                      with plug or bark carving knife intentions.

                      The tree fall dealt a 10 foot slash in the sidewalk; it leaned in
                      branching daze, earth crust privies exposed; drivers stopped 
                      for Increíble! camera shots; a young man, they heard later,
                      not the screams, stepped on live power lines, cell sending
                      views. These new fangled hand devices, Mrs. Bourdy tsk
                      tsked, cradles so full of ourselves.
                             
                      Back inside she heard a chain saw buzzing her bow
                      windows. Heaven's gorilla! how did that fly thru pass the particle
                      screen? And what was taking the sanitation trucks so long,
                      gathering passed overs for bagpipes? fixing years left how limbs
                      were, give or take a bed mate, a tree hug.

                                                                             After awhile nothing seems amiss.
                      So your house roof leaks! catch a falling chord: cloud howl ruin 
                      day clean take turns like on line ancestors; bare mortals, we classify
                      leaf vacancy, Move on! Let mediums search parallels for clogged
                      artery parts, the walnuts you stock in that wind breaker chest.
                                                                                        Not freaking funny,
                      you find? Quantum poetics? Please. What news of footprint
                      pillars sand you don't follow? Thy neighbor's kingdom come,
                      will be done.
                                             -W.W.

 

                    

                          

 

 

 

                                   THE WIND REVEALS

 

                                                      that on Earth's merest surface
                                     all things interdepend
                          in a tango of bending and standing still,
                                   bending while
                             standing within the tugging silence
                                of depths that trust themselves.
                          What it cannot show is what only a man
                               can start to tell of an inner bell
                          that sways to ring in rhyming with the wing's swing

                          – a sounding that does not need to wave a flag
                               as proof of membership
                          of any knot of roots only weakened so.
                                   Do branches
                             of flowers and fruit point to their roots - 
                                or reach up to their seed
                          of the Sun? Does the squirrel or robin bow
                             to its own tail or wing – or, stopped short
                          by men's fences, kneel to ghosts and bones of trees?

                          I let the wind in the hand go where it will,
                               let the hand be a cloud
                          or an unlabelled feather or flower or
                                   stone of light,
                             let the themes of my dreams remember
                              themselves like steam rising
                          from the Earth's core only to become her rain
                            whose fingers interlocking set free
                          all her tongues to bridging Silence's chasms.

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

 

FIRST SUN HOME SET WORLDS APART

  

                           
                On Dad's island, our meet your Grandpa trip, the village
                      bath ritual meant some down dip splashing; a shock to our
                      up reach chrome handling. Dad made me leave the camera
                      phone home. We'll walk and talk the trees the sea night creature
                      noise sun lime. Pan chippers like forest on road winding, catch 
                      sweat beads off breast bounce gleaming, my wish list.

                Grandpa's hand trembled pointing flood and land marks;
                      no patience with passwords, he prefers his walk man's inked
                      transactions. Comrades circuit short at corners, scratchy voice 
                      like Dad's vinyls, their dry season. Crossing streets his fingers
                      on shoulders felt bone grippy. This mobile generation, profile
                      glaze on pocket screens  ̶  who'll mind run save the nation?

                Visiting from London Grandpa's old friend observed 
                      from the verandah wickers: towns & villages here reassemble 
                      tempers caste in Delhi and Nairobi; sunsets dive fast through skin 
                      textures into same text estates; night shifts of snake beats suckle
                      wail. Manners bypass service like retired diplomats. No bell ring
                      run from rape into the sea. You can watch rigged ships
                      harvesting at gated harbours.

                How's Samaroo doing, Grandpa's neighbor's son? came back
                      to play with his English girlfriend last Carnival. They heard
                      he'd smear Chinese dip sauce on her forehead, Sindoor
                      style, before they went to bed. Like he’s some Hindu
                      gangster, they clinked glass rims. Cool licks, my hit list.

                Dad's island home seems spared crowd Square death tolling. 
                      What difference did it make to you, Ma wondered. All that
                      we are is more or less returnable, he snapped. I told Grandpa
                      maybe I'll come back before his sun watch stops; richer
                      or poorer; faster, truth be told, up feeding blood
                      links, don't misunderstand me.
                                                                              W.W.

 

 

 

 

                                   

 

 

 

 

 

                                      TO THE EARTH OF INEVITABLE ASCENSION

 
                               I, your partial son, praise the whole of you
                            as I have praised some brother tree or man, and
                               hosts of sister grass-ears or bird-tongues, and
                               our one seed, your spouse, our father the Sun.

                               Now I admit and honour at last your
                            rich graveyard of compost and manure of birth,
                               and so encourage your slow pilgrimage
                               whose Mecca and Jerusalem will be

                               not only your own end of starhood but
                            also the willingness of men to allow 
                               in themselves the seeds of stars, seeds that will
                               sprout and pulse in harmony with Light's breath.

                               So now I plant such rhyming seed in you
                            and sense the receptive ripples of your womb,
                               and trust such innocent incest shall prove
                               new husbandry of all our shining fate.

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

 

 

 

HAND HARD CONTRACTS CHOICE THAT YIELDS

 

                                                                                            "…all the muttering kinship:
                                                                         Things with things, persons with objects,
                                                                         Ideas with people or ideas." 
                                                                                         - John Ashbery, "Vaucanson"

                                 I

                        A country boy's secret, a reason late to school:
                      his hand was squeezing smooth udders.
                                                                                    Early
                      rising he milked his father's cows, a little
                      business on the side which was fine once city
                      boys didn't find out; though in the lining of that chore
                      silver grains of shame heart beat fast grinding.

                           
                      After our Bunsen burn this parting sign  ̶  his secret 
                      safe, our gang of two  ̶  right hand raised, fingers squeezing
                      air fat  ̶  our way of forming futures unnamable, premises
                      of extraction we could count on to yield.              

                      Who's to say such gestures, muscling youth dream
                      fibres, don't shape the man?
                                                                   True, much depends
                      on where heads low at night, the man up poke rise
                      of you; the old money belt way hovering.

                            II

                           
                      Your nation at war or stand still, dehydrating under tents
                      and you not sure what to do with your hands?
                      which normally would signal to the pocket system
                      find paths to guns, or farm fruit picking;
                      dentistry, or palming off soccer balls. So country

                           
                      boy now sits in brooding khaki view of District
                      Security  ̶  a standpipe they go to for missions: search
                      and redress. His squad men donned in black,chase
                      raiders in braids like livestock loose in Chinese rice fields.                  

                      At a family dinner spread I shook his wife's pain
                      baking hands. Her body clothes pinned moist in mesh
                      veil packs full his pipe call frequency.  
                                                                        Those mornings squeezing
                      udders?  the school yard secret sign?  silent, active
                      like heart conditioning, sugar; like dust folk fables 
                      from radio days.

                            III

                           At times you lose interest in what's on the table.
                      You start wondering what holds in store for all assuming
                      all lies pieced together in a cloud somewhere. Oceans swell,
                      forests strip, things get done with them. Micro tears, worming
                      our chip based loves, secrete like enzymes  ̶  it's conceivable  ̶  
                      ideas we pursue fold rear; names we follow; that faith we grip
                      and breach and fuse as submissions serve or stall.  

                           Still waiting for updates, mounds golden
                      ripe per pound?  from nature improved
                      pods?  go ahead  ̶  click Enter  ̶  hope sun
                      seeds stream. Not before, not after, dare you
                      wash your hands who still can't help yourself. 
                                                                                        That
                      or, simple as this sounds, consider the cow.

                                                                                           -W.W.

 

 

                    

                    

 

                                 
  

                           TO THE CRYSTAL BALL IN MY HAND

         
                      May your body's cool purity temper my
                          body's fires as they
                      warm your wisdom, and your sphere-clear perfection
                          pierce the core of this
                      dull diamond and so seed it to a shining
                         of its inner sun,
                      so that, when I zigzag through the world tilting
                         between night and dawn
                      and noon, this presence of my bones loose among
                          my fellow future
                      cadavers shall be in lightening service
                         to dense shadows and
                      dark masks that signal a running from the night's
                         certain returning
                      fall – which you survive simply by swallowing
                        its dark into your
                      belly's limitless memory of dawn's light.

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

 

 

 

POEMS FOR OLD MEN CHECK HOP SKIP LIGHT ON

 

                    Looked at papi (90+ the other day) and wondered:
                    what sun beams – spirit, gene or grund  – 
                    through tree leaves track my trail.
                    His hair has thinned but he enjoys the prayer mode
                    console of the barber chair, the valet snip snip of scissors.

                    His brother, back in the islands, had the holy grey beard
                    of the village healer; full facial hair to signify wisdom,
                    scruffy importance, or mystic herb manhood; he'd rub
                    his finger rings for luck, trace routes for repatriation.

                    His brother, tooled for harvest like no one else, strip bladed
                    cane limbs found off citrus lanes; then as his fires waned
                    turned Baptist preacher, still believing he could make
                    hips sway mouths moan while the children
                    fidgeted on hard benches.

                       More taciturn, papi’s a shortwave man; falls asleep to World
                    News Today.  Among his found new habits: a moving bowel
                    scan; hot cold good morning! shower; baseball homers, collard
                    lasagna; head bobbing to Armstrong’s “Dream A Little Dream”;
                    old math skills once thought worth less; & his blood truce
                    with our wriggling ancestors.

                       He had two wives; the first one left, the second died;
                    he's walked brick towered over, shoved subway platform lines.
                    When time check lights, he figures, despite filed office white
                    teeth, wide east west numbered streets of strangers
                    not all kind, he’s had a good life here.

                       For heaven's sake, don’t pause and brood, 
                       or perch like Rodin's man props chin,
                       on toilet seats, he warns, the expert now.  

                                                                                                  -W.W.

 

 

                              

                    

 

 

 

                                            CLOSE-UP & FADE:

                                     This old man is a mist's or cloud's blur
                                  that, focusing itself, dissolves
                                       without raining or snowing.
                                       In the depth of his dark field,
                                  he frames you mirroring his fate
                                  of appearing and having to fade,
                                  and he climbs back to his vision's sleep
                                     disturbed to no issue but this
                                        shadow of your youth passing

                                          close, and too late.

                                    (from “Within The Wind" © Brian Chan)

 

 

NOT NIAGARA, AND HOW LOVE FALLS

 

            
                                        “Not ours to own, like a book, but to be with, and sometimes
                                  to be without, alone and desperate.
                                  But the fantasy makes it ours…”

                                            – John Ashbery, “Soonest Mended”
                                       

                  
                  Vijinie, who lets my gold rush pour into her gorge  ̶  the force!
                  she grips  ̶  confessed our Falls frightens her. On the ledge
                  she stands back trembling at its unreversing One Way.
                  There is no observation deck. Closer to the edge outstretched
                  arms could wrap around our wonder of the world.

                  You could take a plane there, a honey moony day trip; or hike
                  through ego friendly rivers, knotted stillness; one last
                  snake tailing trail. Tourist brochures gloss the cascade
                  Vámos! which local scribes consider for book covers.

                      According to reports, Aliya, at 23 fragrant & unfeathered, 
                  with a site tour party and a Korean couple, had seen 
                  enough, was heading back; stopped, turned  ̶  spark  
                  burn  ̶  dived in fusion, riding a silo beam straight up
                     our Fall 226 metres  ̶  breath 226 in out?
                           
                  The recovery team  ̶  Army Officers, 12 soldiers, 3
                  civilians  ̶  used a 1200 ft rope to winch the body
                     up the Fall side  ̶  trip switch not found.  
 
                              …  In mem. Aliya Bulkan …
                              
                  Suicides are not uncommon here; thwarted young   
                  lovers use old sugar estate exits; usually they swallow
                  poison like Juliet, or password distress. Family grief
                  howls like Lear, and leaves messages. Newscasts cry
                  Horror! then break away for theorists in swim suits: 
                     their stunts you wouldn’t believe.

                  In our Interior people hear voices . angels whispering
                  Come with us . spreading legends of the abyss  ̶   
                  the Indians who paddled over in sacrifice 
                  to the Great Spirit who, they say, craves
                  star crossed slits and tenders sweet deals.   

                  Vijinie, at 33 nymphish, back flips her All you Need
                  is Love tattoo, gold dust in hair wet. Her basin
                  bubbles until my down drawn loneliness hits rock
                  bottom. Her swirled pools send up a mist pillowing
                  rescue read rapture . making the dive splash free,
                  loss defying  >  Good gracious, 10  < perfect wonder.

                                                                                – W.W.

 

                             

 

                                                  
                       

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

                              LOVE AT LAST SIGHT

           
                         When some marvel fools the eyes it is the one
                             and final. When a love, lonely known
                         only as buried beneath distraction-stones,
                            lifts its head, shows its face – like the Sun’s

                         above the pale curb of night’s despair over
                            not being ever known for its stars
                         climbing and falling to disappear never;
                           like one such star’s arcing through the spheres –

                         to rhyming recognitions of eyes eager
                           for sharp surprises of the Other
                         no stranger but the reprise of the Sister
                           or Brother or Mother or Father

                                     or other memory of angelic trust
                           – and even if trust was betrayed, cast
                        away, lost or unacknowledged like a ghost
                           too close not to be ignored, but 

                        when it wanders off, an unattended cloud
                           of revisions needing to be read
                        – unless trust-blind lovers would lose for good
                          one last glimpse of love’s star unfaded.

                           (from “Within the Wind.” ©  Brian Chan )

 

 

 

BODY PART BRIEFS & HIP HOORAYS

 

                                                       
                                             "Peace is a full stop.
                                           And though we had some chance of slipping past the blockade,
                                             now only time will consent to have anything to do with us,
                                             for what purposes we do not know.”
                                                                                        – John Ashbery 
                                                                                        from “Chinese Whispers”, 2001

                        So what’s the mandate? the masked executor asked
                      the Governor, his axe paused in a golfer’s down
                      swing through; blade open gleaming, This is
                      what we do.

                      Someone’s chopping heads and limbs, leaving quarterly
                      memos off cocaine highways; faith based scat wired
                      devices display your résumé with the fruits & vegetables.
                      Scarved mothers, be advised. Rosary beads, track markers.

                      Clit eyelid nipple tongue – ears so last
                      millenium! – lower back tattoo: what why not’s
                      left to pierce hook brand? Mum did only nostrils,
                      back in Mumbai – meanwhile fat gathers; bones
                      on line wait shake rattle.

                      Lip moist, finger stroke, smooth thigh show; chest span, O
                      the night shift dangle! See, these pins snag rip reel
                      the heart, “Soul’s born to swim, love plays
                      bit part” – no, not quite Nietzsche, though his
                      trade mark. 

                      That vibrate buttock thing – there must be
                      a method, trick, an app so upstarch girls can do it;
                      hear Fernando Botero grinding teeth in sleep
                      like size still matters. Go, fringe plait!

                      Lamborghini sirens toasting, bass artery pounding red, 
                      chicks like bullets grazing your neck, cool million loitering
                      near horse reamed quakes and private jet suicides: no
                      “Mercy” – summer 12 – hip streets K.West. 

                      Stone club sword bayonet bomb forty 
                      seven – right now we’re drone proficient: less
                      in your face, more never know what hit you!
                      They’re working on the vaporizer: dust to dust
                      free, baby! – tree limbs saved.
                                                                                 -W.W.

 

 

 

                      

                  


   

      

                                  CERAMIC CALYPSO

                               open or closed, it is
                            not too hard to be a hole:
                            sooner or later, you know,
                               you will be fed some thing

                               some body needs to lose.
                            you will never feel hunger
                            unless all who live here quit
                               the scene, this way or that.

                               sometimes you wish they would:
                            you are weary of being
                            crushed and flushed and brushed. but left
                               alone, you would become

                               rusty, fusty, crusty.
                            better to stay in service,
                            though therein the horror lies:
                               there are no surprises

                                      left: all variations
                            on the theme of human waste
                            have but one resolution:
                               come to pass, gone for good

                               but somehow here to stay.

                   (from “Within The Wind” © by Brian Chan)