Tag: Caribbean Poetry

SUBLIME SUN RISING HOUSE

    
                  

                    Privateers are building homes in the trees which else
                    where would be board nailed hide aways for smart kids.
                    On our island this is front tiered business. Gross bonds care
                    little for fruit ripening too long, too soon. If it's all
                    the same mount up means time to pluck.

                    A major worry: cane raised winds whipping through ripping
                    swingers off the roofs.
                                                      A pick up crew is hired to hose away
                    night fall ruptures before regulators with orders come dawn
                    pecking; to deter black mambas, poinsettia wired hedges. 
   
                         Bredren walk by pure in fire for prophecy 
                         strikes; or nest egg shell rattling Chinese gongs;
                         or reclaimist bee swarms so afternoon tea
                         leaves would scat and make readings easy.

                                                                     Line crossed lovers spread
                    limbs under cloud cover, believing only seraphs floating like 
                    drones might notice; while pilgrims in crimson robes pause 
                    to peek at the Adam & Eve linked in nakedness  ̶  your soul  
                    device searching for signal.

                                                       And the whistling you hear? not birds;
                    tenants content; and so impressed with the ether updates,
                    the clean slate wiping view.

                                                              Most mornings sun streaks start
                    up first stop by their sky lounge windows  ̶  Security measure:
                    yesterdays wing flaps; futures past worded bit worming dry
                    running  ̶  green light air show: Alive we're all aloft today.

                                                                                             – W.W.
                       

 

                                               

               

                                  

 

                                                        

                                      
                      THIS HOUSE IS

                      built out of certain strong brick only,
                          and warmed by a tireless
                              flame within
                      its walls so that mould will not choke them.

                     A house daily breathed in crumbles less
                        quickly than an empty
                            house: a man's
                     essence-vapours vivifies blank space.

                     The tenant gives the house its purpose:
                         to remain standing. But
                            abandoned,  
                     it starts to court a fate of ruin.

                     A solid framework then, to be filled
                        with fire to keep it from
                            burning down,
                     or from sighing, shrugging, collapsing

                      ̶  a thought that, starved of recognition,
                        crumbles into ash. Then
                           do we know
                        which tenant keeps this house standing now.

 

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

 

  

 

VIJINIE’S VINE HANG YIELDING PAST

                               
                                                                                       

                                                                                                                    for Grace A.

                                                                                                                                                                      
                   Our island game masters, wrapped up in hair, gate dogs of what
                   lonely they know, invite fleurettes to placid ponds of lily pads; to wash
                   wring dry their thoughts like underwear.

                   Vijinie's bloom, field testing like a poem, bared totems for bead
                   fingers; for migrant pain killers, 24 hrs Open to suggestion.   

                   Nerve of the dharma her fluids received his shark head surfacing
                   narcisse; her text holder's eyes  ̶  rose shadowed, rehearsing  ̶  offered      
                   up devotion on knees.

                   Until one day she glimpsed his shanks sun loss, his buttocks flaccid
                   pulling out then off away to the rest rooms. "You realize."

                   For restitution, Saturday nights, she'd tell her "boyfriend" park
                   outside the "ashram": front load speakers routing sweat borne
                   ovules OmyGod! up churning  ˃  Sunday sinuous duets.

                   Some aging barrels leach, worn staves, permit no curing; cut
                   straight from vine stem stripped to tongue smooth pressing.

                                                                                      – W.W.

 

 

                       

 

 

 

 

                     

                   FROM THAT MOUTH TO THIS,

                                                                         I kiss you a taste
                   of yourself you can never otherwise      
                   know but by fingers, yours or mine, between
                   mouths. Which do you prefer? This tell-tale tongue 
                   with its salacious gossip of your juice,
                   or slick imps stealing the cream of silence 
                   to take home to the mother of babble?    

                   But why choose? Get to know yourself every
                   way you can, using love's every impulse.
                   Only so can your innocence be re-
                   affirmed, on its travels between realms  
                   of ignorance and experience, both
                   openings through which the shaman of the heart
                   utters its oracles of shameless love.

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

 

 

 

 

MILES FAMILY PROFILES

                          

                                                                                    "As one turns to one in a dream
                                                                                     smiling like a bell that has just
                                                                                     stopped tolling       ….as a life    
                                                                                     to the life that is given you. Wear it,"

                                                                                    -  John Ashbery, "Token Resistance"  

                            
                     1.
                  Our rice fields stretch like days wet to the furry with  
                  wage sloshed demands, the stern quiet heart alert to
                  the faintest snake slither. At sunset our neighbours settle 
                  in with utensils and song, bead curtains and bed balming;
                  making sure we never cross the fowl scratch peck peck yard
                  unknown. 

                  Under his bed Pa's cutlass looked sharp; whiffs of burning coil
                  whisper kept intruders at bay. It built resolve: one day
                  he'd move away, wife anew with child, from cane path
                  hammock stilts to bed rooms plumbing rods in cement.

                  The woman who'd sigh when poked to make his love  ̶  then
                  serve done quick rinse dry  ̶  wiped fear from the mirrors,
                  set window screens for fireflies in rags of darkness; faith
                  in habits sewn. 

                          
                        2.
                  Under the fluorescents of the main road gas station Daughter
                  formed her future: Diana heels leg lotioned avenues, her
                  jewels bunched under. Such a risk here, cast net affections;
                  never knowing what you'd catch  ̶  red snappers slip stream
                  racing through the ovary.

                            
                     3. 
                  Miles outside the marble Wall city where the eldest studied
                  margins claimed, the neighbours grant him turf inside a foliage
                  of manners that cite his drive way passable; jhandi flags,
                  faded and frayed, defy front yard complaints.

                  His parents visit, sink in sofas, watch the flat screen, shake
                  their heads  ̶̶  so much full faced, consumed! They ask: whose
                  car is parked outside Son's house. They worry: no moon
                  watch over crow neck street lamps. They'll take home
                  cordless tools, tales of freezer days, fall leaf ways.

                  Son with holding sticks to side walks, top notch clean unreadable;
                  though sirens passing smoke his village alarms. You can follow
                  him home on devices. His solitudes rise closer to the snowy
                  owls nest, a storied perch where no one dare profile a strange
                  brown man well-dressed who comes and goes.

                                                                                         – W.W.

 

 

                    

 

 

 

                             
                     COMPETITOR


                     You are going, you say,
                     from bottom to top but I also see   
                     you a number crusted
                     with words chasing numbered words round and round
                     a melodramatic
                     circuit of gratuitous starts and stops  ̶ 
                     a kind of poesie  
                     that prettifies and pollutes like fingers
                     scurrying carelessly
                     across one or other keyboard of sloth.    
                     Custom  custom  custom
                     even at the core of your ecstasy.

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

 

 

 

 

 

GULLY PRINCE SONG

                                                                                                                                                                        

                       No, they can't export this, can it like pine apple
                   for super city market. It was meant for our island
                   road, that girl with headphone queued for transport Half
                   Way Evening, Kingston, the air acrid with hail; for rose
                   hip swing line carrying on Savannah Noon, Port of
                   Spain; this fella catching her eye, face mask
                   message instant love play marronage.

                      They assemble wails of redeeming, blue chip
                      dip for fall chance rise; pride Ska high hard I blaze I.
                      
                                                                       So it don't travel
                      up North heart chart; that alright, man. Usher it side               
                      ways, back a wall, ripples to belong  ̶  here, here
                      see it?  lignum pleading. 
                                                                                – W.W.
                                     

                              

                  

                           

                                                [In mem. Rex Nettleford]     

                         

                             

                             
                    YOUR SONG

                                             of solitude and desire you sang
                    with such ardent simplicity, I felt
                    the smoke of your breath entwine with mine
                    to climb up the vine of my back, stretch
                    towards the raincloud of my heart
                    and burst it. But instead of the river
                    you flooded in me, what I hoped
                    you saw in my face's glass was the sun
                    of your own smile shimmering through the mist
                    of these eyes too overwhelmed to tell less.
        
                       (from "The Gift of Screws" by Brian Chan)

 

                                           

 

RETURN REDUX REDONE

    

                                                     
                  So someone throws a stone at his window, a senseless act
                  since smashed glass loses love recycling value. Once past
                  the shock there's recoil at what looks like ingratitude
                  considering how much travel he'd invested  ̶  the good
                  doctor; he could scalpel humours with a shaman's feel to heal.

                  This is why they come back, redressing to blend in, roles
                  of comraderie contracted; put humbly, home again hands
                  hard on the teat of weaning service.
                                                                   What an arc, young Castro.
                  In these parts there's not enough land mass for patriots
                  true like you.

                  In time, though, you might sense momentum falter; fingers
                  grasping bare root stump toe scuffing smooth talk all you
                  want for hold. Aura, it seems, doesn't always help you sir
                  past rankled line servers. So much too late to learn back.
                                  
                  Certainly, one could argue, one hoped to foot print about with
                  out power strip trip or faith trick under mine.

                  Just one blinder of trust is all it takes to tilt ship shape up
                  side down, propellers air writhing; how, kaisomen steuups,
                  could a charterer not see that coming.

                  No, they can't make you divest fresh habits of chewing; reach
                  for the gravy, your entrails on the plate. 
                                                                              And, hear nah, before
                  you know it, throat tenure's up, you're another old man waiting
                  to be admitted: a case of Saman tree silence  ̶  leaf distribution
                  done!  ̶  base stop for some upstart dog leg initializing; or
                  drag yuh tale, drag yuh tale. 

                                   Feel the town beach prayer mills grinding? plumb
                  the ground: the vendors of tribe face lift, the cans of prude
                  on shelf; core improperties like tract infection, the scratch
                  that, closing time, takings to add.
                                                                             
                                                                       – W.W.

 

                         

                 

 

 


                  HINT

                  Fallen leaves that lead back to the tree also
                  extend from it, as much as do full branches,
                  as issues of the map of its utterance,
                  the way the stars that seem random are balanced
                  by a centre whose nature it is to keep
                  dividing itself into more and more points
                  of light so that we shall uncover never
                  any absolute but the hint of its winks.

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

 

 

 

 

VOX POPULI

 

                                                                                                    for Linda & Carroll & Zulaika

                                                                                                  

                              Across parting seas whose arguments freeze in fold
                         back a player strums and chips; voices adoring pour
                         life sought after.
 
                         From hearth razed rubble in city husks once home
                         militias lift their heads, leave time out, let them through all
                         wave and recognition.

                         No unpaid piper children red scarf taken; rosary 
                         with followers hailing making Mary scene. Tide
                         high expectation:

                         a mother will give birth to twins; a space ship lowers
                         stairs; a scent to rapture near, always near.

                                                                                                       -W.W.

                       

                                                                             

                                                                      

                          

 

                      
             

 

                                 
                                 WAITING

                    
                                                  like a radio for your voice
                              to speak through me, I can only buzz and hum
                              as though my dial's at an open station.
                              So I pad about like a caged cat
                              and on the wave of that rhythm contemplate
                              the about-to-ring bell about my tight throat.

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

 

 

TRIALS TRIED NEW NEWS PAST DUE

 

                      
                   On system fail watch, awaiting the auditor, the man
                  whose road flags marched up the liberation party leaned
                  forward hawked bright red in his spittoon for naysayers.  

                  Is Funny, he told the bed pan nurse, how body parts you take
                  for granted tear and whimper; sags like fuming diapers call
                  attention; how lungs wheeze insipidities and bladders quibble
                  down right Honorables droop. 
                                                        And, man, the brush pass of disease
                  to gum, like union members threatening strike, joint  
                  ventures lean to ramshackle  ̶  you see this?

                  Listen, he surged, his grave tone pealing: we were the first
                  born Comrades: our Viva! and army, we own stage craft
                  copy. 1979: our time to do  ̶  no wait wait, listen!  ̶  
                  bare back we gripped the hair trope of revo, break clean
                  chant from ghetto. 

                  Turn simple, home made for all; tools to extract sown in
                  plants; hard boil Crown stool flushing out to sea. Ok,
                  lost heads Fort split Salvation we didn't foresee the midnight
                  track suit change?  blood stain didn't bleach.

                  Now white sands cruise the tourists back; safe hands hot hot
                  for winter pain spread cocoa blankets, squeeze fresh out
                  of shell stock courtesies.
                                             Who says the workers, sinking back to bread
                  fruit trees, won't sweep our way again?    

                  Sun bells tongue spermy futurisms; fermentories you can't 
                  see beat chests heat jewels become you. We learning just 
                  don't fuck with our curves (beach warning flag) loss heals
                  (guard knee abrasion). 

                                                                 Green flash: who knows
                  what typhoon escort wave's now on its way, clean sweep 
                  idea. And, hear, enough with poets colon scoping grief
                  wrung fame: the people's island schooler  ̶  what's his 
                  game? paints metrics you can't trigger. 
                                                                            – W.W.
                                                                                    

                    

  

                     

  

                      BRIGHT AND LONELY BATHOS

               

                      The midmorning Sun keeps a calm eye

                            on a million stifled storms,

                            on a thousand restless calms,

                               on a hundred clean hands,

                        on ten fears for the too-well-known

                         ̶  the return to which raises scars

                     in two hearts as on the broken land,

                              and one mind sparks

                              while all hearts shrink

                          and the city expands.

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

  

 

FOR VIJINIE GIRL TOUCHED SHORE BIRD FLOWN

 

 

                   Those enclosed lamp lights in windows alert to passing
                  ship offers of first mate  ̶̶  you'd wake and grace the morning
                  yearn the keys to cabin closets; the farthering stern boil
                  not yet under way.  
                                                                     That half moon need to know
                  how hearts on deck grasp grip at wanting grounding 
                  sheets of wave; first gush first outcry breaking sea 
                  weed dream to day. 

                  How else could you have felt the tide take floats of
                  innocence trembling, while conch shells raise  ̶  what wind?
                  what change in webbed bird step whose unswept shore? 

                  The bare foot years the wish for paths for choice full
                  blooming styles; for moves past screaming Madre mía!
                  playing that teacher out for touch, the taxi drivers rear 
                  view cue; hot lid nails made cool with shadow polish.

                  Stitch by stitch, decorum easing pleats for peeks, that lust
                  mote wedge at the corner of eyes, young men on line on
                  hold importing sweets.

                                             The bark of dogs  ̶  the gates you dared!
                  stretch beats of wing  ̶̶  line curve in air.

                  From lies the sting you didn't expect in the Admin's bite left
                  neck memos. Thank the stars no Toyota blood pack swirling
                  terror dust blade upswing testing how far fast you run before
                  the tumble pins you down  ̶̶  goat foraging not far from grasses 
                  past when loins ate hair; brush close to scarf rules cheeks                     
                  bright tight for after calls to prayer.                                 

                            Vida de mi vida  ̶  your lighthouse radiant
                       beam through storm so sure  ̶  long before tattoos
                       were vogue, our high seas etched high marks  ̶  
                       how you've grown, wave girl, now you're known.

                                                                                        – W.W. 

 

 

                         

             

                                                      

 

    

                              OBSERVANT
 
                         
                             If innocence is impulse without lust,
                             it is your guileless grace that I desire.
                             If tenderness is a rose's cool musk,
                             it is the perfume of your fresh petals
                             that touches, angels me, a faithful cloud
                             that will outlive my seedings of its rain.
                             If caution is a flower of value,
                             it is the bud of your care I would keep.
                             If watchfulness is an eager eagle
                             of vulnerability on the hunt
                             for a chance to bridge the nearest abyss
                             between this need for real food and that want
                             of warm wine, then I long to become one
                             alert feather of your generous wings.

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

 

 

                                

   

POEMS FOR WHAT REMAINS PRIDE TIES THAT HOLD

 

                    
                Like fans of morning ocean breeze we stir to ferocious cock
               waking turns, monkey noise unheard of inside temple walls;
               grace hands smoothing the closed sheets.
                                                                                       Ankle bells
               main road transport heat, rumours of mad cow mad ras
               scowling the city.

               We cherish lines to pin garments wet for sun stroke, we 
               call the children inside. Prayers we chant but don't export
               trusting the cicadas to join in like khartals, keeping us
               safe from drum down areas in darkness.

               The sweat slash burn off cane paths made a wish
               for the order of dry good stores, land fixtures     
               with address;. No head pails spilling sorry come
               tomorrow; fresh hurt. 

                                                          Bright nephews fly off, cricket
               white countries, doctors for the frail health of front page
               news. You can redeem air mail miles saved 'cross generations.
                                                                                                 Wait  ̶  
               see our tooth bent Saddhu smiling? work done, cycling home?

               We buffer the web work of spiders in the Fate House  ̶  
               our hairies, their cabinet big filings for first bite; fence
               filigree like wire barbed to deny and fare well.      

                                                             Our front steps glow with deyas
               for shadows returning from fields of mud; our martyrs. Our
               grave yards breathe weed free, not like elsewhere bones broke
               tossed in corbeau holes, clods from sodden manner; the feral
               things they do, you know.

               How did estate huts trade up for orhni leisures? Our gods
               watch willing. What goes on inside us should not concern
               the teller. So flaring green the grass in villages left unsired;
               too old if we owned gold stalls we'd offer to the cows.
               Past longing, if you insist.
                                                                Count the pipal shoots
               arriving, bracelet arms inset to serve.
                                                                                – W.W.

                            

                   

  

 

 

                         
                  THE AUTOHARPIST AND
                  THE TRUMPETER

 
                  The price of pride is a certain
                  loneliness, and the lonely fear
                  of never being recognised                             
                  fuels vanity's loudest lamps.
                  Solitude, like community,
                  must be earned, each other's wages
                  of awareness  ̶  else sheer blindness
                  circling in its accustomed fear

                   ̶̶  fear no bird always at the centre
                  of the air's pressure can afford: no
                  matter how many pauses of perch
                  it may take, it must always remain
                  alert to the will of the wind and
                  the whims of its own wings' responses
                  within a humility that wears
                  no name's arrow or shield, yet declares
                  itself lonely vanity's victor. 

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

          

                     

DROOPING PANTS KNOW WHAT YOU DO

  

                        In days whipped by if you didn't raise your hand to get
                      noticed Salut! you wound up halo weaning, a lynx
                      eyed old fart knee bent in prayer stall; the back rub
                      beamer for girls twirling @dresses.           
                                                                                  Or a diamond
                      leg trapped in tennis shoes longevity; hard as ghetto
                      to burn  ̶  Achtung. 

                      Pop guns build Museotheques, disks cased in gold.
                      There's always an Error message, but white bone fear
                      of hip funk servers could freeze connections, skin scratch
                      infections that embed and repeat after you.

                      Youth limbs  ̶  nothing better to do, belt free to waste good
                      pay days  ̶  are best advised: here, conjure this  ̶  scrub in,
                      your street hood's cramping; trunk grooves cut down 'ill
                      howl to heaven smell of bitter root  ̶  one shot.

                                        Flight capsules stand by  ̶  crowd wave lock
                      in count down  ̶  blue screens eclipse red moons. Cell sure
                      mobile glow beats no place to go. And site this: sun tan
                      schedules await the newest Royal embryo.

                                                                                       Maybe if
                      we slipped something in their food? a gatekeeper  
                      posts. 
                               This all on boarding  ̶  rivers like Jordan  ̶̶  
                      who cares where bends shape falls whose faith fools
                      love. Oh snap! Arc de Rainbow. In step all good?
                      Nein.
                                                                                 – W.W.

         

                                  

  

  

 

                   
                   THE INSOUCIANT CONSIDERATE PRINCE
                           
               
                     Why should one, heeding the call of Things
                         To Be Done,
                     descend out of the realm of the Sun
                     where all knots and walls have already sprouted wings? 
                                    
                               Things can wait, in the sweatshop below
                             in the den
                         of Duty, that servant with a bone
                         at his teeth as he sucks at his master's marrow.

                       Only after one has broken fast
                           with the Lord
                        of unhurried Light, should one reward
                   the demons of Do with ones attention at last.

                      It is their hunger feeds their demands
                         but they're just
                       clouds, under our Star, waiting to burst
                  when our rays trigger their rain to a million hands.

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