"….giving testimony, fighting against the nothingness that will sweep us away." – Julio Cortázar, "Hopscotch"
Sorry, mate! I can't unveil the source. Contrary to what you've heard ̶ cloud lawn reunions, screenings of world history, last dust galaxy swirls ̶ there's just this aqueduct
to all and nothing : a deed chalked gate _ boneless sluicing _ then, breathless, light white wait.
An activated slit issues the 24 hour pass : terms of agreement? you may return ̶ one loop, one day ̶ through any portal in the world : the old workplace, a war zone rubble fled : camp ward yard fall crash site opening back.
Free again! yes, look around . tidy up unfinished threads; see how those stubborn DNA worms have turned; how the kids are doing; your tormentors! Your will undone on earth.
Ask, Who the new feint champs? if faster fasts exist . inspect new miniature devices, our heat melt sink swim lists. Peel figments from brain child to clan you failed or fondled then no more : biosphere complete.
No, no ̶ I can't reveal my sources . No, I won't give away the ending.
Fine! go ahead : invest in real time shares . yeah, yeah : bond blues stock memory loss > earth . earth :
– W.W.
DEATH
A shell crackedA yolk sucked about the yolk out of the shell that cannot spill that was always cracked yet spreads and clings always leaking
The frozen memory The melting memory of a melting dream of a frozen dream
The blinking memory The staring memory of a dream without eyelids of a blurring dream
The rock mask The shifting mask of a shifting cloud of a stony cloud
The fallacy The triumph of flesh of butterflies and roses.
The slack Sleep's po-faced irony of sleep concentration.
Justice without Reading judgment without text
The ceremony The mirror of indifference of nothing, and more.
"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.
Outside chance. Night before you register prepare with pasta party number tag the thigh stretch marks and faith check readings
while for cross-legged divining heads convene the race has started: Sunday thousands herd chase thousands asphalt pounding zone cheering phone
snaps city quarters exits closed and dark faces half nude marriages waving from fifth floor boredom cross the bridge sweat
the fiber winding rush down the park and water bottle stands a cardboard Go Vincenzo! sign along the line police watch beaks twitch glance quick
scan stragglers bearded; the clock astronomical hand counting breath takes right down to micro seconds reels you like body news fierce fast coming in
Finally
two stewards beaming, perked up for disclosure, time stamp your arms wide Welcome.
I've heard nothing beats the credits scroll: break the tape silence demons after you ̶ head light years up flights of stairs ̶ the rest way beyond what was humanly possible
from nothing random stars chute open the splash olive crown one winners all.
– 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.
Flights to Paramaribo arrive just past midnight, if you’re coming from New York, on the regional carrier, whose seats and operations these days feel overused and over- worked. There's a nine hour wait in Port-Of-Spain, Trinidad for a connecting flight. To kill time you might consider venturing out via airport taxi; join multilane traffic under a Trinidad sun; catch a beach, “eat a food” or, if it’s Christmas, drink a Ponche de Crème. Take note and measure how close the island has moved toward developed- nation principles and practice.
The flight schedule alone is enough to discourage the unadventurous from discovering Suriname, unless you’re willing to stop over in the Republic of Guyana and risk fractious travel over land, bridges & rivers. You might also need a sense of purpose. A young couple, college-break free, speaking Dutch, wearing sandals and visiting the former colony might find it easier to look forward to quiet settings where familiarity breeds acts of kindness and harmless transgression.
The taxi ride in from the airport past midnight follows a narrow road, headlight-swept and free of anxiety. Visitors from industrial geographies might be excused for thinking they’ve entered a country of “sleepy” communities, stuck in time past, comfortable in village habits; though as you come closer to commercial areas – slowing for “drempels” (speed bumps) – and gas stations and security-lit buildings, a group of young men on motor bikes appear, hanging out (it’s Friday night); shiny crash helmets sitting on small heads, casting them as astral occupiers of night’s dreaming hours.
Next day the radio wakes you with Sranang talk and sentimental song which play on almost every station. It closes you in like elevator doors. For the rest of your stay and depending on your circumstances, you might feel digitally cut off from the world, or at least temporarily disabled; though you may or may not mind.
Over morning coffee paragraphs from the newspapers might leap out at you showing you how things are done here, [2011 AlphaMax Academy, Paramaribo] as for example this, from De Ware Tijd, recently: "The President has often stated since this government took office that he supports a transparent land policy. This has resulted in the sacking of Martinus Sastroredjo as RGB Minister after it became known that his concubine had applied for a large tract of land."
On the streets, under a Suriname sun as bright and brassy as a Trinidad sun, people go about their business, as elsewhere, in cars and in bubbles, leashed to triumphs and failings, of diverse race and creed. There are sudden fierce rain showers which stop abruptly, then skies are clear blue again. If you stay long enough you might hear of crepuscular activity, a twilight gathering of local spirits or conspiracy webs. Individuals who otherwise seem educated and informed will swear that, regardless of how things appear, each resident soul is monitored by unseen forces, by living and dead people.
The outside world has reached over language barriers, and moved deeper inland. The new consuming China with agreements-to-sign and full steaming enterprise has bespectably installed its zonal interests. Street blocks, currently home to many Brazilians, could expand in time and be viewed one day with settled pride as Little Brazil. In the Paramaribo of downtown bumper-to-bumper “progress” you are where you dine, or where you shop.
On the plane, early last year, next to my window seat was a Trinidadian (Lawrance G.) a soft-spoken man with a boxer’s upper body. Looking past 50 yrs, his fingers trembled as he settled his paper cup of coffee, hinting at a creeping vulnerability. He’d started working with an oil company soon after leaving high school in Port of Spain. How that transition straight forward happened he didn’t explain. Nickerie, in an area reportedly rich in oil deposits, was where he (and a team) were now headed on new contract & assignment.
He had travelled around the world, slipping on work boots, hard hat and gloves each day as the company probed and drilled into the earth: to Gabon (the nicest people, despite miles of deprivation); to Venezuela (the President there cares about the poor, despite puffed global moments of ad hominem fist shaking.)
Had he given any thought to How much longer, doing this? His body had endured the rigors of travel and work hazards. What excited him these days, he revealed, was exploring the working parts of the human body.
He reached into his carry-on bag and whipped out his latest purchase, the iPad. Did I own one? No? I should get one. The iPad 2, they say, has sharper screen display. To impress me his fingers brought up for viewing glossy images of organs in the body. He touch-swiped through the heart, liver, organs of reproduction, inserting his own commentary and breaths of marvel.
A world of new information, which in all likelihood could extend his longevity, was now within his reach. And though near enough for pension plan review, he wasn’t thinking of retiring, not just yet. (Though where – in his hands? strong character? – lay the source of that span of energy upholding him over the years.)
So what was my business in Suriname, he wanted to know, now that he had shared information and we were no longer strangers? Why was I going there? To see an old friend, I told him. And to learn about an event he was planning.
The event was the launch of a book, “Msiba, My Love”, by poet, Ivan A. Khayiat, a Guyanese educator who lives in Suriname. (The publication launch seems as ubiquitous these days as the baby shower.)
Khayiat describes it as a “symphonic poem”. It has a coffee-table book readiness – assuming that books are still welcome these days on coffee tables – with high gloss pictures and supportive verse revealing the natural beauty of Suriname, and the ecological damage done to parts of its landscape. And it comes with a companion DVD of evocative images and soundtrack over which voices, in English and Dutch, present the poem in heartfelt cadences.
"Msiba" DVD offers ten minutes of shimmering surfaces. It may be much less than a "symphonic” work, but the launch apparently made for a wonderful, rare evening out for invitees in Paramaribo. The Government of Suriname, it is reported, has adopted the DVD & book as a state gift for visiting dignitaries, impressed no doubt by what it sees as an excellent mix of art photo information and spoken words about the country, framed by knowledgeable, friendly hands.
Finding brave new worlds imagined by Suriname writers and artists might require a long stay, some search and enquiry. There is evidence of activity – workshops, art discourse, exhibitions – facilitated by stakeholders in Holland. A more vibrant, grand platform for exposing creative talent to residents and visitors is certain to be avail- able when the next big cultural event, the regional festival for the Arts (Carifesta), takes place in Suriname in 2013.
In the meantime, Wan Fu Nyun Winti Seti Sranan Bun. So the sharp suits and bill- boards say. – W.W.
≈☼≈
OPHELIA MAROON
Every leaf will return to blaze sharp green all about me through days without night (and yet no star shall be erased.) My gaze is the same as the sun’s; neither smile nor frown. My gown of water is all red and white buds not yet burst like my heart.
At the bank or any public building where your business is none of mine, a stranger comes through the doorway says "Good Morning"; and everyone answers, sprung from cell or pride, every one answers. Gross inequities that moment make way, charismatic bones click and play. This is our island, your search connection.
And configure this: bodies wrapped up in road crash metal, shoes poking out, a death in town by gun: and passers slow, level breath short at blood spots news sheets flower shrines. Dry mouths murmur – holler heart to bowel – aie aie aie, shadows and goodness, reverse reboot this earth flat speechlessness.
Island identity, oui, garcon! Test it when you travel on city subways – there, see? can't quite hold that in turn locking out the iText cargo cramped beside our selves. Your eyes feel up for looking round "the fuck you looking at?" bon jour you waiting for.
Mannered residuals from plantation back lash? nah; and not no virgin marie hip sway bonding for miracle income either. Ok, despite the bankruptcy of Ministries someone will call respond decelerate to suck the poison of indifference out before it spreads. Ask any band head granny.
Nou groMambo Paradisio? whoa! that's where we are: love rising up at brake light notice: storm used islands, once ankle and tongue tied, deserving of love; site for new found land eternal eyes; gone water colour twilight sighs. -W.W.
PARADISE
These islands we people as ghosts, no matter how rooted our crops, cities and walls against the sea that lets us these altars of our masochistic leaf-passion for the wind coming to rape our trees or over the sea's edge flinging our fishing boats like shadows, like black leaves. (from "Thief With Leaf" by Brian Chan)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 