Tag: Guyana Poets

TIME NO KIND WARPS

                                                                                         
                                                            "They used to catch fish out the river
                                                             and eat the flesh and put the bones
                                                             back. They used to say, “Go back
                                                             and be fish again.”
                                                            – Ernest J. Gaines, "…Miss Jane Pitman"
                                                                   

          
      Most everyone sighed, I know how difficult this must
      be, or cried What just happened? You hear that
      a lot if you watch old movies (search pre 2001 AD).
      Alexa was a consiglierie hive connector, like an inner
      voice prompt from beyond. Spools skin tight first, then
      memory improve sticks, wires everywhere losing ground
      to king Pins. Wish I could hang alongside as you float
      through constellated air : thread too early . formed well
      knowing your fail proof circuitry would come. Hard
      to imagine new devices read . reject wall breachers,
      fur pods for #me you?  break through. Domains by
      now have home lands reconfigured . found purpose
      for Gold rules God speed I always knew something
      was out there . d'Avignon nudity eye lines.

                                                             – W.W.

 

        

     

 

         

        MARA

        *IN UP-FRONT preto São Paolo, where Mara
        Was essa mulata rosa, she was jeered
        For claiming that the ghost of the ownership
      Of ones body and mind by cowards with guns, whips and
        Policing limiting labels, will never
        Be exorcised out of the blood of either
        Slaves no longer slaves or their undead masters ‒

        This in her hybrid of Latin tongues sputtered
        At arrivistes and aspirants still climbing
        Out of the favela into the fel
      Or ‘indigestão’ (as many called the Sistema
        Financeiro de Habitação’s crédito)
        By working at their studies and service-jobs
        Like slaves avid for field-to-house promotion.

        Joshing Mara’s confusão inglesa, some
        Claimed conquerors Portuguese had not seized or
        Ruled the same clannish way bullies English had,
      And gave her more proof of their liberdade to smoke
        In silence ‒ which she herself broke when she-one
        Fell to the floor in a sharp fit of dança
        De transe that shocked no body but her own.

      (from “Charon’s Anchors” by Brian Chan, 2018)

 

   

HARD TIES BENEATH Who Cares?

              
      Course scanned consider the honor grail : stakes deserve
      to bleed that brace your ride in the elevator; that's
      how alligators halter pride . red light bride take off. 
                                                                                 Soft one 
      day lava lumbers forest clearance nonconcerning rage
      found . Palm torso huggers top over. 

      Digits paused no longer count . holdings so long!
      loop Uterails back to Start : privacy parts reset
      payment plan beak speculum enclosed.

      Enough egg samples . why crack the conundrum in the first
      place : What human means? renting wolf and lamb share
      hunger and sometimes the gut fed well goes merde! same
      cold ‒ foil Brand wrap Serve self Sell ‒ dog bowl.

      So how you holding up?

                                  Try not to lose blood pushing the end
      crap shore free : donors pitbill you run . whipped
      dream done nipple peckers circle.
                                                   *A wind win play? brick
      a layer . tiger the forest . sooner know.  

                                                       Oviduct fibres bitch you 
      find the fork! hack a path through somehow. Atoms all
      split like tomorrow creep . make so you lie your bed.

                                                                     – W.W.

 

        

     

 

  

         LESSING AND CHARON 

         *CLOSING his eyes again, Lessing is engulfed
         By memory of all the women he has
         Ever known, all their faces splashing over
       His own, as though to wash away all its lies of love
         Which he, through them, has etched there, all its shadows
         Of nostalgia for hunts women cannot bear,
         Knowing little, nor caring to hear, of them.

         The sheer wordless ‘wisdom’ of women’s blind strength
         Is what Charon now feels he has been bearing
         In his shoulders of challenging aches and shrugs
       Of perverse disavowals and faithful betrayals.
        

        (from “Charon’s Anchors” by Brian Chan, 2018)

                  

 

DOT THE SUNKEN FORWARD BACK

               

          Field hands five palmed not once radio saviours
          beamed, Wheel kneel! come at altars of Sunday orange
          sovereign head for tongue tip : tuft follicles felt
          blessed unrubbingly turning grey. 

          Inky to relieve print pubs outset paper trail
          crockery : whose commons cast shade fate to face
                                                                                      what
          savants took provision place . which lords raised
          umpire fingers roasting . tallyman corn plank
          cross; how shack congestion seam stressed bed
          wet wretches wrung with mandir cymbals . as hemp
          rope puddle jumpers watched Tegla Loroupe pull
          away.
                                                                                        Island
          heart in hand cart‘graphers fence off pasture spirits
          near . where croppers firm up skulls cake dust let
          chew sticks brush ‘n’ tell : teeth left from gripping
          nipples . bones measured, used to swell.

          Astrologers peer, midriffs report : poui like
                                                                                     stars
          no daffodilly Wordsmith could have imagined
                   sun deck the hills redress quadrilles.
          Blue by now should have one home cleared all.

                       This world ~^~^~ Our place
                   Seasons of make do enchantment                     
          Ocean futures inching flight risk crafters beaching
          Ahead of ourselves, Greenwitchily, all the best.

                                                            -W.W.

                                                                            
                                                                              

         


                                                          

            MARA

           *IN BRITISH Guiana, the word ‘colony’
            Used to be chief policeman of the Mother
            Country's ‘natural’ right to Her property.
         In still anglo-colonized Canada, no-one seems
            To have heard of the C-word with its brass ring
            Of labels stapled to ones breath’s tongue. (In ‘free’
            Guyana, few dared grunt or sigh the D-word.)

            Ruler-ships have been replaced by slave-ship malls
            Of ones democratic right to choose to stay
            A slave, and Her Majesty ‒ perched at the edge
        Of a gilt chair, behind her behind wedged her tight purse
            Of numbers and words of a curse with its mask
            Still haunting a corner of ones postage-stamps ‒
            Could tell one why caged birds want to sing, but can’t.

            

          (from “Charon’s Anchors” by Brian Chan, 2018)

 

 

I LOOK FOR YOU EVERYWHERE

 

                                               "In more precision now of light and dark”
                                                   -  Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Dawn"           

                    
               Just on today platform subway as in disguise . guitar
               rockers played like down out buskers, I phone mapped
               faces game surprise how train stop curious joined in
               song, cross piece to you I string.

               I tape snip after host glove hands . body bits ghost
               picked . white wall scrub painted stadium doors pew
               Charleston floors . in knee deep prayers I sink 
               to save they’ll call if they find anything.

               Up over ocean bloat face floats . helifishers swish
               blade wish one arm might here! here! lift : shell case
               breath holding news found where? in you for gone
               clear life I reach.

               Angler Hopkins lines “instress” hitch mercy that
               outrides the all of water. My feet ground break neck
               lace hung fate . belief? I stone skipped there.

               Come spring grain green I arc back spinal count
               the ways ledge crowd point wait unherd I range
               hiatus fears unsheathe inside you born for easter
               tight wind sheets fall leaves rake I beyond
               doubt risen now . sea ward earth now.

                                                                    – W.W.

              

                                 

             

 

            

             A HEART HEAVIER THAN THE EARTH

                Fly above
                             clouds within sunlight
                and find yet one more edge of eye
             where a vast silence of arctic white
             surrenders to such fine clarity

                of blue as promises nothing
                but a dark heart pining for its
            rarity ‒ heart split between pulses
            of footfall and of winglift, between

               calls of raincloud and of sunbeam,
               and between the lull of dreamt and
           dreaming Earth’s seasons ‒ and the shock
           of sensing, beneath those modal moods,

              a sure determined rising back
              to her Dreamer’s womb of Light far
           finer than any azure the heart,
           denser than clouds, can only yearn for.

    (from “Nor Like An Addict Would” © by Brian Chan)

  

AY VITALY,

                    

              Our trap tale traffick . no cry fodder : Ilyushin
              '76 . innocence to peace midfleshair blown; Afghan
              '85 . down comrades draining fluids in death valleys.
         What roads high tracked side café stop, our glass hour table
              company found . homemade slice shares unwrap : poll
              flag waverings miss fires in me . in you No return
              matters.

              Blink! two sip and time is up. Bit orb initials, touch 
              turn, reigniting work.

              Trucks like ours fork lift all good . the earth folds
              sorrow globe stokes warmer ~ past sea air ports here
          blend fast ~ morning unfuckingbelievable coffee ~ break
              heart land make there we leave it. 
                                                                         – W.W.

 

           

           

               

           

              

           

               A DECEMBER SNAIL

               A windless December dawn so still
                  the Earth herself seems to pause:
               you must scrutinise the horizon’s
               collaboration between two orbs
                  to realize that what seems
               a stasis is in truth as active
               as this snail sliding out of his shell
                  to settle for the next shake
                  or shade of leaf, or to turn
               his horns towards the core of the Sun,
               star always with its own horns pointing
                  beyond the self-absorption
                  of the trails of snails which give
               the Sun grooved news of Earth but keep snails
                  from becoming birds and stars.

       (from “Nor Like An Addict Would” © by Brian Chan)           

           

 

ALL DAY HEADLIGHT BELLY TRICKS

                                                                                 

                                                                      
                                                                       "…all by all and deep by deep
                                                         and more by more they dream their sleep”
                                         – E.E. Cummings, “anyone lived in a pretty how town”


            Not faulting the road country dark or millennium kept
            dune that make specks coming at you luminescent
           as stool samples your tube news read.

           You see me? won’t friend a Buddha olive oiled . skin
           fear carriers who hand shake soft with pyramid jambs
           net worth set.

           Our islands fall head over seas for podium reachers,
               the few who given a needle plier would plait honor
                 folds on any pledge worn bellyfatty.

                 Our spices favour custom misers oysterizing your
               prostrate jollyjelly. You’d think people would age
           past such index fingery by now.
                                                      En.vie.garde! hips flick
           licks . circum|flex|vine . who animal knock down who
           fence?

           A switch knife blade in comes handy . case you stumble
           on coconut palms shimmery like gift cards in the desert,
           where the winds sometimes rub Saheltic, and every dust
           fling is allowed. 

                                      For shallow breathers, mint leave
           advisory : try counting past 100 as pure gas you face 
           mask . that way cruise in Stay with me! gurney wheel
           orbit ~~^^~~  unless you have a better option?

                                                           Heavens wait . dream
           cling wake. Welcome back, sand feed grain.

                                                                         – W.W.

 
                  

              

 

                 STUBBORN


                My tiredness is vast and honeyed,
                my yawn as juicy as a stuffed pig’s
                held wide by the apple of my lust
                to keep awake and hearing my heart.
                You’d think that after fifty odd years
            of failing to harness the sprawl at my core,
                I’d be more devoted to slipping
                into sleep and savouring its dreams,
                but my senses insist there is no
                sweeter dream than the one they conspire
                to mock up and maintain like the stage-
            managers of a play whose author, actor and
                audience I yet happen to remain,
                all these mes busy wiping our eyes
                of their tears of yawning déjà-vu.
                But I still look forward to the next
                breath’s moment as much as to the last
           when the stage-lights fade but the lights of the whole
                house blaze.

            (from “Nor Like An Addict Would” © by Brian Chan)

 

               

CARL’S PLACE

                                                                       
                                                              to Carl Anderson        

     
          At the back then tack left . the lady white though
          game fair pointed ~ on the other side occurring just
          across a 9/11 memorial display whose freeze dry
          billowy might have beckoned her first.

          Off workday anytime is good; visitors must card pass
          blood braising city styles : wait schedules escalator
          floats . down concatenation tunnels linking every port
          authority vet heavy.
                             No grace full circles river mists your 
          brush blade parted once . on point the bowman’s pole
          through signs > shot slinging peopled colors out the forest. 

                            There I get : your ribbed glaze tangents
          breaking out stamp borders . glass case public stationed
          here | can’t be too careful these days. So trips one
          way to radiant close.
                            See something say something frames what
          sunlight finds . under street feet . paint lines shed vein
          grid alerts ~ just saying. 
                                                              – W.W.

 

           

         

 

 

             THE NEXT LITTLE AWAKENED ONE
                WRITES HOME


          We touch on the roundest things as though
                they were flat. We know
          we float on the surface of a globe
          but walk along the lines of a map
              and let sentences
          deflate our arcing telepathy
          into the tightropes on which we inch
              between here and there
          and call that dicey balancing-act
          the art of falling on our feet
              while still in mid-air
          where the anguish of this wingless bird,
          locked to a ladder of light on his
              way back to you, starts,
          towards but one stop ‒ when every rung
      will have been reveined by also his blood.

      (from “Nor Like An Addict Would” © by Brian Chan)

         

MON DIEU, or RETURN OF THE QU’EST-QUE C’EST

  

           
          Body pack rush of side walkers head down 
          file in wave smart . as cars electric roll no
          hands! sigh, and passenger fete brains toggle
          between before and after nightly organ feed;
          metro centers cap size matters. Even blue bird
          divas on wires decline to sing, and over head
          war planes dip wing; for it has come again,
          the black slab ‒ the obelisk? what Kubrick
          talked about in 2001 AD? door silence sealed.
          Still no one knows what|who? intends, dare touch
          face time . bone toss behind. Palm devices paid
          up aim snap icontrails ~ Wow ~ hole spotting game
          towers . for faith keep cloud; tissue in case …  Mon Dieu!

          _______________________________________________________   

          Occupation? moi? done : propulsion blades beyond
          slice not precise . enough staring | you can line my
          plots of sea desperation; floor worn knees; ephemeris
          tables verifying : once every Oui!3K years . the odds
          the chance to scream in concert ‒ man child femme ‒ 
          evacuate . in motion slow our coming ends.

                                                               – W.W. 
              

                

         

 

             

         NO ETERNITIES 

        
                                      only pauses
         of focus: the broken pot, buried
         for centuries under tons of clay
         shifting slowly between stone and dust,
         dreams of one more moment of being
         touched, by probing spade or careful gloves,
         the moment of its next shift in time
         when it starts to be something other
         than what the labelling hand will claim.

              So I think of us, cracked and clogged by years
              of the weight of our mud and junk and dust,
              waiting for some flood of love to cleanse us
              but also for our moment of escape
              from the very fingers of rain that would
              unclog us from the burden of ourselves,
              the comforting pain we won’t surrender,
              instead choosing to slip out of love’s hold
              to fall and smash into another shape
              of beautiful interesting hell on earth.

              from “The Gift Of Screws” by Brian Chan

  

LEAVE TAKE HOW ISLANDS GIVE

                            

            Worth its past in gold, outliers weigh : sand with song
                                         strewn black . chest storm crest
            night fungibles . lime rum | men jerk fish net 
                                                  sun . plus your pirate
            pick of flowers, moons half helming hearts at sea.

            Work folk names gauge love for country God
                                                       and weed . Walk
            good they’ll point on . roads that winding funnel
                                                  cock pit
            stop | conch rest : trees hum 'n' ponder wind strip
                                                       limb start over.

            Virgins greening might blue eye you . wish a wand
            wave would you whirling hems away! lift them . and you.

              Spare notice ‒ back on bounty, in maps faith
              tested ‒ that first pale trader’s lurching print
              to shore : consigned links for you . the miles on you.

                                                                 – W.W.

 

                   

         

 

 

             BLUE GREEN

             To realise the green of green and
         to realise that you love that green more
             than you love the vain idea of your
         lawn or of our universal garden:
             what a fearsome dying beauty, start
         of no nostalgia for some tribal green
            but for the greenless Light never seen
         by green-addicted green-projecting eyes.
            Now your blue awe sprouts tears of the sap
         of adieu veining all greens up to blue:
            feeling and so knowing them are clues
         as to why you could never plant or wave
            flags of green | black | yellow | red | white | blue
         on Earth, on any of her million moons:
            their colours would only pale and fade
         beside the lidless Light which flags conceal
            with their stitched-in labels, tags of fear
                      of both the green of green
                      and green’s hueless haunter,
         fear-names by brick-words with only one mind:
            of hoarding what must be left behind;
        a fear the divorced spouse of your blue awe.
            To compare that fear’s scriptures, pictures
        and airs with the Light they have turned dense-dark
            is to liken morality’s spite
        to Law, or strands of streams to the webbed sea,
            to flatter and flood the ear and eye
        with winds and shades of fat or flat notions
           of green no tree, no Ireland would know.
        But twilight green is an autumn farewell
           by a god fading yet clamouring
        for recognition as fuel for his
           return to the Light beyond all these
        merely green gasps of his witness struck blue
           and drowned by a label-less silence
        no flailing arms of green words can undo.

             (from “Readiness” by Brian Chan)

 

CHAT YUH CHAT, BWOY

           

            Them can't do statues right, bredren wheel. Shades
            thrown from Gandhi + Garvey haunting the sky light 
            on validators : dead heat with Christ . on earth our world 
        charismata, Selassie patient in portrait notwithstanding.
                       Chat yuh chat. 

        Spliffing through, don't stare . for the beach thighs raise
            sand crab creep hair. String purse lip tender, How
            yuh do? You should know better riding horse
            power like summer clearance on our island.
                       Chat yuh chat.  

        And check Segismundo : him await short list of hurricane
            names . him they never pick though him wound
            up and prep for paths of memorable flood nation.
            Wrap yuh tendons, bwoy . distract yourself
            with lottery number, breast feeders say.

        Mean time hear now . home lost love sung : watch how
            freight rise to the top, heart selector . toll forever.

                                                                – W.W.                   

            

                                 

            

                     

                    

               WORK

               As I prune these verses inside, outside
               a boy is turning the soil to make it
               easier for seed and sun to translate
               the one’s silent secret into the other’s
               bright bursting utterance of seamless tongues.

               As I clean up these verses, my daughter
               is vacuuming the rugs of our dead skins,
               sweeping the kitchen floor of our spilt goods
               and you are shining mirrors of your own
               bright eyes with sweet vinegar of your sweat.

               All this doing I once resisted now
               I embrace as love’s natural mask without
               which love would collapse under its own weight
               of a vibrant space waiting to be filled
               and stretched by a million masks of the sun.

               Listening for my own voice, I hear also
               the music of other tongues worlds away
               leaping up through the stalks of my green song.
               Plumbing my darkest heart, I shape the glass
               of plain mind in which you may taste your own.

                (from “Fabula Rasa” by Brian Chan)