Tag: Guyana

POEMS FOR JAZZ ICONS (& THEIR SOUND)

                                                                 

                                                                          – Miles Davis 1926 – 1991

               [That climate changing horn, breath and instrument twinned 
                after centuries of mating, since chance & genes
                in consummation = 'the one' a Mary knows; like no sound on earth.
                There, too, birth marked in (our) Kitch, Sparrow, Marley
                Shadow (few since). 

                I mean the Miles sound, sinew & curve pristine
                until he took off into 70s fusion, bored with gigs cool
                & origins; playing back to audience bored
                with audience; asking all to listen like birds
                alight on power lines sensors gripping;

                until he started chasing young girls' gold-
                haired hits like Lauper's "Time After Time",
                and you wondered: where's he going with that?
                the hot breath quick of pretty young songs? new
                hip swing for hipsters grown too old to rock?

                In the ballads, I know now, he felt the tremble of innocence
                & risk, heard chords immortal blue;
                horn husks to dig for.

                I hear Young Jeezy "Crazy World", Phoenix "1901";
                and think: Miles would have loved vamping that
                juiced up throng and throb; shoulders hunched to shaft in
                for a sweaty duel or three then turn away;
                streaming up a brew fresh as tomorrow, horn-
                miracled; like no bitch on earth, yo!]-W.W. 
 

                                    THE SONG IS YOU
                                                         – Ella Fitzgerald 1918 – 1996

                                    Now, more than before, we know
                                    there is no song you have not
                                    sung: we have only to think
                                    of one for it to become
                                    a bell whose tongue is yours,
                                    moreso now in the silence
                                    of its new dangling balance.
                                         (from "Gift of Screws" by Brian Chan) 


                                    
                                    SONNY STITT'S SAX

                                             A voice like a boy's sure scrawl
                                    of question marks across a blackboard
                                    of silence, a chalky scrape
                                    whose tails fade to fine points as though they
                                    are their own firm erasers.
                                       (from "Fabula Rasa" by Brian Chan)            

                                        BIRD,

                                    your silence of screeches lends me
                                    the faith to scratch on the air one more
                                    noise of us who fly without wing.
                                          (from "Thief With Leaf" by Brian Chan)  

                                                        

 

 

 

 

 

 

POEMS FOR DISTANT FATHERS (& THEIR ‘SPRING)

 

               Your mother blames the breakfast scramble, late commutes
                why you never "took" to Sunday mass; cat
                sleeping like your father 'til midday. She shows off
                postcards mailed when the carrier drops anchor - 
                her only son leaving family footprints 'cross the globe!
                Handsome, unsmiling in uniform your picture's framed
                for duty in the living room.

                She'd much prefer you
                wear a gentler safer (Ph.d not Sgt.) badge on your chest.  
                She worries: who are these older women showering
                gifts on him? what do they ask in return?
                In the wilderness cries of loss
                & loneliness are not wolves' only.

                The Marine Captain's retirement party must have been
                a blast, though why is he the greatest guy you know?
                (Sometimes the enemy's in camouflage salutes
                or bows; 'the kiss', remember?)

                Always too busy, orifice-overwhelmed: your mother's
                pow! pow! at my hard boiled eggs. Might be true; too late
                to reel you back in. Stay in touch
                   on line is all
                                      for now I ask.
                                                                        -W.W.

 

                  TO A DAUGHTER

                  He never hoped for you, he never not:
                  it was you who gave birth to a father.

                  A baby, you wanted often to play
                  with the only friend you had all day long

                  but the drug of Work would pull him away
                  to a desk, piano, easel or stove.

                  If he felt you were keeping him from other
                  life like salt running out, he might bark

                  Leave me alone, in the anger of fear,
                  and he would feel his voice quiver your spine.

                  But you never stopped running to embrace
                  him, teaching how gratuitous is love.

                  Your father's love for you, shadowed by pain,
                  clouded by duty, was never as free.

                  Yet though you're now 'tall as a lantern post',
                  you still sit on his knee and hug his neck; 

                  but that he once frightened you still frightens him
                  should he snap Leave me alone, meaning now Don't.
                     (from "Fabula Rasa" by Brian Chan)  

                  POEM FOR DISTANT CHILDREN

                  A mother gives
                                           birth a father
                  can only witness,
                                            separated
                  from the fruit of his seed, his only
                  cord of connection (which must also
                  be cut) between soul and soul, mind
                  and mind, heart and heart (for as long
                  as hearts allow), all intangible
                  except the giving witness heart 
                  which still moves and
                                                    can still be touched. 
                       (from "Gift Of Screws" by Brian Chan)

 

 

   

 

 

 


 

   

  

ARRIVAL DAYS, DEPARTURE TIMES

 

               Rigged to happen every year now, with onion skin speeches and
             bright remembering fabrics; jerky-hip dancing girls and servers
             fanning coal pots of blame and avowal; though bet your bulging
             jewelry box there's a man in the crowd counting head like votes,
             and women looking man like mate. Party time, yes.

             The horror is gone; but someone on mission & Ministry,
             who frowns on Carnival & chipping bass lines, softens
             for these microphone solemnities: the field of faces,
             the whipped-up batter of maltreatment. 

             The stage is set so walking off the ships dubs every cane bound cutter 
             hero; every scribbler, poet; those labour strikes, famed victories.
             Who can refuse these reparations to the spirit? ignore
             the "time for reflection" drizzle?

             Well, after the plantation, "flight" (& cunning) slipped in
             our DNA, the notion of "anywhere but here". Consider
             what happens now on crafts outbound to any "there".   

             Knees bent in cabins cramped like old mizzen-mast ships;
             air like seasick puddles at your ankles; seat belts, the chains;
             someone in the walk space making sure you're strapped in.

             Time to disembark, the drill's the same: step off
             the transport, follow signs, straight verifying lines; turn right
             to fat free runaways, the heat of welcome in wintered eyes;
             row houses, burrows leased to guard the old ingathering ways; 
                                                                                            turn left
             alone to wonder: your first powerbike down expressways! far   
             off to Chance! Discover! the toll?  paths grassy green, trails
             stone strewn to Growing Old.

             Trust me, go left, left, young man; and pay attention.
             There's more to any "there" than changing seasons.

             This city puts on street shows for Arrivals: marching bands,
             the Mayor sashed & waving, crowds with flags and iPhones;
             back to work, yo!
                                                  -W.W. 

 

 

                    THREAD

                    Last year's song's easier to recall
                    than today's which has slipped in and out
                    of the cloth of the air, a needle I forgot
                    to thread, a thread I forgot to knot.
                    Nothing to retrace but a line of shrinking holes,
                    shadowed punctures in a field of white.
                           (from "Thief With Leaf" by Brian Chan)

                     BARFLY

                         Here I pause
                    to  remember how not
                          to sleepwalk
                    through trenches of custom,
                          how to wake
                    the one essential voice
                          held like wine
                    in cupped hands whose fingers
                          lust to spread
                    themselves apart to shed
                         their burden.
                         (from "Gift Of Screws" by Brian Chan)   

 

 

 

 

  

  

 

 

 

 

NY SLIDE I: SAMMY D.

From Reggaemuffin to Reggaenomics.
        His mother left him back on the island when she came up to the States. He'd left
school a wild youth; flirting with Rastafarianism, indulging a passion for soccer; until one day she sent for him. "I came up here a young man, twenty five, twenty six years old; had two outstanding skills going for me," he explained, raising two fingers for emphasis. "Mathematics
and cooking. No college degree. No previous experience. I was a genius at maths, wizard with the numbers, even though me never get far in the school system."
        His maths skills apparently impressed his first employer who was in fact his mother's employer. She cleaned his house on Long Island. They were nice people; the man found an office help job for Sammy D. at his Manhattan brokerage firm.
        There he astounded them with his ability to perform mathematical calculations in his head. "Simple addition and subtraction, them couldn't believe I could do it, just like that, without calculator."
        That plus the suspicion he was truly an out of wedlock child of the American entertainer, plus exotic stories he spun at the water cooler about marijuana as herbal food, and a special dish called ackee and saltfish that could poison you if not carefully prepared – all of this endeared him to the office staff; made him something of a character, but basically a nice guy.
        At the stroke of five in the afternoon he fled the brokerage and dashed for the subway or a bus en route to Kennedy airport where he did a stint, his second job, until midnight. No, not outside the airport as a baggage helper. He changed jackets and worked inside the building wheeling passengers off the planes in wheel chairs; helping foreigners fresh off the Concorde or Mexicana or Lufthansa and feeling lost in the airport's byzantine corridors.
        In between flights he poured diligently over tiny books of conversational Spanish, German, French. It gave him an edge on the other employees. Foreigners coming off the plane were surprised and relieved when he guided them this way, pointed them that way, all the while chatting in their native tongue.
        After three years of quick dashing and changing, relentlessly working and saving, he saved enough to urge his mother into retirement.
        She went back to Jamaica; she bought a house. She never stopped talking about her son in America, and how strange life is; how one time she was over there and he was back here and now she was here and Sammy D. was over there, working hard in all that New York cold.

(from Ah, Mikhail, O Fidel! by N.D.Williams, 2001)

 

 

 

 

POEMS FOR SONS RETURNING (& THEIR SONGS)

               

               What he confessed, studying wet circles on the beer table, was:
              he could have married Margaret of England:
              her mouth a glossed red line, the way her knees pressed
              his on the bus, promising downy empires.

              His indigene ferocity tamped down like the Queens horse
              on clopping parades, he liked her; he liked
              her student frugality of lust, always holding back some
              for the library & 1st Class Hons.

              Usually they went back outside (proper again) to patted cushions,
              her legs like blue-breast feathers tucked in; to conversation, she listened
              with Ludwig seriousness, brushing hair from her eyes; 
              opinions gliding down her Alpine nose; flutters of glee.

              The more he thought about it: she could have played
              the bhowjie for his people: sandals, the mosquito net; 
              the politics of retribution; saris gold-laced with tassels of self
              reassembling; or the old khaki parsimony.
              What might have been he dared not dare so he came home.   

              A girl was waiting; a position was waiting; service
              to the nation, to pretty Vrajisha of Corentyne.
              They bypassed romance like eels sliding to ceremony,
              heritage lamps lit; and silvery-haired moomas
              brooming the yard for the harvest of grandchildren.

              The patacake she'd oil, spread & turn pretty much
              anytime he liked. Comrade, what else was there?
              what more? 

              Years of tribe agitation; seasons of theatre in the mouth;
              late afternoons when the seawall knows the ocean of bent
              back riders (puffed amateurs, ghost overseers) winds up ashore. 
              
              Over and over how we dig up &
              bury comfort shrouds of the past. The old bulbs.

              Two hours past midnight. Two cars race by, windows tinted,
              hounds for some snatched pleasure kill 
              or drug letting in villages back dammed.

              And every time the power fail, frighten tighten she belly,
              "You lock the door?"

              See the ladybird۞ nesting under him? 

              The feeling you get waking up wedged in this niche!
              What's that? There's fear & life rot all over the world?

                                                                                  – W.W.  

               NO RETURN:

              what we might have been is
              the ghost of a chance: now
              we are virgin ghosts
              desire would pervert. Fate
              is no master but
              desire itself, a blank
              to scrawl a burden on
              or one to keep

              erased.
                   (from "Thief With Leaf" by Brian Chan) 

 

              LOVESONG

              Whenever it's raining at midnight
              I'll be taking a walk and towards you.
              It's your coat I'll be wearing when I must go back home. 

              Everywhere young men are paid to slam
              bullets into one another's bodies
              but this can't stop two souls from containing each other.

              People are still dying in hunger
              but somehow I keep enjoying these grapes
              and bergamot tea with you at 2 in the morning.

              From now on 2 a.m. is the time
              I'll be knocking on the door of your dreams
              to make you burn the butter for the next day's omelette.

              Before the clouds dry up, let us go
              walking in a different town of our own.
              Wherever we stop to eat, we'll insist on plum wine.

              Dream this town whenever we must meet
              as mutual angels full of voice and tears.
              Wherever  we walk, the moon will keep her eye on us.

              I kiss the back of your neck before
              it fades with you down your road without me.
              The shifting cloud mirroring your steps is your best friend.
              
                     (from "Fabula Rasa" by Brian Chan)