Not me and England chip cod cold; coat keys metro
habits he could never master ̶ always counting board
room costs; how rain does make damp cling to skin
and stumbles poise to scuff your good good shoes. Is
joke he jooks like that.
Bow leg moonlight callous noon ̶ trade marks not all healed
over ̶ he works at his nets, the caulk fix; his boat with Greek
warrior name. He'd sever range unseen for weeks, come
home with mambo siren tales; arms tattooed bone cross
beard black ̶ last pirated edition.
Catch him down town target for dust faith harriers lime,
angling the junction for signal as left right mamselles stroll
roll ripples making style. He's squirrelly for horn that way.
If you hear the salty swell up words he does use.
It's his porch to world wide blueness, his Scandinavia
in palm tree sway, point our pursers at debt redressings,
making of the island top deck voyage material; a portfolio
his years at rudder.
He knows where fire flies send
shore lines receive; rip chords try hooks, shark waters feed;
his solitudes split only with night rum hounds.
Allez, viens! sea skater, beach
your blades; view find not green, grapes sour from fiction
bowled; white caps embossed in twilight. Brush past
that schooner flight hand's peacock plumage for face
fans ̶ our home Gauguin renovator.
Yes, pathos drips from sweat in his scampers; his ground
swell leaves rude exit clues. Like draughts he plays tribe
tempers. Empire fame's the same ̶ What happening
there, Bogart?
– W.W.
LA PAROLE, LE MOT, LE VERBE
Rock, grass, tree, beast, man, bird, angel ̶ we are all
slaves to the waves of our veins ̶̶ whether silent
or whispering or loud. Or we are uttered
by the embers of some meteor of thought
drawn to the mirroring magnets of our souls
already aglow with their own sparks ̶ restless
anvil-souls that cannot dodge the word-hammers
that never stop slamming down but whose blows are
tempered by our own willingness to think
beyond the immediate source of each strike,
beyond even the source of all meteors.
Devotion to such fire is as crucible
a love-affair as all other thoughts made flesh:
the Word transfused into these veins and this voice.
You may think these mere words outside of Real Life
which in fear you want to limit to gossip
of its rigmarole-phenomena, the knots
of flesh and breath that can't untie themselves ̶ would
not, as convinced of their own vice as drunkards.
But our sparks rise to link with the sperm of stars
in tangos of eternity's embryo
gestating refined fates, even as we speak.
(from "Nor Like An Addict Would" © by Brian Chan)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 