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)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 