Friday, November 27, 2009

CLIMATE CHANGE

and the lion
shall lie down
with the ass
and the tiger
shall forsake
flesh for grass

Copyright ©2009 by G. Newton V. Chance

Saturday, November 14, 2009

I AM GOING TO AMERICA

I am going to America,
land of freedom
and opportunity,
where you can
be anything you want to be,
even an illegal alien
or even a deportee.

I am going to America,
the world's greatest
democracy,
where half the population
are Republican
and the other half
Democrats and minority.

I am going to America
where a mulatto can
be president
four hundred years after
we built this city on
rock and roll and genocide,
employing raw slave labour.

I am going to America
where an ignorant immigrant can
tear down environment and health
commitments while building up
tall walls to keep immigrants out,
and a black man's life is worth
the cost of a copper's bullet.

I am going to America,
land of barrels
and prosperity,
where an immigrant can
work three menial jobs
and study while
still sending home some money.

I am going to America
where it really doesn't matter
whether feet are wet
or dry or cold once footprints
are embedded in revolution
and republican history where
the soil is a little darker.

I am going to America,
who wants to go to Africa?
Better by far to be
a European refugee
than to lose a hand or foot
or head in belligerent Belgian,
tribal, genocidal stupidity.

I am going to America,
the world's greatest
economy,
where you can
peg your dollar and float your treasury
without having to devalue
your devalued currency.

I am going to America
and I don't mind
standing in a long line
extending down Marley Street.
Better join the line and wait
than to reach
with wet, cold feet.

I am going to the USA
to work and study
thrice as hard;
to live the blues and brrrs
and wait and wait and wait...
in hope one day
of copping a green card.

© 2009 by G. Newton V. Chance
My photo
George Newton Vivian Chance (Trinidad and Tobago) -- member of the Poet Society of Trinidad and Tobago, http://poetssocietytt.blogspot.com/ and the World Poets Society, http://world-poets.blogspot.com/ -- born in Tobago on 3rd March 1957. While residing at Rio Claro was inspired to write over a hundred poems at the turn of the Millennium. Hobbies include playing wind instruments, building computers, observing nature, reading and writing poetry. Believes that the power of a song is in its ability to evoke emotions by the marriage of lyric and music but that music without lyric can be just as powerful, that lyric without music can also be just as powerful, that there is music in the lyric and that lyric can be simple yet profound. Also, in this the age of computers, would like to model his lines after simple and efficient code and, analogous to Object Oriented Programming, achieve most of his imagery from nouns and verbs, avoiding the bloat and excess of unnecessary adjectives. This is what he aspires to attain in his poetry.

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older
than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn
all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

by Langston Hughes

the poet writes the poem;
the reader gives it life
(© G. Newton V. Chance)
Make somebody happy (© Alexander Ligertwood & Carlos Santana)

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