Sunday, July 25, 2010

WALK WITH ME, OH MOON

Walk with me, oh moon;
let us count the tombstones,
excavate the young bones,
piled on young bones,
prematurely pulled from earth-womb.

With you at my side,
no need for furtive glances
over shoulders at the shadows.

Hand in hand, old woman,
there is no shame in romance
but I am in no mood for romance,
I am in no mood for dance.
I am in no mood for marching,
for marching is a death dance;
I am in no mood for waltzing,
for waltzing is a love dance.
Let us walk this slow dance, this sad dance,
with cadence of reflection and remorse;
let us search for young bones
without tombstones,
old bones too,
whose flesh was never found.
Help me count the pyres,
the urns and scattered ash.

Mourn with me, oh moon;
earth and moon are old
and fertile
but I am old and futile
to stem erosion’s tide,
devouring coastlines,
consuming bloodlines.
How will river survive
without replenishing rain?
The rivers run brown with foetal blood;
brown with foetid water.

Talk with me, oh moon;
tell me, moon,
from your singular perspective,
tell me what you see.
I feel your empathy.
Is this all you have to say;
that the wages of sex is life,
and the young makes way
for the new?

Walk with me, oh moon;
we will leave no footprints
to follow in the sunlight,
nothing but ethereal
evanescence of the silence,
of silent footsteps,
as we walk into the night.

Copyright ©2010 by G. Newton V. Chance

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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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