I WOULD MELT THE SNOW

I would melt the snow for you, my love,
Into icy rivulets and streams;
Then warm them into running rivers,
Rapid enough to take you from my dreams
To that place of warmth, residing in my heart.
Thought I heard your voice, calling to me this morning,
“Honey I’m home,” but it was just the wind, rustling
The palm you planted years before in the yard.
Sometimes I smell the cloves in your pastel
Or the cinnamon and jasmine in your hair
And then it dawns on me that you’re not here.
I would be a warm and gentle ray
Of sunlight, melting the ice away
To the waiting heart you knew so well.

Copyright ©2010 by G. Newton V. Chance

MELONS

Water, cooling water, sweeter centre,
Earth's core of molten sugar,
Pink pulp with oozing lava of life,
In its cool ambivalence never quite
Deciding between watery and sweet;
Melon, milk of Earth's bosom,
My voluptuous fruit of the valiant vine,
Turgid nipples oozing cooling juices,
I will hold you to my breast and never
Let you fall lest you shatter into pulp
And pieces of my heart or juicy dreams
Of buxom bosoms and melons larger,
With more water and molten sugar,
And rounder than Earth or moon.

Copyright ©2010 by G. Newton V. Chance

BONSAI

(The power of bonsai is in its ability to portray the utmost beauty of nature. Saburo Kato)

Bent, gnarled and twisted, truncated
Like a haiku. So much beauty
In suffering; all it takes is
Patience and years,

Sparingly watered with the tears
Induced by vain and heartless fiends;
Roots confined to shallow saucers,
Snipped and snipped to

Subdue and stunt by sorcerers
And sorceresses working grim
Silvics on seedlings and helpless
Things like my heart.

Yet we survive and seem to thrive
On deprivation, enduring
Pressure to make us miniature
Trees of beauty;

Looming even larger, blooming
Even brighter, love, a forest-
Full of treasure, love, endearing
And enchanting.

Copyright ©2010 by G. Newton V. Chance

UNKNOWN OCEAN

Coconut stems, some diagonal, stand
Stark ‘gainst shifting gray and white of blue sky,
Hurt feelings, shaped and misshapen by wind
With rain, harsh sun and storm, nature's every

Twisted caprice, as though crafted by the
Well trained but heartless hands of a bonsai
Master gone mad with narcissistic pride.
Here, shipwrecked sailor on naked rock, I

Found mystery in your fragments of sea shells
To fathom you as with Rosetta stone;
Sponge washed ashore soaking in your beauty,
Clinging to your words, hopeless anemone.

Playground of boyhood pangs, oh loneliness,
Elusive iguana unhinging tail,
Vanishing under roots of coconut;
Each time I try to catch you, love, I fail.

Horizon to be seen but never touched,
Trawler dredging depths of my devotion,
Drag your cynic seine across and over
Naive waters of my mixed emotion.

Tears fall like dry coconuts in the wind
To tinder-scorching passion on the sand
Of desires, no tender soul or bare
Foot-sole can walk for long or bear to stand.

A soldier, or hermit, sidling away
With empty shell, once home for some other
Careless crab, you steal this heart, though you know
It's the shell, the shelter of another.

The almond tree, pregnant with almonds like
Your soulful, slanted, haunting, ellipse eyes,
Whose verdure littered pristine peace before
Curious tourists landed, out of the skies,

Like Icarus, while gangs of welfare sweep
Leaves away to keep beach clean and shining,
Shades native Calibans’ once peaceful sleep,
Now perturbed, in a hammock's gentle swing.

I will awake you with a salted kiss,
My lover, from sea spray induced slumber;
Let tide and current take us where they may,
Sailing to the first and final frontier,

To that wide and unknown ocean... we know as love.

Copyright ©2010 by G. Newton V. Chance

WHAT LOVE IS THIS

What love is this, can never be fulfilled
Yet foolish hearts would fain pursue it still;

The young fall prey, you'd think the old would learn
To walk away, nor even think to turn

Around to chance a salt-stone backward look;
One last look of longing is all it took.

There's thunder in the hills tonight, my dear,
The lightning lights up my fears with its sheer

Electric candour zigzagged across your smile,
Immaculate Madonna with the child.

What love is this that we can never share?
What will I tell the babies when they stare

Me, with their big, round, luminous, brown eyes;
That love was just a heartache in disguise?

Or matters not how bleak and dark it seems,
With morning comes relief, the morning beams

Of hope; my love, after the tears and sighs,
Love will find a way, sure as the sun will rise.

Copyright ©2010 by G. Newton V. Chance

TAP DANCE

Ta tata tap, ta tata tap,
Tata tata tap, tata tata tap.
Who tapping who,
Bo Jangles come like boo;
Three Lettered Aberration
Spinal tap the nation;
Servers providing service
To Police and Secret Service;
Phone talk and e-mail,
Extortion and blackmail;
Eavesdropping what you say and write,
Raping constitutional rights;
Pimping with the blimp,
Smell like rotten shrimp;
Tonton Macoute,
Look the macco dey;
From CJ to President
Want to know where the info went;
Them tappers aint biting nice
With dey sophisticated device;
Take me foolish advice,
Like they only tapping for vice;
Ask Rachel Price;
Comedian like Martin
Lawrence tap dancing;
Big Man in a mess,
E-male in a dress;
Tap with pipe,
Tap without pipe;
Wire tap with a cause,
Legally of course;
Once we pass the laws,
Don’t worry about abuse,
You have nothing to lose
And everything to gain;
Don’t need to look for rain
If you not dancing cocoa in sun;
Once we have the laws in place,
Is tapping in your waist;
The whole country will be safe;
Is a tap-trap,
Tap for tap,
Tap versus tap,
A tap for a tap;
All who tapping,
All who was tapping,
Tap them back
To find out what they tapping,
To find out why they tapping,
To find out what they was tapping,
To find out why they was tapping;
To find out what they find out;
Tap the lines of the tappers;
Hold the perpetrators,
The dirty rotten tap dancers,
And put some tap in their oohs and aahs.
Ta tata tap, ta tata tap,
Tata tata tap, tata tata tap.

Copyright ©2010 by G. Newton V. Chance

MOONLIGHT SONNETA

Jousting cries and cat-squalls of joyful tournament
Revealing feral, feline bites, sweet throes, through rows
Of shadobeni, and corn, and then the sudden hush;

Bamboo epiglottis clicking the night's torment,
Blades of grass caress the little breeze that blows
Gossip-rustling sibilance, tendrils of susurrus;

Then wind and rain return from wherever they went.
Tassels ululating, shaking, their curling toes
Touching tips, euphoric, in the shadow's conchoid rush;

Feral cries and feline calls, fur and fury spent,
Flower buds, sweet secrets, expose to ear and nose
And wind and rain, sating soil, release their final gush;

Crescendo, then quiet, the moon has had enough.
After orgasmic love, what's left of love... if not love?

Copyright ©2010 by G. Newton V. Chance

GOAT MILK

(in memory of the late, great Puppet Master)

My friend, he swears to me
Goat milk the remedy
For all ills,
Like a miracle pill
Ending in afil;
Another swears, by sacred cows,
Bison milk the best,
Even imbibed by Ganesh,
With channa by Ramesh;
Another says goat blood
Libation to Orisa
Is really much more potent
At giving them thunder;
Another says hog blood,
In a Kali puja,
Is really much more potent;
Another says the blood
Of Abraham son
Could wash the whole world clean,
While another
Still sacrificing sons.

My friend, he swears to me
Saturday soup,
Cow foot, the remedy
For all ills,
Like a miracle pill
Ending in afil;
Another swears by souse,
Pig foot could open any door;
Another swears by shells,
Oysters with oyster sauce;
Another says goat head
And guts in mannish water
Is really much more potent
At giving them thunder;
Another says goat head
In pentagram at midnight
Is really much more potent;
Another friend say
Leave the animals alone;
He swear some bois bande
Will wake up Papa Bois...

This land of callaloo and crab
Clambering over each other,
Muddy mirage of a rainbow
Shawled by maya and miasma,
Where no one can be sure
Whether love is for the Gods
Or the Dollar,
We still can
Love
Or, at least,
Tolerate each other.

Copyright ©2010 by G. Newton V. Chance

HOW CAN I NOT LOVE HER

How can I not love her, a woman so sincere;
essence of her virtue perfumes the very air;
less about the way she looks, as the things she does,
loving and devoted as ever woman was.
Her love is like an ocean, deeper than the sea;
sounds corny but I wonder what she sees in me.

You pathetic poets, who scoff at smarmy love
because it's just as hard to find a word to rhyme,
non-clichéd, with love; have fun until the first time
you encounter her like a catch in keeper's glove,
or desperate batsman hitting the winning run,
dashing to the wicket, communing with the ground.

To hell with imagery, a love as rare as this,
so sweet, so pure, so true, deserves a hunchback's kiss.

Copyright ©2010 by G. Newton V. Chance

HOUSE ON THE HILL

at the house on the hill I met many minds mutilated
by Mary and then
I strolled along the shoreline where I saw shells and shards of broke-
en lives washed up by the tides
as we walk these shifting sands in the hourglass of time while
debating as to whom we owe the debt
remember an empire takes a lifetime to build and a
death to pass away

Copyright ©2010 by G. Newton V. Chance

MORNING’S PARTING KISS

Morning's parting kiss,
A prayer for protection,
Voyaging success
And a safe return.

Copyright ©2010 by G. Newton V. Chance

DON’T YOU GET WEARY, WAVES

Don't you get weary, waves, of this life of strife?
Like Poseidon, rising up from ocean floor,
Rising, rolling, riding rollers to the shore,
Rumbling, roaring, wave after wave, rife with strife;
Crashing on the rocks like thunder in a storm,
Bearing hopes and boats, with everyone on deck,
Over treacherous rocks and reefs to certain wreck,
Hissing, spraying foam, la onda stoking storm;
Sometimes, in contentment, lapping like a pet,
Next moment, violent, dragon lashing out,
Hissing, spraying fire-foam from marine mouth,
Eyes of fire burning white with salty breath;
Yet you have carried, on gentle gales unfurled,
Explorers and discoverers round the world.

Copyright ©2010 by G. Newton V. Chance