BETWEEN ISLANDS

... went down to water-
edge where gravel-stones groan,
moan, on mourning ground's
intercession,
waves' incessant, white
baptism of fire-
less smoke;

through sea spray, Sahara
dust, early-morning Toco mist,
squinting at distant
horizon's faint silhouette
of hills... mighty midge with arms
for wings
set swim toward the Main
Ridge, in shark-mail suit,
swam and swam and swam,
swimming, swimming, swimming,
alone with Atlantic
ocean and thoughts;

... one valiant
sperm, ocean, semen,
sea with sharks, men-
sharks, shells, exo-
skeletons, ex-officio
sharks, old skeletons,
dissolved to salt-
corroded memories,
forgotten memories;

... one valiant
sperm, heading north east,
as if to return
along the Passage
home to womb of rape
from whence once ripped,
coastal ghost,
Bird of Paradise ship,
landed on Roach's Rock.

Copyright ©2011 by G. Newton V. Chance

NAIL

When you pierced His hands and feet
And the Roman mallets echoed
Ungodly thuds, as they impaled
His holy body on the anvil
At the crossroad on Calvary hill;

And water flowed from spear wound
While two Marys wept and waited;
And in the numinous, ninth hour
When the earthquake split the temple-
Curtain and rocks and tombs were opened,

Did you feel the weight of the world
Suspended from the crucifix;
And if you had not known, would you
Have bent and twisted and refused
To penetrate His holy flesh?

Copyright ©2011 by G. Newton V. Chance

SNAKES AND LADDERS

By Bunsen's blue flame,
With serpentine wisdom
And scalpel, probed life;
And at autopsy came
To crossroad between
Darwin and creation.

And Adam with the apple
Grappled with his adder
Like Jacob on the ladder,
Wrestled all night long,
Till the Spotless One,
The Beloved Son,
At once the Shepherd
And Unblemished Lamb,
Gave His Gethsemane
To retri-eve my Eden.

Go straight from jail, Barabbas,
Climb to Calvary;
And now, I too know
Why doves and mountains coo
And call with such insistence.

Copyright ©2011 by G. Newton V. Chance

SAPODILLAS

Sapodilla, your silly-sweet, brown, seasonal
Madness would enslave me but for the reticence
Of your scarceness. Sap so sweet, smell exotic,
Almost erotic. The lady with the tray
Outside the market allows me to feel and squeeze
Her sapodillas, gently of course, for the
Softness of their ripeness. Impatient as I am,
I would squeeze one now, carefully, till it opens wow
To my nose and eyes and mouth to partake of
Smooth, brown, sapodilla sweetness and you would hear
My soft mmms and ooohs and aaahs of satisfaction,
Savouring fruit-flesh while saving seeds for future
Sapodillas' silly-sweet, brown, seasonal
Madness to captivate new generations
Of softly squeezing lovers of sapodillas...

Copyright ©2011 by G. Newton V. Chance

THE BEST DAYS

Those were the best days of our lives,
In batchie pads, we had no wives;
Ate parlour-food and burned the pots
And sometimes suffered from poor-guts;

Limed at the bars, blagged with the boys
And came home to an empty house.
The girls came by, we told them lies;
We promised them the moon and skies.

But all good things must one day end,
You lie in bed, ask God to send
Someone to keep you always warm.
You visualize her rounded form,

Her skin soft as a baby's yawn,
Her breath as sweet as early morn;
Her mind as brilliant as the sun
Yet condescends to be the one.

These are the best days of our lives,
The batchie pads, now homely hives;
Those were the wasted days of lives
Now relegated to archives.

For so much love in our lives,
We thank God for our lovely wives
And though their tongues be sharp as knives,
We could not live without our wives.

Copyright ©2011 by G. Newton V. Chance

BLEATING OF THE LAMBS

But for the bleating of the lambs,
Silence, a kind of unholy silence,
Pause, rest, the cadence of inexperience,
Illuminated ignorance.

The shepherd had made a solemn promise
Not one head would come to harm on the farm;
Then the wolves descended like Assyrians
In the dark, not one ass or cur did bray
Nor bark; the old rams and the ewes
Chewed and swallowed the censored news.

While the builders built big buildings
Virtual warriors fought asinine,
Internecine wars in cyber cafes,
Shed virtual blood with avatars.

You who know nothing of the olden ways,
Would reinvent steel with papier
Mache blades, like samurai wielding words
And paper swords in patriotic games,
Shielded by patrons and fictitious themes,
Remember that a sharp is just a flat,

The same note, by another name.

Copyright ©2011 by G. Newton V. Chance

TREMOR II (RESILIENCE)

Tremor turn trauma;
Rainless flood brings nuclear rain…
Cherry blossoms bud.

Copyright ©2011 by G. Newton V. Chance

TREMOR

Tremor, terror, trauma;
Floods rampage with no rain...
Cherry blossoms bud again.

Copyright ©2011 by G. Newton V. Chance

WHAT IF (EXISTENTIAL)

What if you were to look into the mirror
And saw nothing, no one, no reflection?
Would the mirror be a mirage, no longer
A mirror or would you be a vampire,

Alive without a soul or shadow?
And what if you were to look into the river
And saw the moon, wet and shimmering,
Cold and shivering, underwater?

Would the river be a mirror, no longer
A river and the moon not in the sky
Or would the river and the mirror
And the shimmering moon, all be in your eye?

Copyright ©2011 by G. Newton V. Chance

TO WHAT PURPOSE

To what purpose, said the porpoise,
This purported pulchritude;
Year after year, wave after wave,
A sea of jiggling jelly-

Fish flesh parades across wet stage,
Feeding frenzy of sand sharks
To the wailing of the whales, flags
And banners waving full sail

In winds of age-old adage,
Breaking dry sticks in bucket ears.
Drunk with wine from grapes of wrath,
The Ship of Sate continues on

Reckless path, sailing to wreck with
Record speed and celebration.

Copyright ©2011 by G. Newton V. Chance

IMPECCABLE WARRIOR

Impeccable warrior, bearing the wings and wheels
And weapons of peace; weary of this war-torn world,
Wearing a golden helmet, gleaming in the sun,
Angelic halo, alighting from his chariot,
Abseils into the abyss of what was, what is
And what is to be, scales over Glocks and outcrops
Past delusions of the disillusioned, descends
To the centre of his soul where, of all people,
He meets sad Judas Iscariot, scapegoat of
Salvation, before ascension to his Jesus.

Copyright ©2011 by G. Newton V. Chance

FREEZE TILE

This about the gab-glib, bravura, ad-lib, self-
Serving style that is free, worth nothing, says nothing,
Does nothing to free the body, mind or soul or

Spirit of a people from abject poverty;
Contributes absolutely nothing noteworthy
To uplift humanity.

Words more ineffective than a broken, bladeless
Sword and yet powerful enough to make puerile heads
Euphoric and overawed.

Broken, spoken words that revel in the fruitless,
The fooling, the freezing and unthawed gerund of
Moribund and meaningless,

Rent-a-tile cliché, golden goblets cast with clay,
Void of any substance, full of noisy chatter
and empty ramajay, leading the mindless ones

On a journey to nowhere.

Copyright ©2011 by G. Newton V. Chance

SONG FOR WADADA

(In memory of Arthur ‘Wadada’ Greenidge who died in tragic circumstances. Wadada in Amharic means love and he was indeed a beautiful person. Will always cherish his memory.)

Dem kill Wadada!
Yes sah,
Dem kill mih brother,
With machine gun and revolver.
1990, the 25th of November,
A night I'll always remember,
For a few pieces of silver,
A few pieces of filthy lucre,
Dem kill mih brother,
Arthur,
In error.
Just another
Martyr,
Like Martin Luther
And Mahatma,
Oh Jesus, dem kill mih brother,
Arthur,
A man who knew pain, poverty and hunger,
So much pain and agony he suffer,
Now time to reap the fruits of his labour,
Just when he was sure,
Of a contract from Amar,
To let the world know he was a star,
To send his message of love near and far,
With the philosophy of the Emperor,
As captain of the Black Starliner,
A modern-day Marcus Garvey navigator,
To repatriate the minds of his brothers
And sisters
Home to Africa,
Home to spiritual Ethiopia,
With roots and culture
As a Twelve Tribes of Israel soldier,
Up comes that Dragon, Lucifer,
In a plot with Babylon, the Harlot Mother,
And send bad-boys to slay mih brother.
But dem couldn’t reach far,
Struck down by the wrath of Jah,
Don’t you see it’s a spiritual war?
But the Lion of Judah,
Surely, the Lion shall conquer,
So said Jah,
Cause He is the Ruler
And the Creator.
Dem kill Wadada!
Yes sah,
Dem kill mih brother,
King Arthur.
Murder!
Dem kill the rasta,
Shot him in the vocoder;
No more
Shall the humble lion roar.
Have mercy on them, oh Jehovah
For they know not what they have done.
Arthur Napthali Wadada,
May your soul rest in peace in Mt. Zion
Where you belong.
Selah.

Copyright ©1991 by G. Newton V. Chance.

ANGRY HILL

And from the angry hill, if I don’t get killed,

I stand and look over the overlooked.

I see 1970, when, with clenched fists,

wearing beards and beads,

afros and dashikis,

people proudly punched through ceilings,

punched the skies and shouted

"Power to the people"

and young artisans punched eyelets

in archipelagos of leather.

I see 1970, and after,

the Drag and industry, and after,

the Drag, the dreadlocks and the drugs,

I see the misery of Sewer City and I ask,

how conscious were we,

how conscious are we?

I see brothers, like Harry Hippie,

in the throes of vagrancy,

liming on the Promenade of the Prince,

the new home for the homeless, the aimless

and the mad where the conscious and the soulful

once sold sandals while the conscienceless

sold dope to hook and drag

brothers through the mud like Hector's hapless corpse.

I have seen the hooked, like bachac, in procession,

dragging the spoils of their conquest of distress

to the Drag to exchange, for almost nothing,

for coke, for smoke, for rocks, for stone,

while the conscious sat and looked

and said nothing and did nothing, and I ask,

how conscious were we,

how conscious are we?

And from the angry hill, if I don’t get killed,

I stand and look over the overlooked.

And I remember, NUFF respect, how the young

and foolish, the conscious and idealistic

like Jones and Jeffers once went up into the hills

and went down, for almost nothing, in a hail

of the Fox’s bullets before he posed with gun

on shoulders and his boots upon their chest.

And I see the conscious, forty years after,

emerging from amnesia of annual processions,

walking up the hill again like zombies

awoken from the sleep and shadows of the past

and I wonder, how conscious were we,

how conscious are we?

I see 1990, twenty years after,

I see 1990, and after,

the holy war, guns and gangsters, and after,

the ignorance of young fools killing each other,

for almost nothing, for ranks, for turf,

for the scrapings at the bottom of the barrel.

Then I take a walk up Frederick Street

where the hip and the holy once would meet

and congregate with the conscious

and the conscienceless.

I keep walking to the high walls, the cold walls,

now crowded with the children of the conscious

and the conscienceless

and I remember Mice and Nyah,

the King brothers and Guerra and Dole

and all the other gangsters, the monsters

and ministers of mayhem and blood money

how they murdered each other

and how nine evil men came to a doleful end

but the Orinoco, the Orinoco and the blood still flow;

and I wonder who they were fronting for,

who they were fronting for,

who they were fronting for,

and I wonder, how conscious were we,

how conscious were we,

how conscious are we,

how conscious are we?

And from the angry hill, if I don’t get kilIed,

I stand and look over the overlooked.

©2011 by G. Newton V. Chance