PROMISES

I promised you the world, my love,
But the world slipped through my fingers
Like water through a sieve,
A forearm through a sleeve
Or sunshine through the leaves.

I promised you my dreams, my love,
But my dreams evaporated
Like water in the sun,
A foetus never born,
An action never done.

Promised you my love, my love,
But love slipped through my fingers
Like water through fish gill,
A hundred dollar bill
Or wind through window sill.

I gave to you my world, my love,
But the wind slipped through my fingers,
Promises evaporated
And like toy balloons, inflated,
Love floated off to other dreams
And left us incarcerated.

Copyright ©2011 by G. Newton V. Chance

DEAREST ONE

Remember when this heart, an envelope,
Forlorn, lonely letter, lay unopened and unread;
And you, beautiful ballad, you a song whose name,
Dearest One, I knew from the first exquisite note.
Dearest One, but for you, long would I have gone
Quietly into that cold, dark, blue oblivion.

I remember you in the scent of carbolic soap
You loved so much, my manhood’s fresh ablution,
When morning smiled her big infectious smile,
The hills lit up with joy and pairs of lovebirds,
Wild and free, would wave hello while winging
Their way on green winds to bounties in the trees.

And we enjoyed the sweet fruits of belonging
After the long dry season of our longing.

Copyright ©2011 by G. Newton V. Chance

REQUIEM FOR THE LIVING

Oh, this land is a pleasant place
For them that’s rich and high
But this land is a fogged up place
For wretched folk as I.

Land of holy days and holidays where
Wealth and power prosecute and persecute
The destitute and prostitute

With sticks and stones and brittle bones
Of old philosophies and old theologies
While pimps and paedo-priests walk free

On honey-roasted city streets, fronting
For the crime and grime of filthy slum-
Lords; the buccaneers never left.

Oh, this land is a pleasant place
For them that’s rich and high
But this land is a fogged up space
For wretched folk as I.

There’s a smug and smoggy skettel bird,
Singing with shrill discord,
A dying kettle’s whistle
Of steam and boiling blood,

While corbeaus in peacock feathers
Lip-sync in stinking galleries,
On sinking galley stages
Of shrinking work and wages.

In this tropic transience of things
Garish billboards proclaim obituaries,
With graphic, graffiti obscenities,

Nocturnal festivities at the Club-
Foot of estranged hills and gullies.

Another city folds and crumples;
Skyscrapers fall and crumble
Into rubble like crisply shattered crackers;
Protect us, Lord, from all disasters.

Do not wait up or weep, my love.
Where night goes, Knight Templars may not return
But rest assured the morning cock will crow
And by the sun the mongrel morn shall burn

The aspirations of the tyrant day
Whose kingdom is a harsh and cruel land.

Oh, this land is a pleasant place
For them that’s rich and high
But this land is a fogged up place
For wretched folk to live... or die.

Copyright ©2011 by G. Newton V. Chance

AARDVARK

Waded through the squelch and slush
to trellised truths in concrete jungles
of canned and canopied stories.

The Emperor went unnoticed,
au natural, in the midst
of nature, in naturist colonies.

Picked the fickle
from the pickles,
flecked red with disbelief.

Ah the relief of release,
the release of relief.

Said the elephant,
student of history,
to the entrepreneurial ant,

“While the mammoth scoffed,
the aardvark never laughed
at the absurdity of the Ark.”

And sometimes, God would cease
to exist, for the atheist,
but for the arrant proof of pain.

Copyright ©2011 by G. Newton V. Chance