Love, if you would be good to me
a fool for love I’d gladly be,
would give to you my heart for free
if you could only guarantee,
in gathering your sweet honey,
protection from the angry bee.
Oh Love, how bitter is your sting,
your cup of poisoned nectarine
from fickle lovers’ lips dripping
to sad songs jilted lovers sing,
inspired by their jaded fling
while falling from your lofty swing.
Venus, the star, I have been told,
shines brightest when the moon is old
but your goddess transmutes to gold
young lovers’ hearts when nights are cold
and hearth fire–warm hands they hold
while moonlight and romance unfold.
Love seems to me a one-way street
where strangers, sometimes friends, they meet
and same mistakes make and repeat,
swear fealty, proceed to cheat,
one giving all while underneath
all one does is take and mistreat;
yet there are lovers who will swear
your perfume wafting in the air
is sweeter than wild orchids rare
when two sweethearts one sweet love share
and two hearts race as fast as deer
with joy enough to shed a tear.
It’s true your moments of sweet bliss,
your sweet caress and tender kiss
which nymphs consume with avarice,
once tasted one will always miss;
but Eve or Venus tell me this,
was apple worth the serpent’s hiss?
Love, look where your spell has led me,
sucked in by the swirl and eddy
of broken dreams and melody
into nostalgic reverie
of melancholy memory;
oh Love, where is your empathy?
Maternal love that hugs and heals,
agape love that sears and seals
and Eros love that whips and weals
which brigand sometimes breaks and steals
and Lady Fortune sometime deals
may be the same but different feels.
Love, I have worshipped at your shrine,
partook of profane and divine,
drank of the henbane and the wine,
been crowned a king, been called a swine,
lived more lives than a cat with nine,
lives entangled by your entwine.
You've been more bad than good to me
yet fool would I still gladly be,
would give my heart again for free
but this one boon I beg of thee,
in gathering your sweet honey,
protect me, Love, from angry bee.
Copyright ©2001 by G. Newton V. Chance
What is a song if not poetry dressed in melody to sing along? (© G. Newton V. Chance)
Saturday, August 16, 2008
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- G. NEWTON V. CHANCE
- 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)
the reader gives it life
(© G. Newton V. Chance)
Make somebody happy (© Alexander Ligertwood & Carlos Santana)
1 comment:
This poem is lovely.I have read it countless times,I even saved a copy of it on my PC.I particularly like the fourth stanza.
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