When the missiles whined and shrieked,
sling-shot nerves snapped and ricocheted,
and my body jerked, and convulsed,
involuntarily, in the stinking trenches
of injustice, at the shattered sound;
and the shrapnel lodged in my mind,
and soul, and the broken bone
protruded from the gaping wound…
The mental scabs are real;
real as the scar, on my left leg,
I cannot remember receiving in this life;
real as the pain and shame,
the degradation,
the hurt and humiliation,
I try to forget
with the opiate of denial.
I forgave, but how can I forget the hate,
the lies and twisted excuses,
when they hung my uncle, Tom,
by his tortured thumb;
and his charcoal hide did flagellate
till his blessed soul, from his wretched body,
departed, liberated, to a better place.
I feel the hurt;
his hurt, my hurt, every time
you call me Negro, or Colored,
or Creole or Nigger;
had you asked me,
I would have told you,
I am…African.
Copyright ©2001 by G. Newton V. Chance
- 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.
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