I
the naked claustrophobia
of a small town is a tapeworm
that gnaws away at the innards
a nameless yearning to escape
its oppressive confinement
to alluring adventure and romance
of the large unknown cities overseas
you watch the ships in her tiny harbour
and your mind sails off sails over
the Atlantic and you wonder
why some discoverer named her after
another small town way over yonder
in a small island called Great Britannia
the boom of the boat as it raises boom
forewarns you as you take one long last look back
that one day your heart will yearn to return
to your prison of Scarborough
and as you spend the vigil of your wake
watching the frothing wake of your Mayflower
a solitary seagull squawks
a warning "don’t damn the waters you cross"
and it dawns on you the size of your loss
your small island grows small on the skyline
as you turn north to face fresh horizons
and you spare her one final angst-fraught thought
for now for you know you cannot
forget she will never allow
her ex-convict to forget that
a small island has a wry way
of retort to rhetoric without words
as innocuous as the droppings of birds
II
my small island capital Scarborough
my small town of Scarborough Tobago
if these two worn ‘up and down’ streets could talk
could tell the tourist their true history
could count the times that foreign feet trampled
upon her people’s dignity
if these quaint old edifices could walk
away walk from their dilapidated
state from their impending demolition
away from their destiny
and be restored to their once great glory
as cantos of colonial chronicles
oh what cruel tales of tort and torture
oh what cruel tales they would tell
what sordid stories what tales of terror
what terrible testimony
of unjust constructs founded on foundations
funded by fornications with demons
who sacrificed the souls and psyche of slaves
whose flesh was ground into the ground
whose fate was pounded in mercantile
mortars of mortality
like chocolate or chilibibi
with European pestles of brutality
for pounds and guilders francs and pesetas
this tale of pity and morbidity
is not a tale of two cities
it is a tale of colonies
it is a tale of slavery
it is a tale of history
it is a tale of two islands
it is the tale of these islands
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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