Thursday, March 28, 2013

STIGMATA

"Simon, that man of Cyrene... 
Natty dreadlocks carry the cross..." Big Youth

What's up brother?
What's up with the 'nigga'?
Is that who or what we are?

What's with the 'dog' and the 'hoss'?
What's with the 'bitches' and the 'hoes'?
Are we lions and tigers no longer?

 Are we just jackals and hyenas,
feeding on leftovers
and each other?

Or have we become
dumb, domesticated,
domiciled to self-embracing stigma?

What's wrong with us, black brother?
What's wrong with us, my bleeding sister?
What's up my brother?

©2013 by G Newton V Chance
Posted by G. NEWTON V. CHANCE at 9:10 PM

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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)
Make somebody happy (© Alexander Ligertwood & Carlos Santana)

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