Death March


On concrete slab
 round table,
 outside rumshop,
 served cold
 to country
 on platter
 like John's
 to Herodias,
 a la carte
 Columbian cartel style,
 a head,

 severed,

 separated from shell,
 left lying lifeless, abandoned,
 in abandoned canefield,
 bitter harvest
 of deluded quest for sugar
 of quick material gains.

 Karma comes round
 on the wheel of misfortune
 in a hostile game of hustle
 in a hostel named California.

 I stand at the window,
 on the outside peering in,
 on the inside peering out.

 Belafonte's yellow bird has flown
 its paradisal tropic island nest.
 Gone the sweet and tender bird calls
 of our innocence.

 There is nothing left but silence
 of secret ops
 (and cover ups by crooked cops),

 and the melody
 of a symphony, a sympathy,
 for the Devil and a bedevilled nation.

 The marching band of death is playing loudly
 but death marchers have forgotten
 how to march.

-----

G. Newton V. Chance was born in Tobago. He is a member of the Writers Union of Trinidad and Tobago and the Trinidad Poetry Workshop; attended Eastern Caribbean Institute of Agriculture and Forestry and works closely with nature as a Forester. Hobbies include playing wind instruments, building computers, reading and writing poetry. Believes the power of a song is its ability to evoke emotions by marrying lyric and music but that music without lyric can be just as powerful, lyric without music can be just as powerful, there is music in lyric and lyric can be simple yet profound. In this age of computers, would like to model lines after simple, efficient code and, analogous to object oriented programming, achieve most of the imagery from nouns and verbs, avoiding the bloat and excess of unnecessary adjectives.

1 comment:

aromaproductions said...

You have summed up well the sorry state of affairs on many of the Caribbean islands in this poem. Unfortunately, it is not much different to other places in the world today. Many are trapped by our own traps.

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