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.