Emily Lo
Hong Kong
2016, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word

the ocean cries for help
do you believe it?
can you tell?

wide, sad and weeping-
her surging power has manifested
– like flames of deep red amber, ravaging a dry,
dry field – a sempiternal affair of lament
disembodied with pain and grief

24/7
the ocean cries for help
for lost and wounded lives, swarming in
saturation
within her every wake

((yet no one listens))

from the nonchalant biker
wheeling past her shorelines
upon a dusty pathway along Cabrillo Beach, San Pedro –
his casual glance to her body (all flecked in a million shades of
muddled brown, green and decay) immediately casting away –

to the small, tourist boy just wrung
from her warm, watery embrace in
sunny Phuket, his mother fretting, “Austin –
get out of the water! It’s dirty.”

it is his chubby feet walking – no,
running – away, that resonates the
same, blatant
and mulling despair –
don’t you see me?
won’t you save me?

the ocean heaves a sigh –
low, guttural, yet all-the-same
her muted cry dissolves seamlessly
into air, edges contracting and,
– like every second, every minute, of every day – unclench
to kiss the shorelines,
at every edge
of land

unnoticeable, it is – the onslaught of her distress,
retaliation against all wounds and scars and lashes
turned loudest in the night –
a body blackened with ebony evening,
flickering gently
under pallid ivory moon

deep,
knowing
life-giver
spilling unto earth,
isolation all-consuming
as the tears fall, shake,
fright

24/7
she cries
and cries

((yet no one listens))

some nights are softer,
forlorn eclipsing rage
as waves linger upon crescendos, dancing languidly
against ever present masses of
dangerous foreign things

it is hills and hills of wasteland,
enclosing her every curve
hills and hills of wasteland, she has regurgitate
‘til it hurts her every nerve

but only proving futile,
as the sickness draws in closer
her patience wanes even thinner,
hiccups of emotion lulling into battle,

a proverbial line barely skimming
upon eternal defeat –
she spits and curls in disgust

the plethora of man’s irresponsibility –
surrounding her
consuming her
killing her

yet never truly dead –
for she is the bearer of all life, mother of all beings
from the slightest of slippery, scaled creatures
swimming in her very depths, to
the two-legged mammals who have
claimed and destructed her purity,
she’s never forgotten –

wide, blue and rich – of what once reflected
golden morning streams
in colourful hues of rich blue-green,
her sparkling magnitude a stretch of infinite horizons,
oh, so bright and wondrous,
so surely amazing, she cannot forget her greatness;
her strength of eternal existence,
her strength of eternal command

so when exasperation trumps it all,
a brushstroke turns nights tumultuous- waves crashing violently
over rocks and boats and shorelines as everything

within her sweeping canvas of creation tremble
vividly in fear and awe

all three hundred and twenty six
million cubic miles2 of the ocean reverberating
in hot, white anger – purging impurities as
lighting and thunder strikes,
smashing quiet reveries of a sailor at sea

she feels the impending sickness
in all its forms – seeping into her veins,
bloodstream thickened with slick, red ribbons of
unyielding toxicity;
intruding her currents, immeasurable counts of
broken plastic shards, cups and bags
find a home within her very core –
an infinite death sentences upon her
innocent children

24/7
the ocean cries for help
as yet another child succumbs
to a barren stomach of plastic pieces
as yet another child withers to its final breath
under the pressure of tangled plastic ropes

the ocean hosts her nightly requiem,
crestfallen in mourning and prayer, a mantra of pleas
diffusing and evaporating upon deaf, human ears;
please, do not bring us all to perish

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