Blue Heart
Lexington, MA
2017, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
NEPTUNE’S DAUGHTER: A PREFACE
o child of the sea, if you could wring out your hair
you’d get perfect neptunian waters, blue like the waves
that tumble out from the crevices of your skin
in later years, children gather round and tell tales of the sea, in
whispered, reverent tones they claim they saw you
“she was beautiful,” “she was gone”
daughter of the man who couldn’t protect his domain
when the oceans finally gave way you wept
saltwater spilling down porcelain cheeks;
girl made of watery smiles and a blue heart,
one day they will write poetry and weep for you.
POLLUTION DESTITUTION
i. there is beauty in simplicity, like undulating swells lapping onto crystalline sands and soft
sensationalistic caws of gulls and the sillage left by beach air / only now, there are no beaches.
ii. bitter concoction running down the mississippi, can you feel the death down your lungs / when
did it become so hard to breathe? / body swathed in cracked shells / in hushed tones they whisper
“there is nothing here, there hasn’t been for so long”
iii. black lungs coughing up a hurricane you can’t swallow / body of stucco and fire / i didn’t
know you had such macabre features / slick with death, raw mouth exploding stars / can you
taste the blood and moreover, can you feel it?
iv. thrashing and splashing as ripples ricochet against your throat like bullets in an empty room,
only the empty room is you now / spiraling down to a watery grave, it is hard to escape the
whirlpool when it is all you’ve ever known
v. gutter mouth rimming with a rancid aftertaste / ingurgitate your lifeline, only it isn’t a lifeline /
corroded hearts and corroded minds / fissures and eyes blain, inflammation has never looked so
good / puncture and mutilate and keep afloat
v. you will learn soon: salt is harder to choke down than water / the ocean can actually weep / oil
does not look like stardust, but rather death / i never thought it possible to drown.
THE DAY THE SUN SWALLOWED THE SEA
the day the sun finally swallowed the sea:
we were walking, hand by hand
all the fishes are dead, anyways; nothing matters
smoke rises in the background, twisting and turning
stained with regret for the generation that stopped caring
a girl draws an outline of a sperm whale
she learns by counting the ribs of the one on the shore
they don’t ask why its stomach is full of plastic
the plastic is everywhere nowadays
(she wonders, if they cut her open, would they find plastic?)
from pittsburgh to paris the earth shakes
ships of fire and storm sail across the blackened oceans
“can you believe that it was once blue,” they whisper
“once teeming with life” we shake our heads, because
this polluted paragon is all we ever knew
Works Cited
“Marine Pollution — Pristine Seas — National Geographic” National Geographic, National
Geographic
“Gulf Oil Spill Pictures: Birds, Fish, Crabs Coated” National Geographic, National Geographic,
9 June 2010. Web. 17 June 2017.
Biello, David. “Fertilizer Runoff Overwhelms Streams and Rivers–Creating Vast ‘Dead
Zones’” Scientific American, Nature America, 14 Mar. 2008. Web 17 June 2017
Reflection
I wrote this short anthology of poems because I am angry and confused and to be honest, feeling a little helpless. With the current administration’s stance on climate change coupled with the president’s recent decision to pull out of the Paris climate accords, I have been feeling like there is nothing that I as a young individual can do to help. I’ve been feeling particularly frustrated with the lack of awareness not just among our government, but among my peers, which I feel is communicated in the eerie and dystopian “The Day the Sun Swallowed the Sea,” particularly with the line “from Pittsburgh to Paris,” which directly references Trump’s rhetoric about the climate agreement. Ocean awareness has recently become something I’m very interested in advocating for. My love for oceanography and marine life was definitely fostered by my seventh grade teacher, who was a marine biologist who actually researched on the Alvin submarine. I focus on issues of runoff creating dead zones, plastic/trash pollution, and oil spills. I take a warped and exaggerated point of view to emphasize the seriousness of ocean pollution and the problems it causes, which I think is summed up by my anthology title, “Blue Heart,” because these matters are concerns of caring for our oceans and our environment. I hope most of all to express my activism through this collection of poems, and to emphasize that a change needs to happen in order to avoid the bleak future I illustrate in my work.