Exodus
Koronadal, Philippines
2021, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
To say You
endure me
would not be merely
a spectral reflection birthed
from conjecture.
For nothing shadows the
stentorian echoes of
I who saw
you see me as
I am—a vessel of
noxious vapors
and endless carnage.
Where I lay down
before gods and machines
seething pandemonium,
your map is hidden on
plastic shores. Whose
but Poseidon’s could that wrath be?
His harbingers raze both land and sea.
Born blind and
bold, awash in
divinations, aware
of the glare of
the visceral inside, I
cower behind living
emblazonries
as drawings of whales are
on a scute of a leatherback—
while petroleum seeps
from sediments of memory to
celestial bodies. And
in the space between
the exhales of a ceaseless empire,
one can grasp
the constellations
man sought for
when birds sang elegies—
another intimately
fatal gesture of
ebbing humanity.
Though I look behind every step
for a waking dream,
the meltwater
tastes of cathartic unrest.
The violent surf churns as
the bell goes unheard.
The figurations
of our mistakes
outlive us.
Reflection
Reflection
I wanted to leave the reader with a clear image of just how ghastly the world we live in already is, and how much worse it can become if we continue to turn a blind eye to the global crises we're in. I wanted that image to be haunting enough to spark some tangible reaction among them. I wanted the poem to make people feel as if they were merely counting the days to this dystopia becoming reality. I wanted to do this so that we could start doing something - something that can actually leave a sizeable impact towards restoring the natural balance of the incredibly powerful and beautiful forces the govern the Earth we live in.