Ghazal on the Rude Intrusion of my Imagination
New York, NY
2019, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
imagine 200 meters below the surface of the infinite world below,
below what is known, a world shedding all its skins of the past
reality ambrés from concrete jungles to endless blue tunnels,
skyscrapers grow coral like hair follicles, shed their skins of the past
bushes of winding broccoli looking yellows and scarlets and rosy pinks
sway to the beat of the ocean’s heart as its sheds the skins of its past
and in the center of it all, an earthy green reef like wrinkled bedsheets
breathing in the soul of the waters and out the skins of its past
the holes of its skin billow with the health of the sea
that is, until it doesn’t, and then it sheds the toxic skins of its home
like when a mermaid transforms from legs to tail, the living greens
dissolve into dull greys and suffocated blacks, it has shed the skins of its past
beauty, beauty lied in the veins of its coarse exterior, and mystery, mystery
hid in the unknowns of its infinite holes, but now, now it has shed the skins of its past
green to grey and no longer breathing, this bright reef of my imagination
is faced by the shaking finger of reality as the reef sheds the skins of its past
imagine from the safety of above, from the potential fear of our world
above heating up, while the world below sucks up the toxins that
shed the skins of its past
the world below altering like a movie reel that can’t be paused,
so this is what it means to shed the skins of one’s past
ocean therapy, they call it, ocean imagination and ocean appreciation
for it never being about yesterday, only today, for shedding the skins of its past
we live in a world where what we can’t see won’t hurt us
when what i can only imagine is tortured by our lack of action in the present
and the inevitable ocean acidification truth of the past
Reflection
Reflection
For my generation, the effects of climate change are not shunned in conversation. I often find myself discussing the recent extreme weather conditions or the rising pollution levels in low-income communities. When considering the prompt, I realized that we only discuss what we see on the news or what we can visually comprehend. This intrigued me, as I had only spoken about climate change regarding human beings, and solely been able to imagine life beneath the sea’s surface. Humans care so much about disasters until we cannot see the effects. Once learning this, I felt incredibly guilty for never considering other effects on the earth and created this poem in the hopes of putting both climate change’s reality and my guilt into words. Prior to writing, I knew absolutely nothing about the link between climate change and the health of the ocean. Once I researched, I was particularly inspired by an article by the Environmental Defense Fund on climate change’s effect on coral reefs and ocean acidification. Reading the article and viewing images allowed me to learn about the devastating realities of sea creatures’ shells dissolving and the ocean being acidified. I want my viewers to view this poem as a type of written scene, a description of imagining the ocean and having that imagination ruined by what we choose to ignore: the reality of climate change. I want my viewers to feel guilty and livid, but mostly, I want my viewers to feel the truth.