Kimberly Rodriguez
Levittown, NY
2015, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word

My home.
Nothing can be compare to the very own beauty of God’s work with water.
Corals, seaweed, and creamy colored sand covered over the land, along with fishes of stars,
Blowfishes, and stingrays shower over my home, wandering the sea in search of love and
appetite.
My parents, my caregivers of the world leave me asleep in the red anemone while they swim
away to find food for us to fast and dine.
The time to go out and present to the outside is approaching, my scaly blue gills open and close
with every breath of hydrogen my body takes in the thing keeping me alive every day.
This world…is my home.
My home.
Every time I go outside my home and look to the surface beyond that of my imagination, all I see
is humans.
Humans sometimes take away members of my family, and others as well.
All I hear is the weeping of dolphins, whales crying to their youth no longer by their side,
It’s a sight to behold your tears and your ears, imagine hearing an old care giving mother
weeping like a haggard on the street, wandering these waters looking for their own creation into
this world?
However, my mama and papa tell me to stay away from the dangerous coast and to never look to
the surface ever again…
“or else…” she told me one night,
“You’ll join them in the bellies of the beast, or die breathing the air of their Devil’s toxins.”
Never, I tell you, did I ever look upon the surface once.
Why? If curiosity gets the best of us anyway
I get up, and start to explore my community of the other species that live here with us.
The beaming light rays from the Sun come down into our community in light streaks, giving us
glimmering dims of the world above us.
The clear teal aqua mixed with dark navy and cerulean shades of blue, painted a majestically
typical ordinary sea life down here,
Splashes of golden petal yellow, hot angered fiery maroon and light lime green a lined with the
dark blue-white sea floor with the horizon.
Fishes come in a bundle of colors not even in the wheel, butterfly fishes with its out sharp circles
outlined precisely on their bellies,
Regal Tangs are very well known regionally around here,
They are the smoothest fins ever seen in our beauty called home.
Every once in a while, a ray comes to block the light,
Although in darkness, beauty is greater you know?
The way shadows fly above your head with the ripples following them, is such a scene.
And the way the hot radiance comes unto us, after the shadows have fled,
Gives us such hope that will live into our fins, gills, tails and even in our blood.
As I made my way around, the regularly view is witnessed:
Teams of tangs go to the outside coral reef, exploring for urchins and oysters,
Angelfishes fly close to the surface with its red-orange colors originating an aura of great
romance,
Diversity has a name, colors give that and God created that, thanks to him!
Let me tell you, that day the waters were pure,
With so much allure!
The water was clean, pure, of true cerulean sky blue,
Twined with the skies above.
My air was so cleansed, so holy
Easily flowed through the blood of my body.
Nothing was wrong, you know?
All of us were in a blissful peaceful era of gold,
Let me tell you, that day
Never did the ocean radiate so brighter than other days.
It was filled with valuable life, from histories before
And to paint this blank blue canvas-
To the diverse cultural hues you call colors.
Never have I witnessed, something so…
Vivid, so flourished of animation and prestigious vigor.
And I will say, I’m proud to call it my mother Earth…
But suddenly, the ocean turned into something,
Or more than a something…it was looming from the surface above…or as I will now call it,
Hell.
…“Son, remember, to stay away from the surface…
“…do not succumb to the Devil’s fraud.”
That day, of such luminosity
Did I return to my home, but
Death surrounded it to every corner and street.
A dead clownfish laid on the seafloor, alongside its corpse would be a plastic bottle.
His colors drown into the colors of the dead, the toxic pollutants now control his body from the
bottle.
Other fishes would follow his example, dead alongside other rubber and plastic wastes,
To their eyes in which is the necessity to survive and nutrients,
Only to end up on the contrary and travel to the side with no light.
I tried, and tried, and tried,
Nothing…nothing.
My friends, to my excrete horror was upon that ocean floor.
The light then was eclipsed by a huge mount to the surface above,
Bottles, Plastic can holders and bags descended unto our haven,
The water starts to darken, to smolder
To a earthen black brown making the such clarity pure water disappear of its color.
Never have I imagined again,
To make an observance to the upper world.
I had to, no choice.
As the heaven around me descends to the hellish abyss,
Have I quickly swam to the surface, to rid of the never dying curiosity.
The muggy brown earth water clears up closer to the horizon.
As I finally glanced to the surface,
Hell was in every part, in every corner,
Seems like no matter one travels, suffering is in every place and corpses slowly
Decaying and drowning in its own blood.
Monk Seals and sea birds were lied down,
With no functionality.
The innocent eyes of this one was just unbearable,
It was scarred with such unspeakable trauma with temblor.
This baby infant seal was a sight never forgotten,
Her neck was marred to her flesh as a plastic can holder choked her to her last final hours.
Birds joined the corpse party with their necks also choked with can holders,
Their eyes give you the true answer of death,
Of blank nothingness with no vitality whatsoever…
I returned to my blue heaven, trying to escape this agonizing hell,
With no use, I still experienced the black color spreading.
Loggerhead turtles were dead with Styrofoam and monofilament lines within their stomach side,
Tangs, butterfly fishes, clown fishes, puffer fishes,
You name it all, were tangled in plastic rope.
It was a tear, you see…
It’s such sorrow to watch someone trying to escape the true reality, but with no validity and ends
in failure.
As I swan closer to shore, two sperm whales were once again stuck in the detestable plastic ropes
that will bring them to the end.
I saw them.
You know, those despicable things called humans?
A woman was walking, and she threw her litter unto our peaceful haven,
Having not a care in the world.
A mother seagull fed her baby a piece of a plastic bag,
The baby happily welcomed it into her stomach, with pure innocence
…But of extreme naïve.
Never have I imagined our homeland to morph into something now so cringing to look,
Of once that was something to behold and love the way we lived and what variety we have, well
now… had.
How would you feel to have such something so comforting, something you lived
with…taken away at some point?
My home.
It was once a blue heaven,
The sun rays complimented us, to glorify our true beauty.
Communities flourished in diversity…
Everything was in routine, in tranquility…
I wished some things in our haven would remain, something that would be alive and free
Or in other words just one thing to tell me that everything’s just a myth!
My mind said otherwise,
“…or die breathing the air of the Devil’s toxins.”
Never have I came into mind that toxins will now invade this haven,
Now our waters will become their lands and their own property and we’re the natives on our own
trail of sadness.
This material called “plastic”, or toxic as my mother would call it,
Would now linger here to an eternity.
Efforts to rid of this atrocity will not take hours, days, or weeks,
Or even just ten years…
This plastic will become part of our waters,
And always will be unless a miracle would come about.
I tear,
And tear…and tear
But why cry if it is already lost?
I not cry just for the destruction of the thing I called home,
But for the deterioration of this thing God created:
Earth.
The waters will then turn into crystalline blue,
To the muggish, such dirty color to an eye.
These creations of beautiful of the fishes, rays and other inhabitants,
Will die alongside that blue.
Our homes, will never return the way they were.
Our children will now digest those pollutants,
And their innocence will lead them to the darkest place of all.
Necks will be cut,
Shredded to blood and flesh.
Remember,
If your Devil’s toxins dare to intrude more often,
Don’t look for us no more.
As our blue heaven we called home,
…will now be artificial earth.

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My Home: The Blue Heaven to Artificial Earth