ocean as stand-up comic
Foster City, CA
2022, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
9:01 pm
An impression of an 80’s movie scene. First, the ocean
is the hero with the chauvinist tongue, guns blooming
from his fists. A new wave crests and he is the guiltless
child, yet another and he becomes the mother with hymns
cinched between her teeth, saltwater lapping against
the spotlight.
9:07 pm
As the act draws to a close, the ocean turns toward
the audience, expecting more. All he gets: a cough &
a handful of revised laughs, tapering off at the seams.
He decides to try again.
9:08 pm
Wordplay: a last resort. Cue the question thrown out
like a lure to sea. Cue the silence expanding between
bodies, suffocating. Cue the answer crawling out of
the ocean’s mouth, meek. The words outdated, overdone:
What did the ocean say to the shore? Nothing, it just waved.
Where do fish sleep? On the sea bed!
9:10 pm
Blank stares over and over again. In the darkness
of the theater, a man stands up, his mustache oil-slicked.
“You’re not funny!” he shouts. This time, everybody laughs.
9:12 pm
The ocean ripples in trepidation. He tells a story
of an albatross on a sun-slicked shore that ate
anything it could find in the sand. When it died,
the scientists opened its belly and found bottle caps,
lighter fluid, half a plastic fork. All of it evidence
of apathetic hands, cities soaked in greed. It is only
at the end of the story does the ocean realize
there is no punchline.
9:18 pm
In an instant, the air thickens with jeers and boos.
The oil-slicked man stands again. He throws
a plastic bottle and it bleeds through the surface
of the ocean. Another person stands, and then another,
and then another. The crowd undulates into rage,
and there is more this time: a candy wrapper, cigarette butts,
a six-pack ring. The ocean cowers, whimpers into low tide,
his waves speckled with trash. Finally, everybody
is laughing. Finally, there is a punchline.
Reflection
Reflection
Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, I’ve spent my whole life being just a short drive away from the sea. I remember when my family and I went to Pier 31 and the Monterey Bay—the lapping waves, the sun glinting off the surface of the water—to me, it was magical. Even through the pretty language and striking concept, my poem is filled with love for the water that’s always been beside me, and urges readers not to see climate change as a joke. At first, I found this year’s prompt hard to work with. What could possibly be “funny” about such a grim, insurmountable issue? However, as I mulled over the topic in my mind, considering the techniques of irony and satire, I started to see humor less as a requirement, and more of a tool I could use to propel my message even further. I came up with the idea of the ocean struggling at a stand-up comedy show partially as a bit of commentary about the prompt and my own struggle with it, and ended the poem on the ironic image of the ocean being pelted with plastic by a dissatisfied audience. Over the course of a few days, I gathered images, words, and lines in my mind, so when I finally sat down to write, I had a nearly completed poem in my mind. All I had left to do was put it into words.