“Stream” of Consciousness
Chandler, AZ
2022, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
i. denial
The fish is rotten, drizzled in the discrete coating
of harmful toxins and homeless mollusks and the crumbs
of the bleached corals it once called home.
You are what you eat.
I sprinkle plastics on its scales,
beckoning the seabirds to swoop for a bite,
laughing at the fruits of His labor.
Have men played God? I ask the fleeting wind.
The offering nods in reply.
ii. anger
The restaurant is barren, shackled with the furious echo
of higher prices and hidden motives and the blisters
from slipping on the sticky, deadly oil.
No use crying over spilt milk.
I wave a straw in front of the store,
luring the turtles with lurid contaminants,
relishing the remnants of self-sustainability.
Is this our purgatory? I ask the empty beachfront.
Plastic acolytes chant their agreement.
iii. bargaining
The water is silent, muted by the squalid screams
of hopeless prayers and half-eaten dollars and the ink
that penned the ornamental laws of the sea.
A watched pot never boils.
I stick a thermometer into the ocean,
observing its red blood rise to the heavens,
weeping at the waves that are hot to the touch.
Can this be salvaged? I ask the stars above.
They vanish.
iv. depression
Rapacious: Man colonizes. Immortalizes. Borrows the world—an oyster? Or a bomb?
Ungracious: The clock hits zero—Mother Nature sends debt collectors in pursuit.
Voracious: Dead-end trails run cold. Man consumes all—everything is His.
Isn’t that funny?
There is no past nor future.
Only the present—a gift? Or a curse?
I laugh at the littered littoral.
I smile at the scarred shoreline.
Do not compare men to monsters.
What would the monsters think?
v. acceptance
A polar bear walks into a bar and orders a glass of ice.
Outside, I sell Styrofoam down by the seashore—
There are no more seashells.
Reflection
Reflection
What’s so funny about climate change? Every source I consulted, from numbers and graphs to pictures and documentaries, painted a picture of death and destruction. Denial and anger gave way to depression and acceptance. Sometimes I found myself laughing, not knowing whether it was a release of emotion or a cry of desperation. And then I realized how ironic that was—how we, as a collective species, have taken so much and returned so little, despite being the self-proclaimed “smartest organisms on Earth.” There is no use denying hard truths, for we seem to have shockingly little concern for the problem. Our oceans, which formed long before we arrived, have been bearing the brunt of our climate-changing actions for decades. Through metaphors, imagery, and allusions, I have tried to convey the worst irony of all: we are the sole culprit behind our suffering environment. In a society where living on other planets is seen as a more investable, exciting, and partisan project than repairing our own, I can only wonder how our children will see us. Tabula rasa (Latin for “clean slate”) on a generational level—we can present ourselves as the ones who caused the problem, gave up, and let it happen, or we can step up and unite for a common cause, accepting responsibilities and adjusting policies instead of pointing fingers and passing judgment. It is not too late to alter our impression on the future; each of us has our individual part to play in this recovery, and a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.