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Wordless Words
Aditya Panangat
Flower Mound, TX
2022, Junior, Poetry & Spoken Word

Climate change this,
These days, all I seem to hear
Is this climate change fear.

I watched as the trees fell,
And the tree branches broke.
I watched the world crumble—
While nobody spoke.

“I told them to stop,”
“To fix what they broke!”
You can’t help but yell out,
And that, that’s the joke.

The funny thing about climate change
Isn’t the Doomsday Glacier
Or one degree increase—
It’s the funny nature of all this fuss—of us.

That’s why we speak just to speak
And post just to post:
We want to say that “we tried,
But the world was toast.”

Words have meaning
Because of actions which underly,
And when these actions disappear?
Well, then these words die.

A tongue that speaks
Without intent to follow through
Is a tongue which speaks
Nothing at all, too.

So, yes, we may speak
and chatter our mouths dry,
But, the funny thing is, if we don’t act,
We might have to say good-bye.

Reflection

I decided that, while writing my poem, I would be real—say exactly what was my point to the "t." I was shocked by the outcome—it somehow took all my ambivalence and raw emotion and transferred it to the reader, not just through the words but also by my tone. The poem displayed my frustration, my frustration of going on any social media platform and being bombarded by posts by people pretending to support climate change even though they didn't care one bit. I hope that by reading my poem, readers realize that it's time to stop meaninglessly saying and to start doing.

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Wordless Words

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