LatinosUSA

“Birds in the Setting Sun” artwork by the author’s god-daughter, Nisa Winter

Existential Navigation

From last year’s eclipse, when all looked skyward,
to yet another earthquake last week in Istanbul;
from a darkened sky denoting a world on fire,
to when I felt the foundations of our world shake: It is existential navigation.

Like still-breathing butterflies pinned to paper,
we seem impaled to a world that waits and watches;
extreme weather, a globe spinning out of control,
warming up where it should be cold & vice versa: It is existential equivocation.

An endangered future and an uncertain present,
looking back to the past, what was left undone;
a planet spinning out of control, like a plane
plunging, pilotless, from the carbon-clogged sky: It is existential abdication.

Loss of land and biodiversity, yet other threats,
with climate change running amok, unanswered prayers;
At the core, our humanity is at stake, and much more
but we wait, sightless, voiceless, without a navigator: It is existential eradication.

People: wake up, smell the coffee, don’t give up hope!
What humans have made wrong, they can then mend.
We can chart our course and navigate these currents.
I foresee a new beginning, not a bitter end. It is existential amalgamation.

Originally published in “The Bloomin’ Onion”

~~

Weathered and Worn

Either just too hot,
or too fecking cold;
Frigid and freezing
or hot and steaming.
Loveless and lovelorn,
life’s highway stretching
back in the distance;
harnessed and blinkered,
spying half-shadows.
I’m weathered and worn.

For far way too long,
been rode very hard;
Slapped on the ass, and
stabled in the barn.
So wet and forlorn,
trembling to the bone,
pawing at the ground;
for they’ll shoot horses,
until the sun dies.
The world’s final morn.

Originally published in “Ivy Literary”

~~

Eclipse

All eyes looking upward,
searching the heartless sky,
a darkened day on show;
moon and sun in a dance,
blinded by the event.

Voices raised yet not heard,
lives lived only to die,
dreams lined up in a row;
people are in a trance,
not knowing what it meant.

Call it an eclipse,
if you so desire.
Staring at the sun:
it’s a world on fire.

Originally published in “Arlington Literary Journal”