If The World Was A Poem

If the world was a poem—

I. it could be a free verse; in songs of the waves moving out of their cadence, with no man to sing them in his own voice; with no words to rhyme the sound of an earthquake to that of heartbreak. look, how shamelessly did I just try to rhyme that. look at how we try to feel in control of everything. I think the world used to spin in the free verse before we got on this roundabout. 

Ii. it could be a haiku; when adam kissed eve, the first time the earth witnessed love - it would’ve run short of words, and wrapped itself into three lines. when syllables couldn’t be counted on fingertips but you could only feel the lump in your throat when you’d say the other half of her name, that’s how you’d break it apart - that’s how syllables would work. 

Iii. it could be slam poetry; when mankind had made it's way further, the world knew it had to quell its volcanoes. it knew that it can erupt, that it can quake, but humans won’t budge if the lava isn't near them. so they snap their fingers in the audience, applauding the wonders of nature. but the earth weeps, it knows that this one last performance is all it can give. the audience grows larger with time, but so does the chatter with the megalomania; and for all you know, no one’s listening to the earth’s cries anymore —no one can hear this poem. the earth searches for synonyms for its volcanoes, but the only connotation its audience knows too that is in factory furnaces. smoke chokes the earth, but we tug tighter at the noose because its tears cascade into its oceans —& we just want to scorch these into barren lands anyway.

Iv. perhaps, all it’ll ever be is an elegy; a mourn for all the conceits based on its sorrows & losses. the earth will never tell you, but it has tucked all its words back in graveyards because they perished waiting for you to make sense out of them. you were too busy digging your own grave anyway, weren’t you? You’d pluck flowers from the earth itself to set it on its own grave, & the earth would know, there is no other way for this poem to end but this. the earth will let the sky fall, and you’ll think its poem is just hyperbole, but trust me, it’s just an elegy, and no one survives an apocalypse like this one, no one makes it to the last stanza of this poem, no one knows which line’s next, because there is no rhyme, and no rhythm— we snatched it off of the world, and now it's nothing but a graveyard of all the poems it could’ve been.

— a poem the earth couldn’t write.