Caveat Poem by Cheryl L. DaytecYañgot

Even if my body is dented from incessant
pummeling with the cold, glinting metal
fashioned by your harried technology,
I hear your idiosyncratic lark of greed
I vividly see you as you count the gold
abstracted from my womb, oblivious to
my harrowing pain escalating each trice
Satiated, you will abandon me unkempt,
defaced, mutilated, raped, half-dead.

For your sake, I must contain my wrath.

I cry, yes, for mirth, and my tears bring
life to a lotus about to give up the ghost
I puff for rapture and my breath blows
a fair maiden’s hair away from her face
It scatters the seeds of the dying pine tree
to multiply its species, sprinkling sweet
perfume once more to your stinking world

But when I cry for pain beyond the pale
of my endurance tested for generations,
my desolate tears surge like a ferocious
cogency legating irreversible destruction
When I shiver from the vigor of your fists,
your palaces crumble and your pavements
crack creating a large crevasse in its wake
The Red Sea parted and the slaves fled
from bondage in a foreign land to liberty.
But your grounds will split to swallow you
and make you prisoners of your own idiocy

For your sake, I must not unbridle my wrath

But you betrayed me so many times
I endured all excruciating torture
How much more can I take?

My womb gives life.
My ineffable sorrow
takes it back.

Do not lay the dead at my feet.

-5 January 1998