Clemencio Bascar

Man-made Apocalypse
 
Grossly the clouds have been so unjust today; not even
a tiny drop of hydrogen was dropped on this utterly parched
section of our ancestral farm; the other side of the river bank
was flooded causing unprecedented havoc on the tomatoes
almost ready for harvest; for both parts of our geography
the torrential rains brought nothing but anguish in our hearts.
 
This never was the tradition of the season in some recallable past; certainly not in my
boyhood when the clouds never missed or faltered in obeying the time-honored cycle
of the monsoon winds bearing the buckets of rain to sustain the collective life of the crops
 we planted for cash; I never ran out of silver coins to buy a stick of ice-drop- the most popular
and instant remedy then to quench our thirst.
 
Though not a weather expert nor a noted climate change pundit
 the evidences of degradation and decay
 around this peninsula, strongly I suggest for their inclusion in
 Al Gore’s documentary on how mankind’s rapacious greed
 for material wealth is pushing itself to the brink of extinction; the collapsing
ice mountains in the North Pole and the periodic burst
 of fire in the equatorial jungles make up only a tiny part of
 the panoramic picture of the horrifying cataclysms taking place on earth
with over-speeding frequency;
 
I think
The rope is now half way around our necks.
 
 
 
Clemencio M. Bascar is a columnist in Zamboanga Today and Zamboanga Peninsula Journal. He lives in the Philippines with his wife, and has three children. Formerly, he was the vice president for Corporate Affairs at Western Mindanao State University and is the recipient of various awards and distinctions, including First Place Winner of the National Poetry Contest jointly sponsored by the United Nations Information Center (Philippines) and PRAMA Foundation in connection with the International celebration of Culture and Peace. He was also a Philippine Civil Service Commission Pagasa Awardees, named outstanding public servant in 2006. Many of Bascar’s poems have been published in local, national and international print and online literary magazines such as Zamboanga Today, Daily Zambonga Times, Women’s, MOD, CHIC, MUSED-BellaOnline Review, and Torrid Literature Journal.