Chaotic Gymnasium
the morning after the bus plunged into the river, 32 made it to the water base, bus-wrecked.
& we took threnody to the shoreline. at least to remind waters that
a madman shares with the household when his dead body decomposes near
the pavement. 32 teeth i have, bear the
victims of the wreck, each. & somewhere,
a man tattoos the wall lines & names them 32 polyphyletic sons of bloody waters.
that's how adults draw the dead to their breastbones. to know this more,
put crickets in the brimmed basin—
an experiment of chaos & chaos.
only then you know tragedy has less euphemism. only then you know at the
lurking of tragedy, everyone becomes
selfish, reckless & helpless.
because right now, a mother battles to save her body, leaving her child backed
down the chasm in the water floor.
i empty tears here not on the water,
because even this river mourns reddish
than our eyes can carry. such displeasure
differentiating s from d—
which by the conflicting initials,
swimming —a brief excursion until your
mother calls home. &
drowning —a chaotic gymnasium
at the ruthlessness of waters.
About this poem
The poem, “Chaotic Gymnasium” is an elegy to the victims who drowned in the water while their vehicle lost control of the gear. They were submerged at night, and nobody came to their rescue. It’s when the news is aired on the radio that some photojournalists went alongside the drone to lift them out of the water, but before then, they have already given up the ghost. Only the bus is lifted using the drone. The title of the poem clears the air enough to bury every line in the mind. At first, some little children think they are swimming, not knowing they are drowning. On the second thought, they think such could be “Chaotic Gymnasium”; the first of its kind. As part of cultural practices, their relatives took their dead bodies and buried them. To keep remembering the ugly incident, they make sure their dead don't go out of memory. Some marks on the wall. Some sculpted their images in the front of their houses. Some keep the enlargement of their portraits in their offices or work p more »
Submitted by benokechukwu13 on July 29, 2022
Modified on March 08, 2023
- 1:06 min read
- 7 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | X X X AX B C XX A XX X CD XD XX CX XB |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,154 |
Words | 219 |
Stanzas | 15 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2 |
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"Chaotic Gymnasium" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2023. Web. 4 Jun 2023. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/133223/chaotic-gymnasium>.
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