SCRIBE 2023 Mayday

SCRIBE MAYDAY
THE BURST OF THE SOCIAL VOLCANO
By AC Himaya V. Tupas
Here
Lounge the
Overlords of the
Societal hierarchies
Who conquer all power;
—
And then down goes the few ones
With deep pockets and silver spoons
That they ransacked by smogging truth,
Stifling resistances, and subduing mankind
Through the smokes and mirrors of their rule;
—
Now comes those wedged midway the social ladder
In a constant conundrum whether to trail the footsteps of
Those atop the sky-scraping summit or to stand with those at
The rock bottom, smothered by the clouded ash flow of slavery,
The piling avalanche of cruelty, and the flickering flames of death;
—
Then lingers the ones with hammers upon their clutches, the proletarians
Who have shed their blood, sweat, and tears toiling in the desolate industrial
Wastelands, quashed by the weight of the elite’s promises of gleaming utopias.
They are the givers who build, light, and clothe the world yet ironically the same
Plebs trammeled from reaping the fruits of their sown labor by shackles and chains;
—
And crumbling at the deepest of all depths, almost rotting over the bedrock are the masses
Wielding concave sickles which they thump over parched fields through rain or shine; those
Who have seen blood upon their crops, bullets in their homesteads, bombs over the mountains.
But behold—for these are the same crowd who will propel the outburst of the social unrest—and
The vanguards who will make the ruling class tremble from the quake of their inevitable revolution.
Art by Jan Brilly S. Chavez
2
51