by Gregg S. Lloren
The sun sinks after the storm,
and the island lies exposed—
trees torn out like ribs,
homes scattered like paper,
lives reduced to debris.
Homelessness. Death. Hunger.
An entire future rewritten
by incompetence and corruption,
by disasters amplified
not by fate—
but by failure.
I am angry—
not abstractly, not philosophically,
but politically.
Angry at a government that funds
flood control projects on paper
but leaves rivers clogged, infrastructures useless
and cities drowning.
Angry at officials who speak of “preparedness”
while they line their pockets with budgets meant
for the very people now buried in mud.
Angry at the “faithful” who preach endurance
instead of justice—
who tell us to kneel and pray
while the earth is splitting beneath our feet.
Angry at the God they insist on—
a God who watches this island
collapse and calls it “mystery.”
He may exist. But I don’t think he cares
For mothers who weep, wailing children,
Helpless fathers, brothers lost under the waves,
Nor for a sister sleeping under the rain.
And angry, too, at Nature—
brutal, unsentimental—
She who unleashed quakes after quakes
Two volcano eruption, and then a super typhoon
She without mercy, rules without law.
But even more at those
who weaponize “acts of God”
to hide their own negligence.
Angry at divine indifference and fascist Nature,
And their aggravation by human folly.
Don’t tell me about resilience.
That word has become
a leash.
Don’t tell me to pray harder
while bridges fall
and bodies are carried downriver.
Don’t tell me to be meek
when the ground has already taken enough.
Spare me the Scripture’s comfortable quotes.
The lessons of the past have become a cruel joke.
Let us say it plainly:
we live at the mercy of the Strong—
those with power, money, machinery,
The Omniscient, Omnipresent, Omnipotent,
The rule of survival of the fittest,
These and those who could have protected us
and chose not to.
Let the anger stand.
Let it be heard.
Because anger, in a place
abandoned like this,
is the only honest thing left.
–November 4, 2025
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The poet is a Cebu-based professor.
