The Mob by Ikera Olandesca (17, Philippines)*

When night goes, they tell 
themselves: they won't lose darkness 
in their finite light, the advancements 
they abandon, the land they will not walk.
They will cower from the backbones of angels.

---

They will neglect that noise is always 
agitation, or that the extremes 
and ignorances of inflictions
are always erroneous. 
Certainly the night is theirs.
After they ignore us,
there is no way they bear us.
There is no way they yield. 
They deny the wasteland 
made whole, complexly 
completed by the predecessors 
of a non-ecumene and neverness
where a plump white boy 
can ascend to lords or die 
to multiple fathers, and will doubt 
the decaying citizen, then lose himself, 
quieting for hordes. And know, 
they are close to dullness, close 
to demise, and that means 
they are giving up, destroying divisions 
that are flawed. They are giving up, 
destroying divisions made to demolish 
the individual, to betray all cultures, 
colors, characters and conditions 
of woman. Before then, they lower 
their shut eyes to those laying beyond them
and those laying after them. They open 
the bridges, not because they know 
to put their past behind them, 
but because their likeness 
is the only thing they know.

​
​