Category: Poems about Society

Only remembered
For your death and for those you
Brought down with you

Context (if you’re interested):

I visited the Terracotta Army that day. It’s a real marvel of human ingenuity. I was learning about how often Chinese emperors would bury wives, servants, and others with them to serve in the afterlife. Nowadays, some of them we know very little about them except the humans they killed with them. Sometimes in life, the main lingering impacts we have are the destructive ones. It can make you think.

Come as you aren’t
I’ll be better able to
Make you how I want

(The story behind this poem; only read this part if you’d like to hear my personal story. Skip if it you’d prefer to glean your own meaning from the poem: I wrote this poem to help me vent my emotions about a specific dispute that happened. I am trying to convey how humans tend to event more and more arguments to solidify their initial impression in their mind even as more facts made it clear their position was wrong.)

For me, this poem is about conformity, about the pressure to be a blank slate so one can conform to how others want you to be.

I thrust my phone through
The throngs of tourists to take
My selfie alone

Context (if you’re interested):

This haiku is based on this Japanese haiku:

From the window of the departing train,
I first thrust my head out,
so as not to lose.

Welcome all
We want to serve you better
Bingo extreme

Context (if you’re interested):

This is a compilation of ads I saw driving around Manila. I assembled them together to get a sense of the surreal kind of feel advertisements can have when you stop to think about them.

Those with a purpose
Are better at worshiping
Idols than the rest.

Context (if you’re interested):

I have noticed how living with a purpose can lead one more susceptible to be swept into ideology. Not simply because they can take too far whatever they find purpose in, but because those with a purpose have something to lose, so they can end up endorse problematic things when that seems necessary to maintain what they have

Some people you meet
Possess the same look of the
Demon you just fought

Context (if you’re interested):

I don’t know if you have also seen this in the eyes of anyone else you see walking down the street.