TICKS

AP Literature "Sestina" poems. I actually wrote mine..in ADVANCE. ??

On days like this, the sun burrows itself into my temples like a tick.
It grinds into my brain, rumbling the grounds of my mind with its heat.
Such is the island—hot and humid—each day our clothes are marinated in sweat.
Tolerance sways like a coconut tree in the breeze, but little by little
Branches twist, turn, and fall. Little by little, we fall apart like buildings—
Aged and dilapidated—each of us questioning the length of our stay here.

These are the Northern Mariana Islands. How long have they been here?
Fourteen rocks protruding out of the ocean's surface, like ticks
Beside names on a list of innumerable lands. Our people building
the islands' history, as though it makes us any different. What heats
up our reputation besides the negative? How little
have we made ourselves in old greed gone exploitive? We sweat

Unnecessarily. Mistakes haunt us. We've exploited the sweat
and blood of others to build our lands. Here
is the karma called Today that will take the little
we have left, little made by us, mistakes made by many. We are ticks
sucking off each others backs. Our anger alone raises the heat
by 10 degrees in the summer time. Illogical anger building

Itself upon our shoulders, caused by our old hands. These buildings
that bulge up out off our dry soil were made from the sweaty
fingers and palms of foreigners who have come here for the salvation of work. The heat
pays no mercy to their sacrifices and neither do we. What have we here
among the people—we are divided into classes, each one ticked
off by another, one working to feed the other. How little

Have we grown, we have shrunk in our manipulation, in our little
luxuries that provide small comforts to the fortunate, but none to the builders,
none to those who toil and break their backs under the sun, whose skin are ridden with ticks
that parasite off their labor. Such are the islands we live in. It's as though the sweat
that dampens our clothing will cook us if we step out beneath the sun. Here
we falter; we are weakened by perceptions of civilization. We become afraid of the heat

That our ancestors once reveled in. We were born out of this heat,
but today we fear it. Like the sun, the truth is a parasite. Little
see it excavating our soils, digging here and there, there and here;
shoveling away our sense and our sight. What builds our buildings
breaks our ethics. We've cheated and must be punished. Sweat
out of our builders, taunted by the sun, will soon drown us, in a wash, like ticks.

We launch our proboscis into the damp, sun-cooked skin of the ticked, the sweaty;
sucking the little blood they have left, the few ounces inversely proportional to the buildings’
weight in concrete, instructing the construction of shade for here, now, we hide from the heat.