How Los Angeles Collided Metaphorically with an Iceberg

The near-dead sailing the Titanic

enjoy themselves, it’s later than they think,

but yet they sing: “No need for panic,

for we are sure this ship will never sink.”

So we, too, nearly dead, all sail

oblivious of hazards in the ocean,

till freezing water makes us fail,

ice-barriers to any further motion.

The term “life’s voyage” is a metaphor

that links all lives to journeys of this liner,

like one LA just took with more

resemblances to it that are not minor

than I can list in verse, metaphorically

colliding with no iceberg, but a callous climate

whose drastic changes, hardly allegorically,

meteorologically ruin it and rhyme it,

as closely as the rhyming of the Hebrew Bible’s

prophets matched their verses with what would befall,

truths treated by deniers as fake future libels,

sad fate of most predictions before empires fall.

This poem was composed while windy fires have been devastating large portions of Los Angeles, and was partly inspired by a poem by Robert Frost:

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.