An Update From Sisyphus
Karlo Sevilla
After all these millennia,
the fucking gods finally
commuted my sentence
because it already bored
the shit out of them.
At last, I’m spared
from pushing that boulder
up a hill again and again
for all eternity.
Now I am condemned
to just run around this plain,
one full circle after another,
clockwise then counter.
Every stride, strains.
Every breath, heart-heavy.
From point A then back on repeat.
And to think that my misery began
when I told a distraught father
that I witnessed a great bird
kidnap her missing daughter,
and the feathered culprit
turned out to be none other than
that lascivious alpha god.
Among the dead, I’m the one
who pines for another death
but of the ordinary kind.
An absolute ending into nothingness.
Not perdition in the afterlife.
I no longer push that giant rock,
but I still bear the burden
of this ancient injustice,
having borne witness
against the powerful.
Karlo Sevilla is the author of Recumbent (8Letters Bookstore and Publishing, 2023) and six other poetry books. Thrice-nominated for the Best of the Net, his poems appear in Philippines Graphic, Philippines Free Press, DIAGRAM, Matter, Radius, and elsewhere. He is a 2024 International Fellow of the International Human Rights Art Movement (IHRAM) for poetry. He blogs at karlosevillaofquezoncity.blogspot.com.