I Bottled the Gods, But They Bottled Me

by Roger B. Rueda

If I had a peso for every time someone tried to stuff the universe into a little vial, I’d be rich enough to fund another ill-advised government project. But here we are, courtesy of Leoncio P. Deriada, who in his poem I Vialed the Universe attempts the impossible: to distill divinity, to miniaturize mystery, to bottle the ineffable. And, surprise! It doesn’t work.

This is, of course, the kind of intellectual arrogance that belongs in the hallowed halls of Congress, where some men—and I use that term both literally and figuratively—believe they can legislate against poverty by merely signing their names on pieces of paper, or regulate corruption while their pockets jingle with ghost-funded coin. Deriada’s speaker, much like some of our dear lawmakers, starts with the hubris of thinking he can reduce the infinite into something manageable, something quantifiable. But as the poem tells us, the Genie—the trickster, the cosmic enigma—escapes. He will not be corked, will not be contained. And so, the speaker is left with riddles.

Ah, riddles! The lifeblood of the bureaucracy! The thing some of our politicians speak in when asked direct questions. But here, Deriada does not mean the evasive drivel of charlatans. The riddles are divine paradoxes, intellectual whirlpools that swallow simple minds whole. We are no longer in the realm of the cheap magic trick, the empty promise, the grandstanding of fools. We are in the domain of something larger than ourselves.

The poem then shifts from arrogance to exhaustion. The speaker is now sleepless, haunted by questions, besieged by the strangeness of discovery. Thoughts, once neatly confined to the limits of human intellect, expand into "new towns"—a beautiful metaphor for the disorientation of true understanding. The bottled God is now unvialed, untamed, ungovernable. What is left to do? Certainly not another Senate hearing!

And so, the speaker surrenders.

This is where Deriada’s poem exposes the true nature of human ambition: we begin with the fantasy of control and end with the truth of submission. Not to tyranny, not to foolish men who mistake titles for wisdom, but to something larger. To mystery. To awe. To the unbottleable.

For those who believe that the world is best understood through numbers and decrees, through rules and rigid definitions, this poem is a slap on the face. A reminder that the universe will not fit in your test tube, nor will truth cower before your committees. You may think you have bottled God, but in the end, it is He who bottles you.

And that is why some minds remain caged while others, like Deriada’s, soar free.

Here’s the poem—let it sear through your mind.

 

I Vialed the Universe

a poem by Leoncio P. Deriada

 

I vialed the universe
And laughed at the concentrated Gods.
But the Genie escaped with His halo of riddles.
I pondered anew and unslept.
Thoughts were strange with the strangeness of new towns
Thoughts were as vast as the unvialed God.
I could not bottle or battle Him.
There: I saw Him mark in the matutinal mist.
I surrendered.