Melting Away

 —Poetry by Lynn White,
Blaenau Ffestiniog, North Wales
—Photos Courtesy of Public Domain

 

 

PLASTIC PIPELINE


“He’s got a plastic heart, plastic teeth and toes,
plastic knees and a perfect plastic nose.
He’s got plastic lips that hide his plastic teeth and
gums”,
so sang The Kinks then about their plastic man in
1969.

Now in the twenty-first century it seems he’s here
as plastic gushes everywhere
over land,
over sea
and into our very being
as plastics ingested from our food,
and inhaled in from the air we breath
become part of our bodies,
part of ourselves
to be inherited
by our children.

We fill every hole in the ground
and soon the sea will be transformed into plastic
land.
We re-cycle it by the shipload from rich places to
poor,
places where the people don’t matter,
where “plastic man don’t feel no pain”.
There we dump it on the newly plasticised people
in the plastic land we’ve created for them.


(prev. pub. in Ekphrastic Review challenge for
Benjamin Von Wong, January 2024)

 

 

 

 

 

STUFF


It’s easy for me.
Even though I’ve planned it
and psyched myself up,
when I walk into the shop
and see rail upon rail of stuff
it overwhelms me,
I can’t be bothered to look,
can’t be bothered
to sort through it all.

It takes only seconds for me to realise
that my jacket,
or jeans,
or coat,
or shirt
are good for a few more years.

It’s harder for those who shop as a hobby,
who get a buzz like a shot of tequila
from the pleasure of buying new,
especially when it’s so cheap,
but we’re drowning in it
all the stuff.
It’s squeezing us out of our homes,
filling up our land
stifling our oceans,
burning up our planet
with its non-stop production
and speedy conversion to rubbish.

It’s those little things
and some people just don’t buy it!



(prev. pub. in Silver Birch Press, How to Heal
the Earth series, 2022)

 

 

 

 

ALL THAT GLITTER

It glitters
like gold.
But is it
gold
or base
metal
being worked on
by an alchemist…
undergoing
transformation,
perhaps
with a touch
of magic,
with an elixir
of immortality,
an illusion.
Or perhaps
base oil
transformed
to
sparkly
plastic glitter
with
all too real
immortality.
Glittering,
littering
with
everlasting life,
all that glitter.


(prev. pub. in Silver Apples, 2018)

 

 

 

AFRICA IS EVERYWHERE

The factories closed for two weeks each summer
and it was off to the seaside then!
They would head for the beach and hire a deck chair
there were no sun-beds back in those days
and there they would sit on shell-laden sands,
the women in cotton frocks
and the men in grey flannels, sandals with socks
and a sleeves rolled up, open-necked shirt,
there were no tee shirts back then
and shorts were too daring for the over-twenties.
And most likely it was too cool in any case.

The sun could be bright though
so the women had a straw hat ready,
but this was too exotic
and extravagant for the men,
newspaper fashioned into a sailing-boat shape
was de rigeur for them.
And so one way or another
eyes were shielded
from the occasional brightness.

Nowadays the sun has grown angry,
too bright for our eyes.
It rages fiercely threatening all in its view.
Africa is everywhere now
and soon sun-beds will be out of fashion.
It’s too hot now,
too darn hot.


(prev. pub. in Alternate Route, October 2022)

 

 

 

 

 

MELTING AWAY


She could still remember
the warm days of summer,
seaside holidays,
times without end.
Almost.
Tick tock.
But now the warmth is too much
and time is melting away
in the sun.

Tick tock, tick tock
goes her memory
curling up
in the heat
and dying
like a beached whale
lying there
dried out
dried up.

Time has run out.
It became too agile
as she stiffened
it curved
and ran
tick tock, tick tock, tick tock
her memory is running down,
repeating itself
out of shape
growing ever more distant
and now it’s out of time
tick tock, tick tock
tick tock
tick.


(prev. pub. in Lion and Lilac Arts, January 2023)

___________________

Today’s LittleNip:

What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another.

―Chris Maser, Forest Primeval: The Natural History of an Ancient Forest

___________________

—Medusa, with thanks to Lynn White for her fine poetry today!

 

Poets from NorCal and beyond will be saddened to learn that San Francisco Poet Neeli Cherkovski has passed away. He was a wonderful poet and a wonderful man, and he will be missed. 

The Spring Equinox issue of the environmental poetry magazine, Canary, is now available at https://canarylitmag.org/.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A reminder that
Loud Mouths Spoken Word
and Stand-Up Comedy returns
to Sacramento tonight, 8:30pm.
For info about this  and other
future poetry happenings in
Northern California and otherwheres,
click on
UPCOMING NORCAL EVENTS
(http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/p/wtf.html)
in the links at the top of this page—
and keep an eye on this link and on
the daily Kitchen for happenings
that might pop up
—or get changed!—
 during the week.

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