Image from Earth.Org
Where the tide leaves in sorrow,
where the oceans weep
beneath the sky’s wide and endless dome,
Lies a silent affliction,
a slow creeping bane
that shrouds the earth
in synthetic foam.
It slithers through rivers,
it clings to the trees,
a cursed creation
of humanity’s lore,
An eternal ghost
of our desires,
a fragment of dreams
now festering
on every shore.
Borne on the breath
of a ravenous world,
where consumption reigns
with a ceaseless hand,
Plastic, the spectre,
arises unseen,
entwining our fate
in a synthetic strand.
Its birth was a promise
of convenience and ease,
a future where life
could be cased in a shell,
Yet this fragile veneer,
so deceptively bright,
became the harbinger
of a living hell.
In the depths of the sea
where the corals once bloomed,
now lies a desert
of toxic remains,
The fish swim through fields
of translucent death,
their bellies distended
with poisonous grains.
The albatross soars
over islands of waste,
where its kin fall prey
to a cruel disguise,
Their nests
are of bottles,
their food but shards,
and with each new generation,
the hope dies.
The forests that once breathed
the earth’s sweet breath
are choked by a lattice
of threads unseen,
The trees wear garlands
of plastic decay,
their roots entwined
with the human machine.
Even the winds,
once pure and free,
now carry the burden
of man’s decree,
For every breeze
that kisses the land
leaves behind
a residue of misery.
In the urban sprawl
where the streets are alive
with the hum of progress
and ceaseless pace,
We wonder through the gloom
of our own design,
blind to the slow suffocation
we embrace.
Our markets are brimming
with treasures galore,
each trinket encased
in a polymer shell,
But the true cost
is hidden beneath the sheen,
a price we pay
as we march toward hell.
For every bag
that is tossed aside,
every straw
that is carelessly thrown,
Adds to the mountain
of waste we create,
a monument
to the seeds we’ve sown.
And though the earth
cries out in pain,
her tears lost
in the slothful deed,
We continue to carve
our path of despair,
indifferent
to the warnings
we fail to heed.
In the dark of night,
when the world is still,
the ghosts of our folly
murmur their tales,
Of creatures that lived
in harmony
with the earth,
before the advent
of plastic’s veils.
But now those voices
are drowned
in reactor vessels,
and the clamour
of endless desire,
And the world
we once knew,
the world that was green,
is consumed
in a microplastic pyre.
Yet there is still time,
though the clock ticks away,
to turn back the tide
of our self-made fate,
To reclaim the world
that we’ve lost to decay,
and restore it
to a brighter state.
But it will take more
than a passing whim,
more than a token
of fleeting care,
It will take a revolution
of the heart,
a new way of being,
a collective prayer.
For the plastic apocalypse
is not a storm
to wait out
and watch,
It is a slow
and suffocating plague
that brings the world
to its knees.
But within us lies the power
to change,
to break free
from the bonded monomer curse,
To heal the earth
and ourselves,
to find a new path,
and to live in a world
where care comes first.
So let us rise,
let us stand as one,
and cast off
the yoke of our plastic sin,
Let us breathe new life
into the earth,
and let the healing
of the world begin.
In the end, when the plastic is gone,
and the earth is green
and whole once more,
We will look back
on this time of change
and know
that we played a role in the cure.
For we will have saved
ourselves from the brink,
and given the world
a new lease on life,
And in doing so,
we will have found
our redemption,
and ended
the reign of plastic’s strife.
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So many apocalypses - so much to rue & regret - the signs & symptoms of this current plague evident wherever one looks; microplastics in mammalian brains, in oceanic & freshwater pisceans, along with whales and who knows what else entangled in discarded fishing lines (invariably made from artificial fibre); the disturbing and disgusting images of elephants and others feeding on the rotting detritus of human garbage heaps, ingesting plastic as they struggle to survive in a world of diminishing habitat; countless kilometres of shorelines littered with thousands of tonnes of discarded plastic containers, along with an estimated 8 million metric tonnes entering the planet's oceans annually; seabirds dying with gullets & guts clogged by plastic debris, the heartbreaking images of children spending their days wading across refuse tips collecting plastics and other materials for recycling; the toxic pollution of these materials when incinerated adding to the already overburdened existences of modern-day dwellers in the wastelands... what would Dante have to say about this descent into the pits of hell... these nightmarish fruits of modernity and its bastard child, capitalism?