Your Plastic Will Outlive Us All

They said the future would shine like pearl, a place of wonders yet untold,
But now it’s wrapped in plastic tight, in poison, waste, and greed’s stronghold.
The ocean swells with choking hands, the beaches glisten, slick with shame,
And every wave that meets the shore now whispers one familiar name.

Plastic – woven into time, a fossil that will never break,
A curse we spun with careless hands, a wound we’ll never quite unmake.
It drifts upon the dying seas, it settles deep in ancient sand,
A monument to all we’ve built, yet fail to truly understand.

We moulded it to fit our needs, we praised it for its strength and grace,
And now it lines the stomachs bare of whales who vanish without trace.
It fills the lungs of birds in flight, it snags the gills of fish in pain,
And still, we throw it, day by day, as if the world can heal again.

They told us it was nothing much, a harmless thing, a gift, a tool,
They sold it cheap, they filled our lives, and made us addicts, made us fools.
They wrapped our food, they wrapped our clothes, they wrapped our thoughts in plastic tight,
And laughed while oceans filled with waste beneath the artificial light.

“Recycle!” they chanted, so cheerful and bright, as if that was ever enough,
But plastic was made not to break, not to fade – just to pile up as mountains of stuff.
They bury it deep in the belly of Earth, but the ground will one day crack,
They push it far out to the sea, but the waves just bring it back.

It gathers in islands, monstrous and vast, where no one will dare to claim,
A continent born of bottles and bags, floating without a name.
It drifts through rivers, clogs the streams, it dances beneath the tide,
And with each gust of wind, it rises up, with nowhere left to hide.

A single cup, a plastic fork, a wrapper torn and tossed away,
A moment’s use, a century’s wound, a price we’re not the ones to pay.
A turtle twists, its shell deformed, wrapped tight in rings of cruel design,
A dolphin gasps, a plastic bag now tangled in its final line.

The cities gleam with neon lights, with fast food chains on every street,
Where coffee cups and straws cascade, discarded beneath rushing feet.
We live our lives in plastic dreams, in single-use, throwaway grace,
Forgetting that what we discard will never leave this place.

For plastic knows no time, no death, no wind to wear its edges thin,
It does not rot, it does not break, it lingers, waiting an eternal sin.
A plastic straw from decades past still floats within the ocean’s grasp,
And long after we’ve turned to dust, it’ll outlive our final gasp.

And now it moves within our veins, it weaves itself into our bones,
It laces all the food we eat, the air we breathe, the seeds we’ve sown.
It drifts in raindrops, falls like snow, in every glass we raise in hand,
It lines the flesh of unborn babes before their lives have truly spanned.

We thought ourselves apart from Earth, untouchable, immune,
Yet here we stand, as plastic-born, beneath a dimming moon.
For what we spill, we drink again, and what we waste, we breathe,
And all the micro-plastic shards now nestle underneath our sleeve.

The fish we gut, the bread we bake, the honey gleaming like gold,
They carry all the plastic dust of stories left untold.
So tell me now, does progress shine, when all we build is this?
A world of waste that never fades, a slow apocalypse?

The future waits in plastic tides, in oceans black and sick with oil,
In forests stripped to brittle bones, in earth that turns to poisoned soil.
What will we leave, what will remain, when centuries have come and passed?
A planet wrapped in plastic tight, a graveyard built to last.

No crumbling ruins, no rusted steel, no artifacts to trace,
Just bottled ghosts and shattered cups – a world devoid of grace.
No bones to tell of who we were, no stories left to pen,
Just plastic dolls and tangled nets, the legacy of men.

They’ll dig through time, unearth our past, and wonder at the sight,
Not temples tall or books of lore, but plastic shining bright.
A legacy not carved in stone, nor written down in ink,
But floating in the poisoned seas, too vast to even sink.

Yet still, the tides have not yet turned, the sky is dark, but not yet black,
And though the world is suffocating, there is still a path to track.
For hands that build can tear apart, and fires sparked can start anew,
And tides can shift, and minds can change – if only we push through.

It starts with hands that dare to mend, with voices raised, with feet that stand,
It starts with breaking from the chains convenience placed within our hands.
It starts with laws that stop the flood, with leaders forced to face the truth,
It starts with choice, with sacrifice, with lessons taught to all our youth.

It starts with holding giants back, with taking back control,
With ripping plastic from our lives before it swallows us whole.
For what we choose will shape the years, will carve the fate of Earth,
And only we decide if waste will be the measure of our worth.

Your plastic will outlive us all, but does it have to be this way?
Does every child deserve to breathe the poison of our yesterday?
Must every bird and fish endure the grave we chose to make,
Or can we dare to cut the ties and step before it’s all too late?

For time runs low, and tides rise fast, and silence is a curse,
And if we fail to act today, we’re doomed to a plastic hearse.
The oceans beg, the forests weep, the sky turns dark and grieves,
And all the world is watching now, will we be change – or thieves?

 

 

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