A Land of Waste

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.  ~ T.S. Eliot

 

 

a portrait of plastic

bottle caps and broken shards

caged inside the bones of seabirds

 

the aftermath of meals

stuffing their bills

no living thing

can stomach

 

curiosity and hunger:

a killer combination

 

lines of water

bottles fossilized in rock

permanence of temporary

tools used only once

 

a gravestone of garbage

 

our skeletons

may out-live our bones

and tell no one

our wordless eulogy

but leave the earth

with images of ignorance

a man-made island

floating on the surface

of the Pacific

 

we created cups infinite

defeating time with life-

less immortality

 

succeeded in living

beyond our death

no longer 

through sonnet and song

just molded chemicals

Reviews

[Kaitlyn Stone]

This poem has been accepted for Septembers issue of Empirical Magazine! :)