PLASTIC

How unreal we thought it—see-through substitute
for the real thing, glass, but light, serviceable
harmless as a toy, child-safe…but even then
washed up among the seaweed like jellyfish that wouldn’t sink
then all along the shores of Greece, beach litter
shoved into hidden landfill or back out to sea.
And staying there, fed secretly by our disconnection
slowly becoming a monster, a cloud-island, miles wide
an alien pseudo-continent of our own making
and indestructible. No longer Frankenstein in person
but a different imago, inhuman, indigestible
in the gullet and belly of a dolphin, shark, seagull
the reality of our insanity—Creation’s Destroyers
the play-do of demi-gods who remain as transient
as the wind and rain, as fragile to breaking
and whose slaves are refugees everywhere swarming
out of Aleppo and Mosul and Oxford Street
consumed by fear and greed, privileged to be
the Sons and the Daughters of Plastic,
the God who is non-biodegradeable
forever and ever polluting our common joy
truckload by load until we say Enough

please give us back
vessels made from this earth
people
made for this planet
not an alien space station
of imagined salvation

—behold, the Golden Calf is plastic !
And the prophet is descending.
Please—wake us, and Jonah-wise, vomit us up.

 

Jay Ramsay
Illustration Nick Victor


This entry was posted on in homepage and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink.

One Response to PLASTIC

    1. Yay ole Jay…Aries hombre.you speaketh de truth powerfully, confrontationally, gutforcefully. Vomit us up!!

      Comment by Richard Vick on 13 April, 2017 at 5:06 pm

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.