- Creative Writing -

See the pile of trash?

Posted by: Reggie on July 22, 1996 at 19:54:16:

Landfill by mark n schieldrop


See the pile of trash?

see the spent, useless earwarmers thrown away,

the old bologna sandwich

the tired, worn shoes

the diapers stacked like bricks

it's the landfill in 1999.99999

only a thousand years ago it held a fire

and a pit

and twelve huts

love and hate, passion

and the secrecy of life bloomed

right here where this shopping cart rusts.


Ahh, but who cares?

we need a place to put our waste

we can't do anything with disposable lighters

wrappers, tinfoil, plastic spoons and forks

once we've used them.

We need our plastic santas and

kool aid boxes

we need to prepackage produce

box cereal, half gallon milk.

we have lawns not

gardens -- farmers died out long ago

the whirring machines slicing distant earth

long saved us from dirty hands and

gave us palmolive

gave us silky smooth pantene salon style

hands skin lips hair deodorant smell.

give that up? For what?


Walking the piles of rubbish we see old brochures

for cruise ships -- the sierra club

trying to save trees

hell, i've got a nice spruce in my front yard,

spread the little lights on it every December

the best on the block.

Damned if they cut that

doesn't matter over out there--trees don't matter there

hell, there's no lawns, no need to string lights

on those trees they just sit doing nothing

maybe animals, but hell, there's a lizard shop

next to Baskin Robbins down the road,

past the third light, on the left,

across from the palm reading hairdressers.

Get all the animals you need there,

they're clean and nice too -

Jesus, out wild they bite, got them weird diseases.


Bunch of environmental chicks in school

line up emptying their trays with the rest of us,

maybe they eat yogurt and hummus, but hell the plastic bags

still fall from their hands topping the pile.


Copyright : (C)1996 Mark N Schieldrop (yakka@mailhost.net)



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