Looking back to 1969 the words seem prophetic
“He’s got a plastic heart, plastic teeth and toes,
plastic knees and, a perfect plastic nose.
He’s got plastic lips that hide his plastic teeth and gums”…
so the Kinks sang then about their plastic man.
Now in the twenty-first century, it seems he’s here
as plastics ingested from our food
and inhaled in from the air we breathe
are becoming part of our bodies,
part of ourselves
to be inherited
by our children.
We’ve filled every hole in the ground
with our plastic waste, our plastic excesses
and soon the sea will be transformed into a plastic land.
Now we recycle it by the shipload from rich places to poor,
to places where the people don’t matter,
where “plastic man don’t feel no pain”.
There we dump it on the newly plasticised people
in the plastic land, we’ve created for them.
About the Poem
About the problems of plastic.
About the Author
Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places, and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy, and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud ‘War Poetry for Today’ competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com%20and%20https//www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/