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Showing posts with label Trash Gyre. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Trash Gyre. Show all posts

Saturday, January 01, 2011

The Golden Year or Two [Guest News Poem by Jack Granath, January 1, 2011]

The Golden Year or Two [Guest News Poem by Jack Granath, January 1, 2011]
By Jack Granath

After forty-five years of work
in a manufacturing plant,
I finally retired
to the Floating Island of Plastic.

I’ve got a beach chair,
a supply of disposable
novels, and earphones
made of leatherette—
whatever that is—
a cooler for my cola,
and a collection of stuffed
birds on crucifixes. I bask
in what my doctor calls

“the enemy,” synthetic
beach togs revealing a grilled-cheese
tan beneath grizzled chest hair.
I’ve earned this. My wife
Evangeline would have loved it,
had she lived.

And I’ve got the Internet.
I’m a gentleman scholar now
(from the Greek for “leisure”)
and know that plastic comes from
plastikós, from plássein: to
shape or mold. I’m shaping it,
Angie, if only by watching it go.


Jack Granath is a librarian in Kansas City. His website is www.jackgranath.com





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Monday, October 11, 2010

Trash Cycle [Today's News Poem, October 11, 2010]

Trash Cycle [Today's News Poem, October 11, 2010]

Elsewhere, they're landfilling
Lots for the offices:
Lead in the firmament
Sweating the excesses
Deeper than rivulets,
Under the glamorous
Surface of glossiness.
Closing the aperture,
Snapping the elements
Shut, with a fiberglass
Shield as the leftovers
Sprout up as carriers
Bearing the heaviest
Metals: the flowers of
Chromium, mercury.
Likewise its counterpart
Demonstrates streamlining.
Empty aluminum
Can with a colorful
Sham: who can emulate
Joy much less paint it on
Drinks? Is it currency?

"Hungarian police today arrested the managing director of the aluminum company behind the spill of toxic sludge that killed eight people, drove dozens from their homes and threatened to pollute the Danube River."
—Phil Cain, The Christian Science Monitor, October 11, 2010
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2010/1011/Hungary-arrests-executive-connected-to-red-sludge-spill

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Monday, May 10, 2010

A New Treasure Isle [Today's News Poem, May 10, 2010]

A New Treasure Isle [Today's News Poem, May 10, 2010]

Sanitize leftovers, place me in bins.
Ripening refuse may travel beyond
Sirens in mourning. The harrowing din
Stresses the senses; the engines respond—

Salvaging trinkets—emitting the sound
Rescues create. The remainder is bagged,
Shipped in containers and sold by the pound.
Cauterize wounds with the garbage we dragged

Out of our houses and into the seas;
Choking the poison with sanitized piles.
Vomited litter: the corpses of trees
Join with the rancid, to form a new isle.


“Ms. Crowley has long hair, a ruddy outdoor complexion, and a sincere manner. She wants to sail west in the next month or two, out to what is called the North Pacific Trash Gyre. Her goal is to start cleaning up the plastic trash that has leaped into social consciousness over the past couple of years. ”
– Paul Van Slambrouck, The Christian Science Monitor, May 10, 2010
http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2010/0510/A-passion-to-clean-up-the-Pacific-Ocean-s-great-garbage-patch

“Engineers are examining whether they can close a failed blowout preventer by stuffing it with trash, said Adm. Thad Allen, the commandant of the Coast Guard.”
– CNN Wire Staff, May 9, 2010 11:06 p.m. EDT
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/05/09/gulf.oil/?hpt=T2?hpt=C1


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