Pacific Garbage Patch

There is a false island lost mid-pacific
an Armageddon prophet
carrying plastic in its back pocket
holding our unwanted on a mother’s meridian.

Between 135 degrees east to 155 degrees east
from 35 degrees north to 42 degrees north
you will find this swirling gyre grabbing garbage
into an infinite spiral of toxic waste 25 times bigger
then a Hawaiian island state
because in the middle
mother earth is gathering our forgotten.
Our too old/ our too faded/ our too tired/ too easily
disposable disintegrated into suspended animation.
We find her over packed with our discarded back handed scraps
and dismiss her so easy as if she owes us
for the trap of our existence
like we deserve more than subsistence
so we fuck her for even hinting
she might resist us and hoard riches
as we slit her skin for our instant benefit. Now our mother
has more in common with a beaten wife
than a giver of lives.

But I don’t think this mother is above revenge.
Because we will swallow
the sole of the shoe we dumped last year
in the fish we eat this week.
So listen to tomorrow’s history laughing arm and arm with earth.
They’re having hydrogen hick-ups
and bellies aching distended with noxious gas.
I’m seeing our wombs filled with trash.
We are creating ourselves barren and
this will be our cosmic punch line.
We will be the hung the hang man and the noose
swinging our mother from an indifferent loop
knotted with difficult truths
we have forgotten how to discover.

But in the northern pacific there is a new country
floating beneath the surface.
It is plastic.
It is lost nets and thrown away dreams.
It is bottle caps and yesterday’s things.
It is a chemical compound backbone we cannot break
only translate into food chains.
Here is our cancer.
We are manufacturing our own tumor
malignant and starving feasting on the flesh of our mother.

Can you hear her whisper -
Sometimes you cannot see below my surface
but I am not bottomless
she says and I listen while I stand
holding a throwaway starbucks cup in my hand.

I sweep my crumbs beneath the table.
I eat more than my share.
And tomorrow I will buy another coffee
in a disposable cup with a polystyrene cap
showing nothing biodegradable about me

while the earth speaks.
I am plastic down to my digestive tract she says.
I am mecury/lead/monoxide/I am poison.
Petroleum lined at the cellular level
confine me in molecular chains.
Gift wrap me in lead.
Embalm my flesh with the dead.
Spit me disposable and I will give you treats
plastic sand beaches and food you cannot feast.
Remember she laughs
You should not have shit where you eat.

Now she watches us bickering over fate.
Wonders if too late we will see our expiration date
filled with too many too much and not enough.
Come she will say let’s come together and listen
to our heart beats
stutter.