Or at least; it’s called ‘Rubbish’. As you can tell, I’ve been thinking about the environment quite a bit recently (maybe it’s the influence of the inspirational environmental protest group, Extinction Rebellion).

They say the oceans are full of plastic,
But you should see the front gardens where I live
On a windy recycling day;
Scenes of carnage and dismay,
The kind of heart-sinking mess
That’s sure to cause distress;
Make you feel like doing something drastic,
Like devoting your time to collecting it anew,
Something you know you’re not going to do,
Leaving you contaminated by guilt,
Blowing through your mind,
Like plastic bags blowing through the streets.

Where does it all come from?
The rubbish that accumulates in drifts,
Against fences and gates, under hedges,
That wedges in crevices,
Or flies aloft in the breeze,
Catches in trees, or floats in the canal,
Journeys along rivers,
Maybe all the way to the sea,
To wallow like jellyfish,
Be swallowed by many fish,
Seals, dolphins, whales and birds,
The situation is too absurd:
Should never have occurred.
But we human beings are profligate,
With no regard for the environment on which we, too rely.

I blame McDonalds – those golden arches get everywhere.
They don’t seem to care that they’re the cause of so much litter.
See, I reckon they view it as a kind of publicity;
All that discarded packaging is like free advertising,
A subliminal reminder that whenever we’re greedy for a cheap meal,
They’ll always be there with a special ball-burger deal.
But it’s too easy to look for scapegoats,
To blame governments and multi-nationals
For the degradation of the land, the air and the sea.
But while that may be rational,
We too must share the responsibility;
It’s not just the big guys who are tossers.

We need to change the way we live.
No excuse for single use;
Don’t take that plastic bag, for goodness sake,
One day it could spell the demise
Of something that lives in the sea.
Bubble-wrap, shrink-wrap; no way, sorry to be a nag.
They say’s there’s no planet B,
Actually, there is (probably)
But we’ll never see it;
Never bridge the millions of light years.
We’re trapped here, on our own planetary sphere,
Drowning in trash.

Better do what we can; eschew all packaging,
Re-cycle, re-use, don’t fling cigarette ends out of the window,
Dropping litter is a no-no; pick litter instead.
There’s something to be said for getting yourself in rubbish credit.
But when all’s said, it isn’t you and me,
But all the other buggers, who won’t see,
Who can’t be told; who won’t involve themselves
In the battle to save our world from free range plastic.
So where it will end, I’d rather not say,
But sooner or later, human kind will have had its day.

Enjoy your weekend everyone…

Text & NSW poster photo©Graham Wright 2019
Beach photo by Javardh on Unsplash