We are Living in a Plastic World!

We are Living in a Plastic World!

Ecology and Humanities

Verses and Photographs by Dr Abe V Rotor

Plastic Elephant, River Cruise at Disneyland HK 2017 Photo by the author.

It moves, it calls your attention,
this virtual elephant.
Oh, it's still fantasy in any name,
work of foolish savant.

Hermit crab finds a home in a PVC elbow joint. (Internet)

We ask, for whom the bell tolls?

Laughable though pitiful,

a hermit crab in a plastic home;

the bell tolls none but the fool.

Potted plastic plants on the sidewalk, HK 2017 Photo by the author.

Warning! Don't touch the plants,

(else you discover they are fake);

make-believe to keep discipline

for peace-and-order's sake.

A flower shop - but which is natural, which is plastic? (Internet)

Plastic flowers everywhere, how lovely can they get,

crowded in a shop they look cheap though;

Not the pet flower of the Little Prince in his planet,

among the stars the whole night through.

The author's grandchildren, Markus and Mackie, trek on Big Buddha

Mountain, HK 2017. Photo by the author.

Playing hide a seek among the prop roots of the Buddha tree,

Perfect to hide, but where's the thrill,

on discovering it's all imitation, lifeless and still,

of plastic, concrete and steel?.

Plastic toys morgue (Internet)

Remnants of childhood's joy and mystery

now in a forgotten cemetery,

So died the laughter, song and fantasy,

of growing up fast to be free.

Food in plastic moulds in a Hongkong restaurant

Pavlov's conditioned learning,

a tool of consumerism;

culinary art indeed deceiving,

everything looks appetizing.

Our waste in the ocean is visible like the tip of an 

iceberg, 90 percent is down under.

Hidden under the rug of the ocean.

plastic waste to be forgotten;

eons hence submerged and drifting

and we call Nature our friend!

Giant Christmas Tree made of soft drinks plastic straw - one for the Book of
Guinness. Photos taken by the author at a parish church plaza in Bulacan, circa 2010.

 Giant Plastic Straw Christmas Tree

(before plastic straw was banned)

Call it Christmas Tree, call it tree of nativity and offering,

to a Messiah when the world seeks for peace and rest;

call it a tree of Conscientization* in shrouded light and truth,

in a modern world deluged with technology and progress.

Call it waste turned beautiful by small and innocent hands

into a thousand-and-one stars on a pylon rising to the sky

what we grownups simply throw away and pollute the earth,

and the manufacturers reap profits while the young ones cry.

Call it Christmas Tree, call it tree of nativity and offering,

to a Messiah when the world seeks for peace and rest;

call it a tree of Conscientization* in shrouded light and truth,

in a modern world deluged with technology and progress. ~

Plastic wastes live for 2000 years, drift with the Gulf Stream, winnowed into

a continent in the making, now the size of Texas. (Internet)

Land of plastics, ahoy there!

floating debris, lifeless and bare;

when the good life is over,

Alas! who would care? ~

Acknowledgement: Internet illustrations as indicated