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Scarlet Niamh Aug 2017
I live in a cracked land with glowing light
all around me as I hold my tools
with hands of broken polystyrene.
This is a world I can live in no longer,
where plants used to grow and the earth
was once rich with fertility. Now it is barren,
with death and decay spreading from where my body
meets the earth. I will never feel the soft
grass beneath my feet again - on impact,
I **** all life. Beauty is destroyed
and everything placed in my hands crumbles
and withers away into nothing. This
was once a place of wealth and plenty, where love
flew through the air and played like swallows
swooping and swerving
their way to freedom, but now
love has been forced into small, sealed boxes
stowed away in some decaying corner
of my heart. I still feel the way your hands
left burning trails across my skin,
the way it felt to see you looking
down into my eyes, but none of this
is alive. The way your eyes shone
is locked in a cage and is shattering
faster and faster with every desperate
touch from my plastic fingertips.
There is nothing here except the stretch
of polythene covering my mouth and restraining
my lungs, my screams.
Help me, my love.
The light is leaving my eyes.
~~ Solar System, 7/10 ~~
SQUID Aug 2017
Inflatable bride march,
Plastic enormous,
Stoical hens,
Mystery "pleasures".
Naomi Hurley Jul 2017
I live
In a cardboard cutout house
Our plates and silverware
Are plastic
The food adorning them
Plastic as well
Glossy and vibrant
But poisonous if consumed

No water will pour
From the sink or tub
If you try to turn
The handle

The plants are fake
The dog is fake
The microwave won't turn on
The floor looks wooden
                           (which may be the case)
For there is no carpet
                           in sight
No decor to behold

I try to pull back
The sheets on the bed
Only to find
That they're entwined--
Attached to the mattress
That feels more like
Pottery
I lean down to see
                           "Made in China"
Etched on the side
Of the frame

My footsteps echo
Down the hall
On the wooden floor
Of the cardboard cutout house
Until I finally see
Something living
Something real

Until I get close.

Her skin is matte
Her eyes are dull
Her teeth are chalk white
Her hair (maybe made from silk?)
                           sits perfectly in place
She is positioned with a smile--
                           Her vinyl arm bent at the elbow
                           Masquerading a friendly wave

She is merely a sculpture
                           A doll of a human being
Filled with wax instead of tissue
Factory made, not a product of Love(TM)

I escape
Away from the figurine Mother
The clay bed
Hard floors
Prop kitchenware and
Plastic food

Because a cardboard cutout house
                           is not a home.
Islands of trash are forming.
Plastics are swarming.
The forgotten fish,
With Fishing nets adrift.
Plastic.

It never goes away.
The killer that cannot be killed.
Our fish are dying,
Our baby dolphins are crying.
Plastic.

Bottles thrown to float,
Choking throats of the dying.
They’re eating the rotten,
Our forgotten friends.
Plastic.

Trash is thrown to float,
Caps get stuck in sea turtles throats,
Our oceans are too lovely,
To make them all turn ugly,
With all this plastic pollution.

Once a beauty,
Our oceans are filthy
But maybe someday,
The oceans will once again live in peace.
Plastic, a killer.
Allyssa Jun 2017
What of that is me that is so beautifully splayed against the cold tin tray beneath the light of the surgeon who is splitting me open.
What of that is not me who is the nurse, helping remove the blemishes and tumors that make the unrecognizable body mangled.
What of that situation makes this so uncannily familiar that all I do is try to change the person I am to be when I hear God sigh once more at my attempt to, again, change myself.
I hear the words,
"Love yourself,"
As if I hadn't already tried but the parts that I have attempted to nurture already lay in the bin of flesh the surgeon has already removed.
I could tell you that I was the surgeon but really,
Self-consciously,
I could not.
I say I could not because of the way the surgeons eyes resembled of those who pick me apart,
Also known as society.
I am not happy with myself,
I am an ever changing chameleon to the people I choose to bring apart of my life as they chisel me down to who and what they prefer.
I am not the color blue any longer for that represented his eyes,
I am not the color pink as my friend used as a disguise,
I am not the color black for that I realize,
I was once that.
So I lay here splayed on this cold tin tray,
Picked apart by the vultures who deem worthy and those who do not.
Do not tell me to love myself when I all know is to be a sponge of the people who pour toxic waters into my skin and I wear it like plastic wrap covering me in all of the wrong places.
I am no longer in control of my own strings that hang me to this life like a noose wrapped around my throat as I struggle to breathe and dance for an audience who no longer enjoys my company but my suffering.
I am not who I once was before I learned what perfect was.
Essen Dossev Mar 2017
plastic party cups
at the charity event
for Syrian kids
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