The Crown of Humanity
Ann Arbor, MI
2016, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
My Crown
Not alive but I can breathe
I can hear,
I can feel,
I can see-
This destruction bestowed upon me?
Am I now the king?
Do I sit on the throne of this depravity?
Ah ha! I see,
I have received the crown of humanity.
The Call
Filled with the secrets of the Earth
The mother who has given birth-
To the greatest system in the world
I am the eldest of them all.
One great united entity
I give life to humanity,
Yet still no respect for me,
No one listens when I scream.
No one is near when I can’t see.
No one comes when my children choke-
Choke on this PVC.
I am your elder!
Listen to me!
Protect your posterity,
And please help me.
Follow Me
Follow the whip of the Minnow’s tail,
Back and forth every day,
Navigating through the vast deep world
It’s been everywhere
The Australian coral reef,
to the arctic snow sheets
Now don’t worry,
It’s made friends here, and there
A pleasant turtle
A hospitable clam
Even some fish in the sand
From coast to coast its traveled,
London to New York
Tokyo to LA,
From dawn to day
It’s seen many horrors,
So many products,
So much plastic
It knows that capitalists realms are beginning to take over
They inch and invade
They leach and they destroy
It wonders if there will ever be a better world
A home,
A haven,
A glorious place of life
The minnows swims and sees all the strife
Oh Minnow, Minnow!
Swimming everyday,
Maybe one day these people, will learn to change their ways.
It Swells
Swim,
Swim! –
Deeper.
The current is
electric-powerful
dark deep and heavy.
Here, the great white stalks,
it hunts, it feeds
and feasts.
Is it we?
Or some other being?
Same?
We both bare the same elements
Chlorine and Carbon
Made from the same salt and coal
But,
I fluid
You stiff.
I vast
You cover.
You trap.
You ruin.
You pollute.
You made by man’s hands,
You murder.
PVC #3
We blame consumerism,
We blame the population,
We blame the generation,
We blame everything but we.
Stop and think,
Its time to own up to the disillusion that we have come to believe-
Is the truth, the rectitude for the destruction that we see.
PVC number 3
a plastic with a whole new identity
The monster that consumes our great waters
The murder of the thousands of seas creatures that have fallen
Its translucency allows it to be overlooked
Its curves allows it to slip through our country’s legislative hooks
When will we own up
and invoke the change that our posterity is waiting to obtain
Generations are waiting to sail the seas,
Waiting to hear the dolphins screech,
Waiting to see the minnow’s fearless journeys
Who are we to take away that opportunity?
PVC #3
Once for the toxins,
Twice for the crimes,
Thrice because its humanity’s time-
to repay their debt to the marine life.
Reflection
Reflection
One could say it started with a science fair project: Determining the effect of various liquids on plastics types. I remember staying up late and watching my sister and mom meticulously test each plastic type. Out of all the plastics, one stuck with me, Polyvinyl Chloride #3, or better known as PVC #3. It was an ultra-durable plastic, resistant to any chemical, making it the toughest of all the plastics tested. Years following the experiment I found myself beginning to pay more attention to the plastic I was using, and I noticed that a lot of these plastics were in fact PVC #3. I got to questioning, if this plastic was so abrasive and ultra-resistant, what was it doing in our landfills, was it just sitting in our oceans? PVC number 3 was different, a whole new plastic, built to withstand and last. Its impression on our environment would not be brief, but instead, it would be long and detrimental. I wanted to convey the dangers of PVC #3 with abstract perspectives of how one might view the plastic. One perspective is from a marine animal’s viewpoint, another compares a great white shark to humanity’s plastic waste. While the most important viewpoint is from the ocean’s perspective, as it analyzes the fake plastic crown humanity has bestowed upon it. Through this poetry collection I can only hope to elicit a change in humanity’s actions, and reduce the plastic consumption worldwide, especially of PVC #3.