Plastic Poem
Chicago, IL
2015, Junior, Poetry & Spoken Word
Plastic bottles are drifting,
Fishing nets are sifting,
The oceans are a mess,
We need to try our best,
To help our fishy friends,
Our fishy folk are dyin’,
Baby seals are cryin’,
There’s trash among the kelp,
These animals need help,
To survive our sloppy oceans,
We’ve got filthy ocean floors,
And dirty ocean shores,
We need to start policing,
The garbage that’s increasing,
To save our lovely waters,
Islands of trash are forming,
Plastics are swarming,
Fish are eating garbage,
Their stomachs are turning hostage,
To these vile micro toxins,
Plastic is on the beach,
You can hear the animals screech,
Birds are eating rotten,
And they’re also chewing toxins,
From the plastic in our oceans,
Waste is washing ashore,
Our oceans have to be cared for,
Wouldn’t it be fantastic,
If we could keep our toxic plastics,
Out of our beautiful oceans,
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,
And sooner or later,
It’ll all come back to us,
Because our oceans are our water,
And our water is our life.
Reflection
Reflection
I chose to write a poem because in my opinion, poetry can emotionally affect the reader deeper and faster than a short story can. Since I take this issue of ocean pollution very seriously, I want to make the reader care more too through my poetry. I spent hours on hours drafting and editing so my readers would act because of my poetry. I was inspired to write this poem after my friend asked a question to me. He asked "how do you expect to win this contest if you can't emotionally connect with the reader because you're not talking to them?" That question gave me the idea to really push to emotionally sway the reader into actually caring about plastics in the oceans. Lastly, I think this piece really portrays the problems and lack of effort to fix them and why we need to fix them. In conclusion, I spent my time on this poem and I hope it will payoff and make my readers take action.