Translucent Corruption
Chandler, AZ
2016, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
Down below the wet precipice of rocks
Across the frothing waters scatters awkward bumps
And solid mountains of ink-black
Ripples dotted with gaudy pink and yellow and
Green and orange that form an endless, ugly painting. And
I see sheaths of lethal, muddy-clear puddles of plastic
Webs as they gather in suffocating muffs
That cover the ocean surface. I spot feathers upon
A motionless body, fettered to its clear, fatal manacles—There
I notice a torn, dirty fin, punctured with the clear
Blade that reads “Drinking water” on the bleeding
Label.
If I glance further East, all I see is red and green and
Sickly pale. The mesmerizingly haunting scarlet that floods
The water near Zhutai, where the ocean did run red,
Juxtaposes tacky pieces of wrappers, bottles, and bags that
Gather along the coast. The red seeps from the
Toxic alga blooms, bloodying the water until I can
No longer see beneath its cloudy surface; plastic debris
Was the chauffeur who spread the poisoned red from the
Yangtze River into the reaches of my once-clear, blue ocean.
Red is the tide that begins to choke the living out of the ocean,
Where the man in the straw hat and flimsy, starched clothing
Looks on in fear, for he does not want to bloody his
Hands in the poisoned water, where miniature garrotes
And knives meander along each ripple. Instead,
He will go home to starve.
Yet we can travel anywhere to seek the dirty,
Kaleidoscope of colors that becomes alluring sirens to
Unsuspecting sea creatures. Beware—it is not
Food; in fact, it will surely guarantee death. When the
Enigmatic circles of serrated can-holders latch
Onto a seagull’s beak, she does not know she will never
Eat again; as she starves along the coast, jabbing
Her beak into promised food, her mouth is never open
Enough to collect any of it—like Tantalus, whose punishment
Is that he can never eat or drink—except
The seagull did nothing to deserve
Hades’ punishment. Always so close,
But never enough.
Remember the cute, baby turtle on the once-golden
Beach? From my vantage point, I see many
Like him. Some are just fine—happily ambling along,
Yet many are struggling to obtain enough
Oxygen, as plastic bags, printed “Have a
Nice Day” are lodged in their throats, with the
Handle still hanging out. And they breathe with shallow air,
Clawing at nothing as they cannot help themselves.
So further along the shore, I already see one dead
And another on the other end of the coast who
Has already given up.
And the fatal clear contraptions that convenience
Humans on a daily basis come at an even steeper price—
Because oil and petroleum, that dark, seeping liquid
That pervades the ocean like a quiet killer, is needed
To produce those plastic bags and bottles. As I see
The little humans drill tremendous holes into the clear ocean
For the toxic agent, clouds and clouds of dark, iridescence
Pollute what was once the beauty in my eye—corrupting
What we once knew as “blue as the ocean.” So the
Rose-gold beaches become deathly white, as bleeding corpses
Of once-peaceful fish pile atop the lovely grains of sand—
An unbearable stench of doom and dread, as fishermen
Pick up inedible fish, shaking their heads at the noxious waste
That has littered the beach, with no reward to reap.
So the rivers and the beaches that children once frolicked upon
Now hold signs that warn “NO HUMAN CONTACT.” I
See parents that chase after their children to yank them away
From our dirty water and I see villages that have nothing but
This waste to drink, so some villages are cursed with
For higher cancer rates—higher death rates—
Because pure, clean water is too scarce now,
And much, much too expensive for the poor to find and consume.
And thus that sparkling life
Source that I have seen spawn new life and rejuvenate the
Is now a hole of poison that can kill
The fool who draws its deadly nectar.
However, I recall when the ocean
Once boasted clear, navy undulations of
Beauty, webbed with white-gold lines
Of my reflected sunlight—where I could see
Just beneath the glass veneer of the cool
Salty water, with a school of rainbow
Movement, flitting here and there, traversing
The blue waters that once captured my
Heart. I hope that we will return to this picture
Purity, so reduce Man’s poison of fatal bags
And tools of plastic that
Have scarred and perverted my holy ocean.
Reflection
Reflection
I wrote this poem because I saw horrific pictures of the deadly, gruesome effects that plastic wrecks upon ocean life and beauty. I remember viewing photos in China of red rivers and green rivers that highlighted the pervasive algae blooms, and I found out that plastic is a vector that spreads the blooms so rapidly. Additionally, petroleum and oil is used to make the plastic, which further poisons the water. Then I compared pictures of the scenic ocean views where the ocean is sparkling and clear with dirty, muddied water where plastic covers a third of the surface area. I’ve known plastic pollution is a huge problem, but I only truly understood its severity when I realized how fatal the effects of plastic pollution are to a large amount of animals. In fact, even humans are suffering from the damage we have done to the ocean—now we literally have cancer villages. My poem takes the perspective of the sun as it looks down upon the transformation of the ocean. The sun, who is the narrator, is dismayed at the corruption of the purity of the ocean, so the entire poem acts as a call to action—a wake-up call—for people to reduce the prevalence of plastic, and to start cleaning the ocean of this toxic material. I use the poem to urge others to finally realize the damage that our plastic use has done to the ocean and check myself from wasting plastic.