. . . . . . ESTO ES UN POEMA . . . . . .

  PLASTICENE SUITE (cont.)   6. SORCERER'S APPRENTICE You know the old tale: a machine made by the Devil that grinds out anything you wish for with a magic word and some idiot wishes for salt, and out comes the salt, more and more, but he failed to get a handle on the charm to turn it off so he throws the thing into the sea, and that's why the sea is salt. The Sorcerer's Apprentice- it's the same story: Go is easy, Stop is the hard part. In the beginning no one thinks about it. Then Wait is too late. In our case the sorcerer is dead, whoever he was to begin with and we've lost the instructions and the magic machine grinds on and on spewing out mountains of whatnot and we throw it all into the sea as we have always done and this will not end well 7. WHALES Everyone cried when they saw it in the square blue sea of the TV: so big and sad a mother whale carrying her child for three days, mourning its death from toxic plastic, So big and sad we can hardly grasp it: how d...

   PLASTICENE SUITE   1. ROCK-LIKE OBJECT ON BEACH The Paleocene the Eocene the Miocene the Pleistocene and now we're here: the Plasticene. Look, a rock made of sand and one of lime, and one of quartz, and one what of what is this? It's black and striped and slippery, not exactly rock and not not. On the beach at any rate. Petrified oil, with a vein of scarlet, part of a bucket maybe. When we're gone and the aliens come to puzzle out our fossils: will this be evidence? Of us: of our too-brief history, our cleverness, our thoughtlessness, our sudden death? 2. FAINT HOPE You could turn it into oil by cooking it: this has been done. First you'd have to collect it. Also there would be a smell. Some supermarkets have banned it. Also drinking straws. Maybe there will be a tax or other laws. There are microbes that eat it- they've been discovered. But the temperature has to be high: no good in the north sea. You can press it into fake lumber but only some kinds. And buidin...