4.25.13

Today's color prompt was purple.  I wrote a rant today after photographing my daughter's Mardi Gras beads.  The costume shop where I work is located in a party store, where practically everything we sell is created for one use and eventual discard.  The sheer volume of things manufactured for the landfill boggles my mind and depresses me, especially considering that one of the classes I teach deals partially with sustainability and environmental responsibility.  Whole industries ignore those things.  Mind blown. Rant explained.  Who knew Mardi Gras beads could go all sinister?

Landfill Necklace

Fuchsia, copper, gold, purple, every color

imaginable or able to be manufactured

in metallic plastic, they hang in enticing rows.

Beads by the billions, flash-formed and melted

onto cotton string, pressure-painted in toxic brilliance,

four for a dollar, cheaper if you buy a gross.

Created for cheap sparkle and a fast fade,

they are thrown from parade floats,  sunlight

spangling their flight with jewel tones.

They are slung by sixes and sevens

around the rubbery necks of revelers that dance,

and spill vodka, flashing like disco lightning.

After that fast moment, they lie forgotten as cigarette butts,

and bound for the same place.  The ghosts of a thousand

identical parties, bound for a thousand identical

push brooms, trash cans, curbs and landfills.

Or, worn home and abandoned on the dresser,

 moved from place to place for a few weeks,

then boxed away.  Billions of beads, lost,

tangled as ground-ivy, metallic sheen grown flat

with time.  What if all the useless items came out at night,

uncurling like asps, dull beads glinting like scales

in the moonlight as the click, click, click brings them

up the stairs, out of corners, a rustling

 in the trash, crawling out of the landfills

to come and strangle us while we sleep?