Message in a Blotto

An election season poem

In this missive, amidst a world saturated with excessive communication and endless text messages from machines asking for money, I feel more motivated to share poems than opinions.

People have apparently spent 16 BILLION dollars on this election cycle, all to make their side win. What would the world would be like if we donated and campaigned for our local schools like this instead of for politicians?

I hope you enjoy this short poem.

Message in a Blotto

We are soaking in
first, the ramble
then the rubble
a free throw
to a dump truck.

I’m starting to think of words like plastic bottles,
like the paper clip thought experiment,
full bottles, empty bottles, crumpled bottles 
choking the landscape
with texts and images
copied and copied
water carriers.

The average American obtains, uses, and discards 13 plastic water bottles per month.
12 months in a year.
If we all live to 80, one year younger than our president, each American 
alive now 
will use approximately 12,480 plastic water bottles 
before they die.
There are approximately 330 million Americans currently alive. 
That’s 4.1 trillion plastic water bottles. 
Just amongst the living. 
Not counting the unborn.
Who we must talk of ceaselessly 
Consider ceaselessly
Yet we don't
Or else we'd stop the plastic water bottles
That accumulate in our systems 
like the 16 billion dollars stuffing this election cycle.

But it’s even worse for words, of which we use a zillion more.
And now pictures.
Now videos.
Soundbites.
Podcasts.
Uploaded by the millions every second.

Call it “sharing.”
“Creating.”
There is even “recycling.”
Reusing 
and reductions,
but reducing
would be a misnomer.

They churn like the synthetic trash that washes ashore on the Big Island of Hawaii’s western rocks.
Big pieces bob like dead turtles
Tiny ones choke smaller fish.
Content is our paper clips
Our plastic bottles
And though they never go away,
they are not empty.
There are messages rolled inside.
Over and over.
Often they get lost in the landfill.
Often one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

I saved a new image as my cell phone’s screen background.
My friend was like, wtf is that? When she saw it.
Some people have pictures of their kids or puppies,
I have bloody hands reaching at me from an abyss.
To remind me they want me.
My eyeballs.
All of them. Grabbing. Yanking. Waving at me.
They’re not real.
But our brain forgets.
They’re copies of copies of the past.
Fed to me by a machine
looking for money
The way politicians look for votes.

Some days I don’t want to contribute anymore.
I text STOP
But they don’t.
They are as numerous as thoughts. 
Mosquitos on a cattle farm. 
Crowded shores.

But other days I’m thirsty.
I drink.
It tastes good.
I toss out my own.
Crunch. 
I document,
copy,
distribute,
discard
duplicate,
scatter,
distort.
I weigh down the earth.

Cause what’s one more
when they will never stop?

Now You

How do you cope with the deluge? Are you thirsty sometimes too?

If you write an election season poem inspired by this one, (which I’d recommend because poems are refreshing) please let me know or tag me. I’d love to read it.

And here is my screensaver if you’d like to use it. Halloween may be over, but you can keep it creepy regardless.

Can’t remember now where it came from, or I’d give credit to the artist.

PS:

For any lovers of literary fiction, my double book giveaway got no entries this week, so I’m extending it another week. Very sad when you can’t give good books away, but maybe this speaks to the same problem as my poem—an over-saturation situation.

Enter here:

PPS:

This song got stuck in my head once I finished this poem and gave it a title.

The lyrics are fitting.

XXXOOO

Charlotte Dune