The Junk From America

the junk from America

gets pieced into houses

withering cardboard, splintery wood

as junk trucks haul the land

back and forth

across the river

across the dust

to desire anything else would be treason

contemplating the economics

of frivolous tourist entertainment

because the must

live in shacks of tarp and cardboard

dust flying in their eyes

caked with makeup from the dance

and afterwards

the junk dries up and out

mickey mouse tire heads

leave little trails of sand in yonke

leaving again behind the rest

of everyone I knew down there

The Junk from America Revisited in the Amazon

The curse of America brought upon us

Of smoking and plastic and the things they tossed

Watching for progress from a cheap mp3 player

We’ll never get there

We’re always so far

What took you so long?

They always cried waiting.

Waiting for redemption from the other side.

Waiting for fewer plastic bags

To contaminate.

Waiting for less pollution

The trees filter the air.

Clean and green

We always knew it was here.

The Junk From America The Third: Africa's Story

Piling up endlessly in villages underneath

The reaches of poverty's grasp

Where we don't know what rich and poor are

Where we all have TVs

The ones that we see in the junkyard

the ones we see and scrap

the ones that we eat from

and live from

The junk from America we all are poisoned by

Trash triumphs over animals

Forgetting how the pristine jungle roads used to look

The Coke cans litter the dirt

and we can't understand how

the houses

and brooms

and buckets

are from the earth

but the Coke can lies on the dirt

But it's not theirs, its the junk we all dispose of

That becomes their treasures

Their treasures that they live on

rather than the land

rather than the earth that gives them life

rather than the polluted streams, the desert's reams of paper-like

reeds flowing up over the edge

engulfing the endless bushveld and the dusty hills

The trash that ends up in babies' mouths

eating used batteries

leaking bluish grimy paste

translates to their eyes

their eyes that never go away

haunting the ones who dare to care

How we all turn an eye away

trash disposal we count on weekly

recycling what is toxic, what is toxic here

lives on in Africa, lives on in innocent lives

bombarded with trash, filling homes and filling land

we can't take it away forever, but Africa seems like forever away

we don't seem to know that people live there

People just like us

People who live and die and have children who like to play

With trash we always manage to send their way.

The Junk From America #3 inspired by a news report from BBC in which Greenpeace (i am not advocating for them, it is just news... can we all be grown up and not think i am a greenpeace activist now?) found that TVs that are to be recycled from the UK, actually usually get sent to Africa and fill up landfills there, and people dismantle the TVs, computers, and other electronics, poisoning themselves in the process, to get out certain valuable metals to re-sell for pennies.
The Junk From America #1 is from Mexico, I was in Juarez at that point, and the second version is from being in the Amazon in Brazil, in Manaus.