No Accounting for Waste by Mia Hart-Allison

The landfill site gapes capaciously,
indecent exposure defiling the hillside,
containing the same utter nullity as death
like the noose around a suicide’s neck.

Everything here is deemed to be
as useless as a nun’s fecundity.
The cruel, complex stench summons distant insects
to gorge themselves giddy on society’s leavings.
Here, where nothing’s too good to throw away,
the shifting dunes of refuse mount up like excuses.
The on-site incinerator’s smoke is a furtive nocturnal emission,
the noxious fumes released only at night when darkness
is kind to such secrets, but can’t prevent the fouling
of the unsuspecting clouds, that quickly grow soiled
and stale as creased sheets the morning after.
From the chimney’s rigid middle digit
the pollution taints the rain that fosters
the site’s consumptive decay. And when
the rare sun stings glints from ragged metal shards,
fool’s gold gleams deceitfully, seething meaninglessly.
This place of negation is as pernicious
as a bloated, monstrous foetus, growing out of control.
Harsh as perfection, it has the tenacity of cancer,
and is expansive enough to block a black-hole’s throat –
indelible proof that there’s no accounting for waste.
The blighted life that results from rubbish’s abundance
is saturated with latent rage and pain.
Even recycling’s lie multiplies the flies
and amongst the dirty sepia debris
acid-green weeds flicker like an antique film reel.
This mass grave for the remains of the living
is a tomb for the consumed,
the final resting place of the used.
It lies along the horizon like the corpse of a murdered giant –
both a vista of the perpetual past
and a preview of Armageddon’s aftermath.

http://www.therecusant.org.uk/#/mia-hart-allison-review/4533446677