Plastic.

Right now I am reading a collection of poems called “Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty” by a very smart and funny poet named Tony Hoagland, whom I have never heard of before.

I was reading right along and he has a poem titled “Plastic” which is about plastic. He says amazing things like:

You could mull over the ethics of enslaving matter/even while feeling admiration for the genius it takes/to persuade a molecule to become part of a casserole container.

But then I was stopped dead in my tracks by a few lines which very nearly could have been about a fight I vividly remember having last year. He writes this:

- Or in another case, the blue polyethylene water bottle/sitting on a table in the park on Saturday/between two people having a talk about their relationship/- which I could tell was probably near its end/since the various lubrications/usually coating the human voice/were all worn away, leaving just the rough, gritty surfaces/of need and fear/exposing and rubbing on each other.

I mean, wow.

It just reminded me of how good and beautiful and honest good writing can be. It has been awhile since I have been able to write that way, but I am going to re-devote myself to it. I need to, for me, and also so that I will have something to talk to Mister Hoagland about should I ever meet him in an airport bar.

Also – and this is how good this guy is – he followed the passage above with this one below:

I wonder if it would have done any good then/if I had walked over and explained to them/about Plastic?/About how much easier it is to stretch than/human nature

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