poo bags

we finally met him
by the bins
Stanley and I
(or is it me and Stanley?
I’m not
too hot
on grammar, evidently)

we were walking
through the estate
around half past eight
(which is just for the rhyme:
actually it was more like half past nine)
and there he was!
dressed in fluorescent yellow because
he has one of those street collecting jobs
where it pays to be nice n’conspicuous, obvs

a baseball cap
earbuds in, listening to an app
because I guess the job’s crap
and let’s face it
who wouldn’t use some music to erase it

there he was!
master of the waste collecting gods!
riding his tiny, shiny van
the mythological POOBIN MAN!

a bit grumpy though
when I smiled and said yo!
I’ve got a little something for ya
swinging a poo bag Stan filled earlier
hoping he’d say something cool like ‘Poo me’
but he ground his teeth and looked right through me

Poobin, Poobin, whither thou goest?
what foul bags wilt thy gauntlets knowest?
and verily when it snowest
I’m guessing
it’s a blessing
as the poo will be frosty and attractively glaucous
with a little less chance of enterococcus

There was a poo bag by the side of the woodland path / lime green / easily seen / you couldn’t miss it / maybe they intended to pick it up on the return visit / but then, no / the way these things usually go / I don’t think so / I think they were hoping someone else would deal with it, y’know? / their precious dog’s effluvio / passively aggressively making the point / they’d like more poo bins around the joint / like a poo theme park / more bin less bark / maybe the odd tree here and there / to make it nice & sweeten the air

so here was my dilemma / do I leave it in the hope they come back later? / or do I carry it myself to the bins in the rec? / what the heck / although, I have to say / it is actually quite a way / to sashay / with a lime green handbag of poo / swinging nonchalantly by the side of you

so I’m ashamed to say / my squeamishness got the better of me today / I left it in situ / and submit to / your judgement / and my lack of environmental de-fudgement

But does it really matter what I do or say / if I carry the poo now or leave it for another day? / it’s not going to stop the rainforests burning / the drill bits turning / the microplastics churning / in the gizzards and the guts / of the leatherback turtles and the guillemots / the droughts, the floods / the cataracts of mud / the superbugs / fat bergs / skinny icebergs / rampaging cyborgs / carrying out their military instructions / for the surgical reductions / of human populations / and a hundred other dystopic situations /

I mean / according to Queen / in Bohemian Rhapsody / existentially / Nothing Really Matters / because at the end of time when everything scatters / and we’re caught changing seats like a trillion Mad Hatters / at the Tea Party / at the End of the World / everything will get scooped and tagged / in one gigantic / galactic / sanitary / interplanetary / super-pooper bag / and tossed with everything we thought we’d lost and won / into the indifferent heart of an imploding sun

I mean – one poo bag’s not going to swing it / is it? / it’s just a little bit of shit / in a shady glade / in a shiny green poo bag that will never degrade /

(why the hell they didn’t just flick / the shit / with a stick / into the undergrowth / I don’t know)