MY CD'S ARE SLOWLY KILLING ME

MY CD'S ARE SLOWLY KILLING ME

I eat frozen dinners and processed foods.

I'm a man of many and various moods,

I also eat three gorgeous red apples a day,

A ton of blueberries and sweet red grapes.

Hoping an untimely death to escape.

I resolutely have sworn off the lure of red meat,

I only will consume it as a rare special treat.

Poultry is my meat of choice and I love me too some fish-

For protein and Omega 3s, they make a perfect dish. 

Imagine my surprise, when I saw a treatise in the paper,

That made my normal pulse to quicken.

That said it was harmful to eat chicken.

Something about bird flu, viruses and all that.

Good grief, balderdash, Jumping Jehosaphat!

How in the world am I to live if you take away my favorite dish?

Now the papers warn me of the mercury in fish.

And when chicken and fish are microwaved to get to dinner faster,

You have, alas, the makings of a terrible disaster 

For the heat can trigger serious stuff that is most dire and drastic,

Releasing the perilous particles of the dreaded microplastic.

It creeps into the abdomen and the stomach microbiome,

It settles in quite easily and makes itself at home,

Causing abdominal pain and bloating, the subject of much fear and loathing,

The case is open and shut, it can wreak havoc with your gut.

The microplastic can also affect your airways and your lungs,

It reeks of oxidative stress, you breathe it through the air,

No matter if you're old or young, these particles are everywhere,

How this plastic tempts and teases, conjuring up diseases

Endocrine disruption and COPD, these plastIcs live in you and me,

Causing weight gain and insulin resistance, some say even cancers.

When it comes to microplastics, there are no easy answers

I still heat plastic bowls of frozen dinners in the microwave,

I'm foolish for that probably, either foolhardy or weirdly brave.

But what bugs me as a musicologist is i need all my CD's,

I rely on them to cheer me as I drink life to the lees

I have hundreds of them in my bedroom in sturdy plastic cases

I swear I see them taunting me with their twisted gleeful faces.

They surround my bed quite alarmingly on sturdy wooden racks.

Snickering as I'm sleeping, thinking I don't know the facts,

That though their music's thrilling me, my CD's are slowly killing me,       

Leaching noxious particles throughout my humble room,

Slinking through the ambient air like salt into an open wound.

Flailing about in a sea of doubt, I might need measures drastic,

To save me from the tyranny of the dreaded microplastics.

-Bruce Potts

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