kipple

I feel illiterate, a graduate grasping
onto the last word I read:
kipple.
the world filling up with it.
On a cool evening I ride by cemeteries, doused in long honey light,
past old sheds with wobbly ladders, broken window frames,
potted plants (long since dead), hula hoops and giant inflatable snowmen perishing in the autumn sun,
cigarettes, sticks of gum, treadless tires
snapple caps, pens, dimes
Popsicle sticks, the foil tops of yogurt cups
old tooth brushes, condom wrappers among the leaves
USB cables, telephone cables, coiled like a rat king
promotional cds, nutri-grain wrappers
the tabs from orange juice bottles
outdated cameras, batteries
tired shoes and fishing lures
some times the sheer magnitude is terrifying
i pass a can and bottle redemption center, cans block out the windows, their weight seems to have cracked the glass
I cannot keep a record of what I throw away -
I have also given in, lured by shiny packaging, tastes and smells and statuses
How freely
ordinary happy people use,
how desperately ordinary unhappy ones
buy and sell and waste.

I walk with my bike, mostly
afraid of dying
I can see how this may progress
to agoraphobia
surrounded by the boxes
in which I create and store life.

I don't want to be buried in a box
bones shifting up and down with the frost
weeds covering a forgotten weathered tomb --
but
i'd like people to have somewhere to go back to
if they feel they must commune
there's always something compelling about those beaten stones
filling up the fields,
endless kipple
those vanished bodies, cities of the dead



*Kipple appears to have been coined by sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick, in his novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=kipple
*Rat King: a group of rats that becomes tangled together by the tails and become one organism (30 Rock)