Fatberg – Fatberg, Growing so fast;
Fatberg – Fatberg, Growing so fast;
Please don’t tell them where I am
They’re sure to set up a webcam.
I’ve made my way along this river
Accepting all from every giver
Now I’m stuck – a great fat ball.
Full of gunge and ten feet tall.
Mounds of wet-wipes, cooking fat.
Now you know what happens to that.
Rolled into one gigantic ball,
Big as the goddammed Albert Hall.
They say how many of us exist
In pipes and rivers in our midst.
Across our fair and pleasant land
Disposed of waste … Ain’t it grand!
When they’ve dispersed my fat and grease
all those wet wipes, every piece
Then at last I’ll meet my end
But then the next one will descend
And when dissolved, where do we go?
Why, into the sea then, don’t you know?
That great big cess pool in the ocean,
Unlikely to stir your dulled emotions.
A FATBERG is a congealed mass in a sewer system formed by the combination of non-biodegradable solid matter, such as wet wipes, and congealed grease or cooking fat. Fatbergs became a problem in the 2010s in England, because of ageing Victorian sewers and the rise in usage of disposable cloths. Wikipedia
Yerk! A modern day bards’s subject matter!
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Yerk, indeed, Maggie.
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Superbly done. I’ve only recently heard about these
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Thanks, Derrick. Best to keep as far away as possible away from them!
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I’ll say
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Brilliant Ballad Roland. You certainly will not have a reader forget about the Fatberg. The repitions in the first stanza are so clever.
Just to make sure we all know what is happening to our system and our seas you do relentlessly tell us with a slant of humour among what is serious.
Miriam
and I don’t use wet wipes…
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I thank you for your appreciative comment, Miriam.
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Another two-fold poem, expertly, via humour, introducing another man-made problem. In this case, one that is particularly gross!
Thank you Roland.
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Gross ineed. Thanks for responding, Nigel.
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Good one, Roland. A Fat Berg as big as a Freight Train, I would say!!!
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Many thanks for your comment, Roger.
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Amusing piece, Roland! Love the rhythm of your poem!
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Thank you, Eugenia. Based on the rhythm of the old ‘Freight train, Freight train’ song (see Youtube!).
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My pleasure, Roland.
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