Oh, Something Rotten
          by Ib Claus Wedere
          “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”
          —William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Marcellus to Horatio

This month a goose-beaked whale was espied in Norway’s muck.
Researchers euthanized it, drying on the strand, there stuck.
The carcass then went off to Bergen University,
zoologists discovering, not so surprisingly,
inside its stomach, thirty plastic bags, and human waste,
oh, something rotten, Denmark, more than animal could taste.
Though plastic does not go away, it does break down, I fear,
releasing toxic additives into our biosphere;
and chemicals can put our health, and animals at risk;
cetaceans nibble at a snack that is a deadly kiss.

Ib Claus Weeder is a poet and intimate of fellow Scandanavian-focused fellows, like Lucas Eberewid, Lars U. Ice Bedew and Eric Albu, “Swede”. Some of his favourite writers include Hans Christian Anderson, existentialist Søren Kierkegaard and atomic theorist Niels Bohr.

_________________________________________________________________

Human Stuff
          by Ed Rubee Swical
          “The food containers each of us uses boggles the mind and cloggles the Earth.”
          —Carb Deliseuwe

The vast variety of things that human beings make,
like trucks and tractors, jets and trains, books, bric-a-brac and brakes,
like cars, roads, buildings, rockets, satellites and furniture,
computers, dishes, phones, no matter what expenditure,
these things add to some thirty-some quadrillion metric tons,
compared to but five-hundred million tons of Earthians,
approximately fifty kilograms per metric square,
surpassing Earth’s own biosphere with this new technosphere;
Geologist Zalasiewicz of England’s Leicester U.
has so reported this in The Anthropocene Review.

Ed Rubee Swical is poet fond of geology and rocks. Some of his favourite writers include Charles Lyell, James Hutton, Alfred Wegener, Charles Richter, and Luis and Walter Alvarez.

_________________________________________________________________

On Farewell Spit
          by Eric Awl deBeus

In sum, more than six hundred pilot whales beached themselves
on Farewell Spit, one of New Zealand’s many coastline shelves.
Some hundreds died, but volunteers were able to save some,
who went back to the troubled sea from which they had just come.
Unfortunately many perished on the troubled land,
where volunteers were hard at work, but sadly undermanned.
Perhaps it’s true that whales do not weep, as Lawrence wrote,
and yet the squeaking, squealing calves, as they took off afloat,
with squeep-squeep-squeep, and squeep-squeep-squeep, affected volunteers,
who, looking at the troubled land…and sea, shed salty tears.

Eric Awl de Beus, a real Erewhon man, sitting in his Erewhon land, hobbitually reads and writes on Kiwistan. His favourite writer is Ernest Rutherford, and his favourite poetic line is, “The World is at your command.”

_________________________________________________________________

Dane Bjarke Ingels
by Arcideb Usewel
“Someone is thriving in the state of Denmark.”
          —Ib Claus Wedere

Like as a comic character out of a graphic tale,
Dane Bjarke Ingels prospers in economies of scale.
Defying fixed sets, while embracing the environment,
he takes a BIG view for sustainable development.
With vim, he fashioned VM Houses in planned Ørestad,
which he inhabited until his Mountain Dwellings pad.
He helped draft the Azeri zero-Zira Isle resort,
and pyramidal VIA 57 West, New York.
Like as a crazy, cartoon superhero on a soar,
pragmatic and utopian, he shouts out: Yes Is More.

Arcideb Usewel is a poet of architectural construction and buildings. His early influences include, inter alia,Wren, Wright, van der Rohe, and Rome. In the New Millennial period he continues to use newer poetic structures, like the tennos, five couplets of iambic heptamter, as in the poem above, and is inspired by the work of Bjarke Ingels.