Monster

They are making a kids’ TV programme,
I assume, where the protagonist is a creature
who lives on a landfill site and is made
from recycled goods. At first, people
are scared of him and they call him names
like Trash Man. But then a young boy
takes the time to get to know the man,
who turns out to be caring and warm-hearted:
his heart is a carburettor. Week by week,
the boy helps to fix the man up. Hot water bottle
stomach, shoe box feet, lungs from rolled-up
cereal packets, car bumper legs, coat hanger
rib cage and soon they have the whole
town helping and everyone is recycling
and even sorting through the landfill site
to find anything useful, people are running
their cars on vegetable oil, the local paper
declares the boy a hero, the Trash Man
goes on national TV, the President gives
him a medal (made from recycled metal)
and slowly the Trash Man’s natural habitat
retreats, the landfill returns to grassland
and the ending is really sad – it’s feature
length, not a TV show, and is animated,
perhaps, with a cast of talking garbage:
a Jamaican toaster and I can see it already,
the boy weeping as the Trash Man asks
to be dismantled, it’s his final request,
and the boy carrying the Trash Man’s eyes
to the clear glass bottle bank, and every bit
of him recycled except for his heart,
which is kept for parts – flash forward
to the boy’s sixteenth birthday
– we’re in America, by the way –
and the boy at the wheel of a wide car
with the monster’s heart in the bonnet.