Packaging

‘Taties and carrots and onions All have their own natural skin So why do most of the suppliers Use plastic bags to pack them in, Either the fragile brittle type That bursts all over the floor Or the stretchy greasy oily sort That resist for evermore, Evading each attempt until They grudgingly finally split Just before the onset of A near fatal apoplectic fit. Meat is sold in indestructible packs With film top supposedly able to peel But unfortunately all seem to have An equally indestructible seal. The advent of plastic packaging Has become one of the banes of life Normally requiring heated resort To hacking with scissors or knife. Are they super human, these designers Or is each just a malicious little rat Extracting satisfaction from inventing Such useless products as that They say us oldies don’t recycle They don’t seem to understand In our younger days we didn’t Contaminate many acres of land. We took our own shopping bags Used paper and glass to pack Bought our milk in bottles And sent all the empties back If there is an after life I hope It is made unavoidably obligatory That every packaging designer Suffer eons in purgatory, And in the cause of justice those Whose lives they’ve made so drear Be allowed to sit and watch and, Maybe, cheer and shout and jeer.