Dustbin Don Poem by Mel Carter

Dustbin Don
A Cautionary Tale for High School Chemisty Classes


It doesn't take tremendous skill
Discovering Chemicals can kill.
Within containers there's no mys'try
Eat or drink me and you're Hist'ry.

But Don would sneer, It's very boring
And was forever quite ignoring
Warning labels - front or back
(Bright and orange, text bold black)

On boxes, bottles, jars and tins
Wherein he could indulge his sins.
Sampling the forbidden fruit
He really didn't give a hoot

A damn, a monkey's or a fig
And frequently would take a swig,
A taste, a lick, a pinch, a bite
of Substances in labs. Quite

Indiscriminate you'd say
And lucky too! Until One Day
The flask from which he stole a drink
Enclosed Electrolytic Zinc.

Though normally taken in his stride
This time the poison got inside
Young Donald's overloaded veins
And Plated what had passed for brains.

Poor lad he lay with breath abated,
Life in him almost terminated.
All the kids around, aghast
Saw that he was Zincing fast.

Before the class had realised
His little body Galvanised,
And drawing one last quav'ring breath
He Zunk to a metallic death.

Economy is yet the norm
As well in life, so in this Form
And now they use him as a Bin
For putting trash and rubbish in.

If it's for Moral that you thirst
Take sober note of this: Feet First
Is neither megabrill nor cool
If that's the way you're leaving school.

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Carmel