Life is an IV Bag
If you’ve ever been in a hospital, you are surrounded by patients covered in tubbing and wires connecting to machines. One of those tubes is connected to an IV bag that hangs from a thin steel pole. From that bag, through the tube, comes fluids getting slowly injected into your bloodstream. In the poem Life’s an IV Bag the image and use of metaphors that are made from the IV bags appearance and job create an eerie proclamation. The IV bag represents life as a whole. The idea that you must struggle to have all goodness and prevent the harshness of painful life comes to mind as an image of a giant IV bag not only feeding the weak, but feeding goodness to all. Another thing that I see within the IV bag is that it’s keeping us alive and it’s plastic. As plastic pollutes the world, it is slowly destroying habitats, animals, and many other incredibly important environmental aspects of life. The IV bag is one of many important pieces of equipment helping us fight death as we know it. The black hole that is mentioned is equivalent to death. In other words, it’s what we don’t want. The idea that everything is pushing you down to the black hole except for the plastics of the world really brings you to think about your surroundings. In a hospital everything is plastic or is covered in plastic. From the hands of the surgeon that’s operating on you, to the machines that are keeping you alive post surgery. The IV bag is almost a metaphor because although it keeps us alive, it’s most likely going to be what kills us along with all the other plastics that monitor our health and well being. When the poet says “you turn red all over from what may be an allergy not only to latex but to all plastic, and thus, nearly this whole world” it hits me. The whole world is covered in plastic, and when we get covered in it, it’s like we are getting surrounded by something that isn’t good for us. So my question is, how come we think that the earth can handle the toxic chemicals when we can’t? Not only do we not connect the dots, we completely disregard them to save our own lives.