Saturday, September 4, 2021

poem

 Toys

I never really had any cool toys because we were poor.  Free lunch token poor.  Some years we got hand me downs from the Burgess boys for Christmas. A Simon Says, a talking robot that went silent by New Year's Day.   I always wanted those big Lego sets so I could make a Millenium Falcon or an X Wing fighter and put it on my desk.  Maybe a full-ass set of action figures instead of my one-armed Han Solo. But I’ve been a bucket of assorted Lincoln logs and random Lego pieces ever since.   Nothing but a mass of mismatched pieces. The instruction manuals were long tossed out with the Thursday trash.  Sure, there’s potential there.  But it takes a bit of effort and ingenuity.  Some people just have to work harder. Some have to earn even their smallest joys. But someone was always stepping on the pieces.  Mom screaming, plucking sharp plastics from her heels. It stops being fun when all you’ve made is just a mess.  So I drifted away from toys.  You have to.  Everything breaks.  You lose interest after a while no matter how much it first shines.  There’s better ways to occupy a mind, so I tell myself.  Now, I’d rather be the giant bucket, gathering up all the discarded flotsam of lonely children everywhere.  Somehow I’ll find them all and go door to door, asking if anyone would like to play, for old time’s sake, once again.


9/4/21

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