The Bad Poetry Hour
One benefit of packing up a room to declutter it is that you rediscover old things that you'd forgotten you'd kept. Something I found on my desk is my old poetry journal, from back in my college days when I was an English major with delusions of talent. I can't say that any of it is terribly good - it's full of the imagined profundity and tortured meter of a nineteen-year-old - but there's at least one I wouldn't mind sharing. Appropriately enough, it's the last piece in the journal.
Action Figures
To the adults,
you are but lifeless hunks
of plastic that cost them money
on birthdays and Christmas
But to the children,
you are the heroes and villains,
the players in an epic tale
told daily in sandboxes and bedrooms
vigilantly guarding your cardboard forts
dying by the handfuls in battles no adult will ever see
only to rise again each night in your shoebox Valhallas
--
I can't say I miss writing poetry, but it's nice to have a record of my attempts.
Action Figures
To the adults,
you are but lifeless hunks
of plastic that cost them money
on birthdays and Christmas
But to the children,
you are the heroes and villains,
the players in an epic tale
told daily in sandboxes and bedrooms
vigilantly guarding your cardboard forts
dying by the handfuls in battles no adult will ever see
only to rise again each night in your shoebox Valhallas
--
I can't say I miss writing poetry, but it's nice to have a record of my attempts.