Not as eloquent
as a fountain pen,
not as artistic
as a sketching pencil,
not even as bright as a magic marker,
but one smart cookie to your kids.
We have cool names like
Cotton Candy, Manatee,
Razzmatazz and Inchworm,
and are non-toxic sticks of joy
to those little imaginations.

Yes, we sometimes look like
clumps of colored wax
smashed into tissue paper,
and we do break easily
or lose our wrappers at the drop of a hat,
then get tossed in a bag
or worse, become homeless.
And horror of horrors!
We’re reinvented as candles
or reheated into twisted zombies
of our former selves.

And neither do our achievements
reside in a museum or gallery,
why they're not even framed
and proudly displayed on a wall.
No, they're slapped on ***** refrigerators
and kept there by plastic alphabet
magnets that loosely spell
such mundane things
as ‘milk’, ‘cheese’ or ‘daddy is dumb,'
until they fall to the floor
or end up in the trash.

But hey man,
give us a break!
This is our plight,
it’s a harsh existence!
Perhaps we should organize,
form a union for children’s
writing and drawing utensils,
and thus ensure equality
for us crayons?

We realize, more than likely,
this poem's title will cause
some backlash by those
who insist it be called
‘Return of the Crayon,’
because we 'happy sticks', you see,
supposedly don’t take revenge.

Nonetheless, we stand by it.
It is what it is!
Your children love us
and so should you!