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preservationman Jul 2015
Putting the Hasbro model together being a snap
You won’t need a thinking cap
It is as easy in reading a destination map
Piece by piece
The instruction being an ace
Product is made in not making a waste
It’s a Hasbro Greyhound Bus
A display that will involve the hobbyist in us
Detail piece upon piece
Bringing it together will be a feast
Fun with anticipation of done
The heart in admiring the Hasbro production bus
The talent in being a preservationist at the hobbyist level
Hasbro being a name for the one who helps create
It has become the moment at the precise date
Fate of production is your Hasbro hands
The after product becoming a display at your own demand.
Diane Aug 2013
She thinks if she travels to foreign lands- even if
it is only by dating an ethnic man- that she can
scale the high walls of the borders between what she
was taught and who she hopes she is.

Having followed blindly her predestination programmed life
she can’t resist taking squinted peeks through the
tiny open slits of vision, hoping to find her true self.

“You are losing the faith!” her anxious mother warns
as though to do so would be an inherent flaw,
not a conscious choice.

But Mother’s own faith
has been slipping through her hands for the past
30 years, and only that promised salvation can save
her from the indiscretions that fill the non-rapturous void
left-behind by mister Christian-right-wing-man.

Taught well by mother, father, and god, that men
must be assessed in a purely logical fashion,
“Agree on finances and childrearing and you will
have happily ever.”

But she feels fake, and does not know how
to peel the plastic wrap off her personality.
You can see its bindings in the way her eyes implore you
and how she clasps her hands on her lap by rote.

She is the pink peg in the Hasbro Game of Life car
with guilt trip road blocks, detours and poorly folded
directional maps. Spinning the wheel in search of tour guides:
What should I read? What should I think?

But that only gives her new mind instructors.
Perhaps instead of foreign languages and foreign lands,
the verity lies in the realization that mother
probably feels fake too.
Melodie McInnis Sep 2011
so you think you had it hard?

when you were five years old,
you were given hasbro toys,
when i was five,
I learned how to fold,
and help mom do the laundry,
and tuck my little brother and sister in ,

when you were seven?
you were spoiled beyond your wildest dreams,
when i was seven,
I learned to help make lunches,
and stick up for my little sister at school

when you were ten?
you had the best birthday party,
when i was ten,
I helped mom save up for my sisters birthday present,
that year she wanted a doll house,
and that year she got it, finally

When you were 12,
you went to your first sleepover,
when I was 12,
my daddy lost his job,


When you were 16?
You got your first car,
I bet that was the best part,
when i was 16,
I helped my parents pay the bills,
with my first job,
Are we sitll equals?

the difference between you and me?
some people have to grow up faster than others,
some get to be free, some have a responsibility.
Mollie Grant  Aug 2016
Operation
Mollie Grant Aug 2016
Thursday night is game night but Hasbro
has never had this one right. Operation is not
a game for ages four and up–maybe four,
multiplied by four, add four, and up.
Surgical mask on, Cavity Sam prepped,
and tweezers waiting to the right of the operating table:

I like to start with the Adam's apple–
carve away any trace of my origins
and they will never figure out who I am
because, like my mother used to say to me,
who is Eve without a blameless man.

Then I move on to the butterflies in the stomach
flittering and fluttering for a home that feels far more familiar
but they cannot be caught, only drowned.

Naturally, the broken heart follows
but the problem with pulling that out is
the never-ending-silence,
white-noise-science, black-hole-giant,
You know, the absence that predates writer's block–

writer's cramp, sliding a pencil up your wrist like it's the
(best kept) secret IV of an author.
Is that the price of filling up your bread basket,
going  to bed full on recognition and reward
and maybe even a Pulitzer Prize?
Be careful not to trip up on your own ego
or you just might end up with a wrenched ankle
and water on the knee.

I still have to deal with the wishbone,
the split-in-two-gravestone,
the only-one-of-us-is-leaving-here-happy zone.

And finally, I have the spare ribs
but I just might leave those there
because we see what happened when God
bothered to remove those the last time.
Jeremy Betts Mar 3
I can feel every eye roll
And all I did was pour out what was left of my soul
Looks like I might be the only one to see it from that angle
Like it's painful
I brush it off and project as being humble
Really I'm only diminishing what makes me emotional
It's just standard business as usual
A series of unfortunate events themed carousel
The victim blaming has become so casual
That I somehow become the spectacle
Put a screen between us and then I bet they'd care though
Convinced themselves I'm some kind of animal
Chomping at the bit, waiting to say "I told you so"
Waiting for said moment from the get go
Was it always the plan to poke at the volcano?
The saying only mentions a bear, though the volcano makes it more...what's the word...I don't know, disasterful...
That's not a word but that's what came to mind cause the mind isn't always rational
Whatever, anyway, on a long enough timeline you're bound to get burnt, we're all flammable
A majority of us are expendable
Not essential even if dependable
Reluctantly invited to the annual shiit show
The HUD flashes on arrival
"WARNING WARNING, CONDITION CRITICAL!"
But we've been lied to before, for example
Take a look at religion and the political
What's actual?
What's factual?
And what's just another game by Hasbro?
What are you looking at me for? I don't fuuckin' know
Try tying it to a white flag and running it up the flagpole

©2024
Miguel Carmona III  Dec 2021
Toy
Toy
I’m so hasbro makes you
Elated to see me belated to the TV
Cause when I come out
You jump like Geronimo
Head to toe until I need
Some double As just to go
Left out to dry  
Then the next bereft post-adolescent
Who acts prepubescent to the crime so it’s just petty theft
Cause I’m back before 3, dropped off
Carefully but unsuccessfully fixed
Played with so much that regrettably
My Hue isn’t brisk
However that doesn’t stop the next
Wavering wrist that sees me as the Catalyst To there fantasy
I’m such a satirist just mimic what they do
An antagonist to myself
spilt In the middle McAvoy
Nightfall brings arms and legs missing
Doesn’t stop your mission
No matter the position
I’m forced to listen
Simplistic with you movements yet I’m congruent so you don’t feel the intent
That I wish you used me more then just to
Pitch a tent
Gears that squeak, cracks and scuffs that peek through plastic, paint bubbling on side chipping on the other, unique I am no longer
Until you ponder to pick me up, it’s midnight a light flicks on
You wipe the borders of my dull frame
Apply a new coat of paint
With a somber look
As this routine isn’t green but gray
More common then prayers on Sunday
Attach new limbs, you place me on a tray
To let the repairs stick, how I long for this moment every day.
Once back in optimum shape,
I can’t opt to miss
Thanking you from making me prime
So I become an auto thot for you
One more time
Whatever is on you pallet
hammer it out
I’m not against being a mallet
Cause you know I’m already
Your first round ballot
Once our matinee ends before dawn
Your out like there’s a package on the lawn
I wish I could just see you yawn
Too bad because it’s 12
Time for my first black swan
I Love "Jess" Weirdelf Helps Me Write"

Cool Change

come to the earth though pure from doted nature a chance of fortune later
brass the sequence in infero blissfullness shattered dreams from the sleve
commercial obedience through the groove of order natural selection second guessing
going to the beach smell of fry doe at your reach hot dog & hamburgs out on the grill
Hasbro toys infection peril to the escaping noise hear the peril of sorts you see
plain selection in sight nor rear nerve is your right buried beneath the sod
emerging surfers going into the waves a shoot gun spy away...,

Dream deep as the wicker spout set off in organic sofa spout
can you believe through the brisk cold a common ornament to cue
what are we to do leaving a legacy both for you and me
dazzling me...
forever will see

shatered peak
life in the seams,
night has come the day was far spent made...
whistle through a corridor in places we go

— The End —