Plastic Love
Let the public vote! no mind beats in the vacant chest of that malleable coy mistress
Barbie
how can we call it
love
projected onto those guardians of our childish hearths
the Lares and Penates of the Pink World?
Love does not bend unless it’s plastic:
worth unknown but price precise, with discount, tax and shipping
Barbie’s not Time’s fool: her fuchsia lips and cheeks
blanche only to fashion’s dictate
and alter to match the marketing brief
– even to the edge of taste and decorum
Ken dallied with the Toys
while Barbie surfed the dating game
now he’s asking us to choose for her
what hope do our full-sized selves have if elections determine love?
4 comments:
Like this one very much, indeed.
I'm here from John's Odradek blog post about the Fray. Your comment there suggested to me, now here's a thoughtful person worth following. This post confirms it.
Barbie and Ken are such stereotypes of humankind. Not a great reflection of our 'full sized selves'.
Once again, you score a palpable hit with this searing insight.
Some toys are just so preposterous like toy guns. What are people thinking?
Brilliant!
Dave, thanks for your support.
Elisabeth, I appreciate you taking the trouble to read Ken ... I have a long history (in poetry) with these two.
John, I await your essay on toys and iconography with interest. I suspect I may be accused of being obsessed, but the Barbie poems are nearly at an end. I feel I am in danger of repeating myself.
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