Poem #7
FTW
Out in the night, beneath the watchful scope
of the icy winter moon
the sanctum sanctorum, the oasis of fun,
had been crankin' in the red since noon.
The gyp-joint was jumpin' from wall to wall
with jackals that had braved the storm
just to get a brief glimpse of the Tickle-Me-Gimps
that had arrived that very morn.
They were shouting "Mine! Mine!" somewhere down
in Aisle 9
and someone lost his teeth in Aisle 6
when he tried to snatch the very last batch
of Hiccup Pick-Up sticks.
Meanwhile, creeping through the store like bloated rattlesnakes
the dealers beat up little kids and steal their piggy banks
they lick their greasy lips and flap their pimple-studded jaws--
the syphilitic, drug-addicted foes of Santa Claus.
And what can we, the keepers of the sacred trust, attempt
that will not leave some customer to view us with contempt?
It's hard to please a pack of wolves or sate a school of sharks
and the ones that say they'll lead us often leave us in the dark.
Out in the black, within the grasp
of the watchful winter night,
when each and every one of us must to our cars take flight,
we try to set our pains behind, our problems all on hold...
but like the ice-encrusted streets, our hearts have all grown cold.
Out in the night, beneath the watchful scope
of the icy winter moon
the sanctum sanctorum, the oasis of fun,
had been crankin' in the red since noon.
The gyp-joint was jumpin' from wall to wall
with jackals that had braved the storm
just to get a brief glimpse of the Tickle-Me-Gimps
that had arrived that very morn.
They were shouting "Mine! Mine!" somewhere down
in Aisle 9
and someone lost his teeth in Aisle 6
when he tried to snatch the very last batch
of Hiccup Pick-Up sticks.
Meanwhile, creeping through the store like bloated rattlesnakes
the dealers beat up little kids and steal their piggy banks
they lick their greasy lips and flap their pimple-studded jaws--
the syphilitic, drug-addicted foes of Santa Claus.
And what can we, the keepers of the sacred trust, attempt
that will not leave some customer to view us with contempt?
It's hard to please a pack of wolves or sate a school of sharks
and the ones that say they'll lead us often leave us in the dark.
Out in the black, within the grasp
of the watchful winter night,
when each and every one of us must to our cars take flight,
we try to set our pains behind, our problems all on hold...
but like the ice-encrusted streets, our hearts have all grown cold.
posted by Tom at 10:15 PM
1 Comments:
I first started working at Family Toy Warehouse (hence the title) in Beckley, West Virginia, on October 9, 1996. The last day I worked there was in October of 2002. Betwixt those two dates is a huge amount of my life, really. I graduated from Concord College in December of that year and basically decided to "hide out" in the simple retail world due to educational burnout. I quit three different times, but because I was quite good at my job (no, seriously, there is a way to be good in a retail store, and I kicked fucking ass for a while) I was always asked to come back. I fell in love with a girl while I was there, whom I recently broke up with (boo-hoo, right?), was threatened by several customers...there's just too much to tell about that place. Suffice it to say, it was my life for a while. I would come in to talk to people when I wasn't scheduled, because I had no life other than the store. I lived in a low-income apartment and drank profusely, also. The poem was written when I was angry with the management, which was a constant thing. I even left a copy on the office counter so that my manager could read the part about the ones who say they'll lead us...
The customers. Fuck. I have seen more of the ugly side of humanity from customers in a toy store at Christmas than I guess I'll ever see anywhere ever again. I had people threaten to cut me up, to punch me out, and oh-so-many who were smartassed pricks. To many of them, including the chain's owner at one point, I responded by saying we could go outside and settle up the old-fashioned way. I was mainly loved by the customers, and I assure you that I was the nicest person who worked on the floor (I was the King of Stock, btw). But I didn't let people fuck with me. After all, it was just a $5.50 an hour job! What did I have to lose? I could write a book on that place, where I could go into the nuances of, well, dozens of different aspects of the place. I DID write a very well-received short story (well-received by my creative writing class at Concord, anyway) about the place that I might post if I ever have the industry about me to do so. Ironic, then, that these comments are so very vague and lame. But there's a reason for that: I want to say SO MUCH about the place that I know this isn't the correct place or time. Regarding the poem, there is a whole stanza just for the TOY DEALERS. What a bunch of scumbags they were. And, (never start a sentence with AND) man, what a bunch of aggravating assholes. No particular rhyme scheme or anything like that. I know I tend to write poems in quatrains, and like some of my other less-thought-out poems, this one kind of tails off into quatrains (except that the last stanza doesn't coooperate). That's that. It's really not one of my better poems, but some of my best ones are very dark and kind of self-indulgent and I'm not sure I can bring myself to put them on here.
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