The Photographic History of Junk Dealing

The Photographic History of Junk Dealing

            Be it a box of old baseball cards, a crochet tangle, rusted Tonka trucks from 1960 or the Mattel “Derringer” belt buckle, I find my thoughts saying “I’d like this; I’d keep it.  Too”.

            A Cub Scout banner, a Snoopy poster, a chemical tube, a plastic dump truck, a postcard to someone’s parents from 1969.

            Where were you?  Where are you?  Why don’t you still live in your room, in your sand box and in your bike?

            WHY?

            Because the dirt devil of a short time kisses your lips and sticks your arm out so you shake the hand of every passing stranger telling them “It’s all right.”  Then your home alone inside your head peeking like the little mouse behind your brain down the dark spine to that hole where it somehow always seems to be “getting out”.

            Waiting, waiting, waiting; it never ends?  Ever?

            Slowly, like the logs on the bottom of the old wood pile stacked long ago by the dead man while his wife watched his every mood (move) from the kitchen window to “be sure”,

            You rot.

            Beautiful rot; dark gray-brown turning to dirt first at the feet, then toward the center, then to the core ROT.  Majestic dirt rot like the moist soil you used to kneel in to peer behind the shed to see that it “was” “a turtle”.

            Rot like the broken plastic gun you walked home with from playing war with your life.  You set it down to ponder if it can be “fixed”.

            CAN IT BE FIXED?

            The car is late for it’s inspection.  The life is unsure of the eternal rejection.  The sun shines on the young girl’s face but her shadow falls upon my knees and

            Keeps them cool.

            Like the dirt.  The dark gray-brown dirt from rot.

            I am dirt.  I am a rusted Tonka truck with a bent baseball card in the cab.

            SCREAMING with glee I ran down the dock severing the cables of the barges that clung to my life.  FLOATING astern I watch them wait behind until they slowly turn in the current.  They twist and

            Hang there

            And do nothing more

            That I can see

            From the deck of the dirt devil called short time.

            I am a photographic history of junk dealing.

            I am a bottom log on the wood pile stacked long ago.

            I am majestic brown rot.