Tonka Man

Memory starts with
action figures
which are just dolls for boys
but you can't call them dolls
because dolls
are for girls and boys
wouldn't play with them but
Action Figures!

What of Atari do you remember Atari
do you even know what a Commodore
Vic-20 is/was?
We had one my mom won
it at K-mart and we had
games like Tooth Invaders
but you didn't have a Commodore but i did and i remember

Personal memory has turned to a
catalogue of consumer items out
at a certain time that maybe you or your
parents could actually afford to buy.
No longer sharing books, sharing
TV shows Hey do you remember the
Gilligan's Isle when the Skipper hit
Gilligan in the head with his hat
and why
why could the professor what was his name he had a name
and i don't mean the actor i mean the character why could he keep
the radio working, but couldn't figure out how to fix the
hole in the boat or the time he made rocket fuel from coconuts?

My eyes register zeroes just
like those damn cartoons or
the Tonka-man action figure doll
can I say Tonka? Can plastic be
a man?
he had brown dots for eyes
and a bright orange jump suit
but he was just plastic so I guess that
was his body
do dolls really have bodies, even?
He came with some kind of jeep-car-motorcycle-type thing
and was smaller than the other plastic dolls
and my brother once had a night
mare that this Tonka-man crawled up out of a
hole in his blue blanket--
my brother's blue blanket, not Tonka-man's--
and came to get him! I wonder if Matt remembers
Tonka. Finally dropped out of a pocket
out of "his" car-type thing he came packaged with
out of one kid's nightmare.

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