The Barbie Project

A planned art work showing a decapitated Barbie will not feature in a charity exhibition celebrating the doll, toymakers Mattel vowed today. -The Independent, October 1999

Starman extreme totem,
baby rubber plastic doll,
you are my super delicious
even on the floor
even in the water,
the best She-ra ever.
How many worn out
Polly Pockets are there now?
To each his own
and in Babylon,
the dirt still covers
the old puppets
just as well as it always did.
The bronze happens and recovers,
counting backwards all the time
in half lifes, by tens
editing the masterpieces
one by one, she's there
because faith heals
the right totem
for the right plaintiff,
I want to hold a firefly.
We all do. The best
is brand-new.
I'll tell you a secret
about the learning curve
that this life is,
how the children
ape the ages.

It is in the boxes,
never goes away.
All the thrift stores
in town, all the pretty
Skippers in torn dresses
with nappy hair, practically dead.
All the armless legions
of men and women
created in playscale
but not that, not that.
No one buys special edition
nuns eleven.5 inches tall.
If I could sew my taboo
around this doll's neck
it'd be righteous real voodoo.
I'd lay it at the foot
of a dying man's bed
and call it, his only totem,
in your basic breast-plate
and a real good hooker
with poke-in earrings.
We all do.
We want to hold a firefly.