chuck-e-cheese 

i want to birthday again
but like for real & with a plastic mountain
& coins for eyes. i had a friend
who always got older there. sugar 
& a tube into the sky. if i could
go back i'd climb higher. have
a second piece of cake. forget my body
in the machine place. you are always
asking me, "why do you love plastic?"
i feel attacked. i want to lie & say,
"i hate plastic" but that is not true.
i go back to the arcade talk. the sound
of plastic machines & little plastic
dinosaur prizes & plastic wrappers around
laffy taffy & plastic dads with plastic
sunglasses on their necks. i don't actually know
if i can birthday like we used to.
eventually you get old enough that birthdays
don't feel as much like celebrations 
as belt notches. maybe i could start
holding unbirthdays. alert my loves ones,
"i am getting younger." plastic is one
of the few things that are eternal at least
as far as humans go. the wood rots 
& the bones return to roots but the plastic
lives on. ghosts without eyes. a bright
prehistory. flashing lights. the chomp sound
of the ticket eater. nothing is more u.s.a. than
the wall of impossible prizes. the million ticket
hover board & video game palace. 
when i got birthdaying i always let myself
believe for a moment that they were
within reach. right there. not worth money
but tickets. tongues of paper. we could 
lay in the ball pit until the orbs turn
into synthetic planets. we could get older
& tell no one. then maybe it wouldn't count.
then maybe we could go run legless
with pizza in our lungs. coins falling 
down on the street.