What I Bought For a Quarter

Gumballs.
Tie-dyed and spotted, polka dotted.
Scratched and dented,
Reinvented into hues of cantaloupe and picnic table paint.
Ketchup-flavored gumballs.
Trained for popping.

More gumballs.
Post-marked and bench-pressed
Into stale papier-mâché sticks.
Denim gumballs.
Reupholstered and draped with fabric wrappers.
Squeaky clean gumballs soaking in a bubble bath.
Oatmeal-flavored gumballs.

The colored balls of chew wrestle with each other
Under a sky of hungry liquid foam,
Each one debating what to eat. They look at me.
You see, I’m edible. Digestible.
Won’t stay in your system for seven years,
But rather a few days,
Or until your bowels can perform a quick shit.

Where I become flushable.
And into the abyss of sewage waste I go
To dance with Kleenex clods
And play thumb war with soiled toilet paper.
After months of this,
I reach the vast polluted sea,
And eventually meet shore under an old gumball tree.
Looking up nonchalantly
A middle-aged man grimaces
And catches a porcupine gumball straight in the eye.
On his blind-side.