Plight of The Misfit Toys

Story Behind The Poem


My people, my people.....It's been a goooood lil minute. I have no good explanation, so I won't even venture to try. I will just promise to try and do better....emphasis on 'try', lol.

But moving on. As you all may have noticed, it's the Holiday season, so of course I've been catching all the little holiday shows. I caught one of my all time favs, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and watching it I revisited a sympathy I felt as a child watching the movie. As a kid, I always found it real messed up how all the toys on Misfit Island were just discarded, especially when at the end they ended up being appreciated by some lil kids who weren't limited by any preconceived concept of what a toy should be....the only question for the kids was whether or not the kid was a means to his having fun. (Okay, so my childhood thought process wasn't THIS intricate---but the point remains...I felt bad for the toys, lol). But somehow, someone, somewhere else made a decision that they understood everything there was to understand about the Misfits. The truth of it all, though, is that whoever was in power simply lacked the ability to appreciate individuality; he lacked the ability to see all the toys for what they truly where...And because of his inability, the toys suffered...they were typecast as 'different', the catchall concept that essentially is a saving grace allowing the ignorant to feel as if they still do actually understand.

Okay...so maybe I took the cartoon too far.....but that's my individuality, don't typecast me as 'different' for it, lol. In all seriousness though, the plight of the toys, as I have discussed them, hit home with a feeling I've been having for a while.......I admit I am an acquired taste for people; I'm not exactly the easiest person to be around. However, being an acquired taste does not necessitate a finding that I am hard to understand.

Now I haven't been told by people that I am a hard person to 'get', but the way people have treated me has told me as much. People are very good at telling me how I will feel or react to certain things because they know my 'type', and it frustrates me because 99.9% of the time, they are completely off base. The result is me being frustrated by essentially being condemned to forever being misunderstood....sorta like the misfit toys.

Stylistically, this poem is really a departure from the norm from me.....the pattern, the pace, it's all a bit scatter brained and poetically, probably a tough digestion for the average reader. I call it my 'soap-box' form.....I jus had a lot of things to say and wanted to get it all out...so how it hit the paper is how you get it....RAAAAWWW!!! I actually re-wrote/ changed the piece three times content-wise, but I never went back and tried to make it a traditional 'poem'....this is like an anti-'Wax Poetic', lol.

But without further ado, welcome to my thoughts. Enjoy your skinny dip in my stream of consciousness..


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A misfit among misfits
Even amidst those unlike others, I am apart
And I beg the Good Lord that I not be misunderstood

But I suppose, I am not entirely unlike their breed
My good providence for misinterpretation lays in cold water, on tea leaves, stale
Still, a distance remains
As the others are embraced by an intangible concept, an enabler
The masses pat themselves on the pat for defining those across the drawn line
“Different”, they say
And somehow the masses feel they comprehend
And the others feel understood
And all is well
But apart from the masses and the others, I stand apart, frustrated
Discontent with being short changed
No attention or effort put forth to understand me as I am
I am not different
Not within the confines of their definition, at least
A definition which seeks to lasso me among others who are, but, unfamiliar to most

But such is the plight
Placed in the hole where the pigeons are kept
A parallel universe governed by assumption and misplaced certainty
Where no one dares questions the politics
There’s a strange unrest amongst the contentment
Yet it is futile to rebel
Because as my father told me, struggle is ordained by God

Still, I feel compelled to burst out of the nutshell that is my summation
And I challenge all takers to truly learn me
Navigate away from the road most traveled
Shift your gaze away from their sanctuary, east towards He
The light is always proper
And you can
I always see me for who I am; what I am
My outburst do not define me
Neither my anger, nor my sweetness
If any concept at all, I am a fluid one
Like a river that will never be touched twice
I find predictions of my evolution to be asinine
Copouts for more fearless assertions

But such is the plight
Unfitting of a conceptual fit
As opposed to risking a conniption by broadening ones horizon
The option is simply this or that
This, being a concept they already understand
That, being different

Somehow the concept of relativity escaped them, along with the truth
The truth that we are all different…..
Some are just not as easily understood
Even by those who think they understand

Such is the plight of the misfit toys