Lasty’s Doll Helpers

Nighter

Lasty as a doll maker is functionally illiterate but can fix.
In his life as a doll maker he did the best,
for dolls come in all colors and needed to be retouched.
If dolls come up short Lasty has a leg.
Dolls need a new voice or maybe they can't speak for themselves at all, 
Lasty talks. What does he say? We want to know.
Is he a little old man with a white mustache and beard in slender patchwork
 like his dolls or one of those figures from fairy tale?

If you ask the dolls they say good things.
They flutter big eyes, call him Mama,
 do a lot of ticking.
He bathes them like children in the tub.
He feeds them and they wet.
They wet and get changed.
It sounds like Lasty's a dad but he's not at all.
He doesn't interfere in their lives.
He sets them free.
One is put on a wall for all to see
and then she disappears.
She goes home to visit the baby Jones.
He puts them in swings in the school at night
and in the morning children pack them away.
He puts them in little cars, for Lasty’s a mechanic,
and in boats and puts them on canals
and on lakes with the swans to sail
 and when they come in to shore
the children take them home.
That's what children do according to Lasty,
take dolls home. 

 
When doll children first came to Lasty's house
before he was a doll maker,
he had heard of dolls and his grandmother made dolls
so Lasty started and before you knew
he had Saturday giveaways.
 People would stand five deep at his door
and he would wheel out dolls with plastic bats
 and fur coats, red shoes and pumpernickel colored hats.
 Dolls that graduated from college too
 came with degrees printed in frames around their necks.
 “I'm a Harvard doll,” one ticket said.
“No you're not,” her companion resaid.

Some of these dolls have pets who talk,
 little grasshoppers and snails that live under polls
 which argue until you put leashes on them
 and then they behave pretty well to get their treats.
 Some dolls have babies and that can cost a lot.
So here all these people were
if you can call dolls standing at Lasty's door
 and getting all the dolls they could carry,
 because if you haven't noticed before
 there are more dolls than girls in the world
and more dolls than children
and more dolls even than  rhetoricians with guns
 who are waiting for you to disagree 
 before they pull the button.
Dolls with zippers don't do that, but there are not many zipper dolls.

Lasty got a cab for one of his dolls.
She was large and wouldn't fit in his wagon.
She sent her night clubbing in Bodale where all dolls live
who can't come into Lasty's store.
 Not everybody is a doll maker, but Lasty is not the only one.

Blessing

Many live in Bodale along the rivers and swamps.
What does a doll maker in a swamp?
Have you heard of Swamp Doll
and Fire Fly Doll, Mosquito and Fly Doll or Tree Doll?
In this world of ours there are many dolls and many needs for dolls.
Consider what the nations do to get them
dog dolls, cat dolls, bird dolls, bug dolls all,
and even playhouse dolls with a plastic frig. 

Lasty lives under that pine tree there
and when his dolls come home from an evening out he has hot milk.
And if they bring a friend, all the better, for Lasty is looking for helpers.
Doll helpers are hard to find in a world
 where everybody is busy being important.
But what is more important that building and fixing dolls
so they can inhabit the world?

A lot of doll barns need mending.
A lot of doll apprentices are being trained.
Doll memoirs need to be written.
Doll writers sit at doll desks, at doll screens in Ad companies
and mortgage dolls write policies
and making decisions on doll phones
that affect a lot in doll world home .

Too bad to say dolls go to war.
We blame that on boy dolls.
 But when he gives them little doll girls you know what they do.
So somebody has to step in and tell them what.
That's how Lasty got to be a doll instructor.
 He gave manner classes. He taught doll history.

It's a good thing Lasty didn't have to work for a living.
He wouldn't have had time.
Lasty was teaching dolls the trumpet.
Lasty was teaching dolls to mow lawns.
You can see that dolls have to make a living.
In Bodale they made doll money, but it was very hard to get.

Doll Makers 

Doll makers preface everything with doll,
 doll futures, doll light, doll wonders. Doll love. 
What can't a doll do? And why not, who's to say
 this is not the proper use of dolls, to stand in for ourselves?
Who says dolls don't have people makers making them
with people futures, people light or love?
 But then you're going to ask whether that can apply to ducks.
And this is just the animate. 
Imagine when we mix the living and the dead, 
work on as we speak; non-living comes to life with just 1% of DNA
 and there will be new ugly fish, wish-rider. 
This world has such people working, mixing and matching. 
So why get excited about doll makers, so much more modest in endeavor?

We doll makers make dolls.