Now they brought the Mishkan to Moses, the tent and all its furnishings
its clasps, its planks, its bars, its pillars, and its sockets . . .
-Exodus 39:33
I bit the bullet of my youth and
ordered a full-sized arcade machine
from a guy in New Jersey.
You can stop reading now if
you’re disgusted at how lucky I am.
I don’t mean to show off
but the eighties are still in
full view through these eyes.
It’s a custom job.
He’s making it from scratch.
From trees, and paint, from
hand-coded data that
aging fingers once tapped
into existence. Images of
aliens and Pac people
will adorn its case.
I get to choose where the
buttons go and there will
even be an extra stick that
does what I want it to do.
I’m at the foot of my
own mountain and someday
soon I will experience the joy of
having my ship captured
only to take it back and reap
the benefits of both their abilities.
Doing this as a tween is
part of my own personal Torah.
And as my thirteen year old
spends his free time tapping away
I realize this odd electronic chain
continues. The builder is a craftsman.
The end results of his work will
outlast my ability to enjoy it.
Oh, bless you, guy in New Jersey.
The details of your labor
your craft, connect me to the
high scores of my past. To my
history still in the making.
Los Angeles poet Rick Lupert created the Poetry Super Highway (an online publication and resource for poets), and hosted the Cobalt Cafe weekly poetry reading for almost 21 years. He’s authored 25 collections of poetry, including “God Wrestler: A Poem for Every Torah Portion“, “I’m a Jew, Are You” (Jewish themed poems) and “Feeding Holy Cats” (Poetry written while a staff member on the first Birthright Israel trip), and most recently “The Tokyo-Van Nuys Express” (Poems written in Japan – Ain’t Got No Press, August 2020) and edited the anthologies “Ekphrastia Gone Wild”, “A Poet’s Haggadah”, and “The Night Goes on All Night.” He writes the daily web comic “Cat and Banana” with fellow Los Angeles poet Brendan Constantine. He’s widely published and reads his poetry wherever they let him.
